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12th April 2009 After the luxury of the tour hotels it was back to hostels for us! We spent some time in the morning finding and moving our stuff into a hostel, fortunately finding one just around the corner from the hotel. As we were moving on the next day it was then into the centre to buy our bus tickets, but lunch first! Next stop Arequipa. Back in the nicer part of Lima (Miraflores) we decided to go to the beach. As it was Easter Sunday it was pretty busy giving a good atmosphere. We managed to snap a few photos of a kissing couple, don't worry we weren't perving it was just a statue. Sipping our raspberry ice drink we watch the sun go down in spectacular style! (see photos)
13th April 2009 17 hour bus ride, what more can we say? Bus was nice though and we attempted to join in with the on-board Spanish bingo, we may even have won but we wouldn't have known!
14th April 2009 Arriving early morning into Arequipa our first stop the hostel Koala backpackers, we definitely don't recommend this hostel (maggots in the pans, do we
need to say more?) After dropping off our stuff we hit the town to book some adventures. Bookings sorted we explored what Arequipa had to offer. Arequipa is surrounded by volcanoes and mountains giving a very pretty backdrop to the city. At the university there is a small museum which houses two extremely well preserved mummies. Both are young teenage Incan girls given as sacrifices to the mountain gods, to prevent further volcanic eruptions. Next up we saw an exhibition of pre-Incan societies and a historic house made from white volcanic stone. The roof terrace of the house displayed excellent views of the volcano, El Misti.
15th April 2009 Disappointed with the previous hostel we decided to move. After spending the morning sorting this out we were very excited to begin our first trip, white water rafting on the Colca river. This was much fun, and wow did we look sexy in our wetsuits, life jacket and helmets. Still safety first! The rapids started off steady so we were a little confused when they told us to get out of the boat and wade through a section. This is when it got exciting. At one of the wades
Alex slipped over not so gracefully and felt like a bit of wet idiot, still better than falling out of the boat and getting stuck under the rocks though. Back in the boat we bravely took on the heavier rapids, at one stage dropping 3m. This was awesome as was the view looking back at the fall and El Misti in the background. We proved our white water rafting skills by not falling out unlike two people from our group, but we did get smacked in the face by a few stray tree branches (always listen to the instruction "DOWN''). It was a fantastic day, wet and tired (boy did our arms ache) we returned to the hostel where by coincidence we bumped into the two Danish guys from the Inca Trail. It was good to catch up with them again.
16th April 2009 Today was an early start for our second trip, a two day tour of the Colca Canyon. We drove from Arequipa up a mountainous nature reserve, where the vacunas hang out (these are endangered relatives of the Llama). We reached the highest point of our trip so far, 5100m up. Here we were amongst
the snowy peaks, but there was still people trying to sell us stuff, it wouldn't be Peru without it. By lunch we arrived in Chivay, our overnight stop. After an all-you-can eat buffet and a quick nap we bathed in the thermal springs. The temperature was a nice and toasty 38C, after being cooled down from 85C! It was a great way to relax after being cramped up in the bus. The evening entertainment was dinner with a traditional dance show included. Alex was lucky enough to be dragged up to participate, what a good dancer.
17th April 2009 Day two of the tour and it was a 5.30am start, why do they do this to us? Stopping off in a small village we had the pleasure of watching a traditional dance go round and round the main plaza. The surroundings were stunning as the sunlight hit the snowy peaks, if only the music for the dance would be taken off loop, it would have been a great way to start the day. Along the Colca Canyon we saw some Pre-Incan tombs and an Incan rock in which was carved the irrigation system for the terraces that surrounded
the canyon. We reached the condor cross in time to see the "Flight of the Condors", and what a flight it was. With a huge wingspan of 3m you wouldn't think they could be so graceful and we were lucky enough to see several Condors pass by. The whole experience was topped-off by the great view down into the Canyon. On the return journey to Arequipa we visited a village that was partly destroyed by an earthquake, where we photographed an impressive looking eagle before returning back to our hostel.
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