Arequipa

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Oh Bolivia, you were not nice to our gastrointestinal regions......😞 We saw some great stuff in Bolivia, don't get me wrong, but it made us feel less than stellar. And, to add insult to injury, I (Greg) came down with a nice bout of food poisoning (or something along those lines) our last day in Bolivia. After finishing the boat trip, and having lunch in our last Bolivian town, we took a 3.5 hour bus ride to Puno, Peru. The bus ride was uneventful, but as soon as we starting heading into the city center to grab money, I started feeling really weird. Fast forward 3 hours or so and I'm vomiting my guts out in front of the tourist doctor in our hostel room! We spent the night in a clinic that night while I received IV saline, antibiotics and gravol! Fun times! Not a huge deal, but needless to say its not what you want to spend your time doing! Another prescription for antibiotics plus some other pills and within 2 or 3 days I was feeling pretty much back to normal. After spending 1 extra day recovering in Puno than we had planned (it was supposed to just be an overnight stop between buses) we headed to our next real destination which was Arequipa.

Arequipa is Peru's second largest city (Southern Peru) and has 2 huge volcanoes (Misti and Chachani) that overlooked it. We were here for a total of 5 days so I'll summarize what we did below.

1) Day one we spent basically just touring around the nice area close to our hostel and deciding on tours we might want to do for the rest of our time here. Arequipa's nicest area is around the Plaza de Armas with lots of nice restaurants, shops and colonial building made from white volcanic ash (I think). They call Arequipa the "Ciudad Blanca" (the White City). With Laura not feeling great, combined with us being bummed we couldn't celebrate with Bre and Barry this night made for a very homesick day.

Just our luck, Laura hadn't been feeling 100% all day and because to be honest we were sick and tired of being sick, we called the doctor right away to make sure she didn't have a parasite since she had been struggling with the same problem for a while now. We got the results the next morning that it was just another bacterial infection, so she joined me on the antibiotic train.....AGAIN! For those scoring at home, our prescriptions thus far;

4 doctor visits
1 cream for bug bite swelling
1 antihistamine
4 antibiotic prescriptions
1 antinausiant
1 to counteract fever
1 for stomach pains
plus the saline, O2, gravol
**ALL IN BOLIVIA**

With the doctors advice we have tried to change our diets so that we don't go more crazy than we already are from being sick off and on so much in the past month. So, no more uncooked fruit or veggies and no fresh fruit juices. I know, you're probably thinking, why limit yourselves, if it's going to happen it will happen. Well, we tried that, and it did happen, over and over, so we are gunna try something different (so far so good knock on wood).

2) After a rest day to let the antibiotics kick in we went for a long, long, downhill bike ride on the Chachani volcano! The day started by driving 3hrs up hill from Arequipa (~2400m ASL) to the start of our bike ride at 4800m ASL. It was all downhill from here! It took us about 4hrs with breaks to reach the city again. The terrain was a mix of normal gravel road, bumpy gravel road, ridiculously rocky and bumpy road, sand, and finally for the last hour or so pavment! Laura bailed twice in the sand, but no major injuries. Overall a rough, but fun ride! We did very, very little peddling. That's the way it should be no?

3) Next we did a 2 day tour to a place called Colca Canyon. This is the deepest canyon in the world coming in at it's max depth at twice the depth of the Grand Canyon! The tour didn't pan out to be as great as we had hoped, we spent most of the trip in the van driving to and from the canyon. However, there were 2 highlights. First, our dinner was accompanied by a great Peruvian band and 2 dancers who did traditional Peruvian dance which was really cool. Second, when we actually got to the Canyon, we went to a lookout point called Cruz del Condor where it is common to see the huge Andean Condor. Luckily we saw 4 of them, soaring above the canyon and coming quite close to where we could stand at the canyon edge!

4) We had planned on taking a night bus to Nazca the night we returned from the canyon, however when we got back to our hostel we found out that on Sunday (the day we left for the canyon), a miner strike had begun, just our luck! They decided to block the Panamerican highway (the main coastal highway in Peru) about 5 hours from Arequipa therefore blocking our road to Nazca. To add to that, on Monday when police tried to clear the road, the miners fought back and 6 people ended up dieing (reportedly 5 through police gunshots, 3 miners plus 2 bystanders I think, as well as an 85 year old woman who died on a bus from a heart attack). Obviously we were lucky to not have been stuck at the roadblock on a bus as they were stranded there for over a day until the government began flying people out with army planes. So, we had to extend our stay in Arequipa and wait out the strike. Luckily the following morning a 48hr truce was called while they negotiated with the government, allowing us to pass by bus that night. To fill our day we visited Monestario Santa Catalina. This is a convent that was opened to the public in 1970 after 4 centuries of mystery - the convent was a city within a city for the 450 nuns that lived there in the late 1500's (they never visited the outside world, and most of the outside world never visited it). Its filled with maze like roads and stone rooms that covers 2 hectares in the middle of Arequipa city. There was tons of artifacts and period furniture allowing you to really imagine how these nuns lived (barb wire under garments...ouch). The convent is considered one of Latin America's most important religious sites and so it was pretty cool (and kinda surreal) to be able to visit a place with such history.

Overall, great time in Arequipa. Nice place, lots to do, great hostel! Next we will make our way to Nazca to see the famous Nazca lines from the air!

Hope everyone is well and is enjoying the warmer weather back home (although by the time I wrote this I think it got cold again)

Gregory and Laura

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