Adventures in Arequipa

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I posted this but it didn save, so Ill give a summary.
Last weekend I went to Arequipa with Kim & Lauren. The city, made of the volcanic rock Sillar, is called the "white city" for the aforementioneds color. We got in early Thursday and visited the Museo de la Universidad Catolico de Santa Maria, where the Incan mummy Juanita is displayed. It was really cool to see a piece of history so well preserved. We checked out the cathedral and a colonial mansion -- both very pretty.
On Friday we took the early bus to Chivay, at the beginning of the Colca Canyon, the 2nd deepest in the world, only behind the neighboring Cotahuasi Canyon. We pretty much spent the entire day waiting for buses, since no one knows the real schedule and officials are less than official (welcome to Peru). The bus ride from Chivay to Cabanaconde was absolutely terrifying, with the gringos in the back screaming every time the bus tilted or jolted us from our seats, as the driver raced to beat the sunset.
We woke up at dawn on Saturday to visit Cruz del Condor, the best place in the world to see Andean Condors. With a wingspan of 11 feet and weighing up to 15kg, they are the largest land-birds in the Western Hemisphere. We waited at the mirador for 2 hours, with only glimpses of two condors from several hundred meters away. Just as we were giving up and heading back to the bus, several flew straight over the massive crowds, allowing us to see them in full form and snap a few photos. We took the bus to Yanque in order to see the Uyu Uyu ruins. The site of a Conquistador massacre, the village was very intact, but had really cool cacti growing from the stone walls. We descended the trail to the Colca Lodge private thermal baths, where we were definitely out of place compared to all the rich tourists staying there. Forgetting flashlights, we had to have an employee shine a lamp so we could cross the Urubamba river in order to get back to our hostel.
We left Yanque for Arequipa early on Sunday and visited the Convento Santa Catalina. It was a convent opened to the public in the 1970s, and was both gorgeous and very interesting to see how such isolated people lived within the 2nd largest city in Peru. We returned to Cusco on Sunday evening...

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