First day in Arequipa!

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We are finally awake in Arequipa. The traveling here was really rough. We left Miami at 7:15pm and arrived in Lima, Peru at 1:00am. Needless to say we were absolutely exhausted! Líma´s airport is pretty cool, it´s open 24 hours a day for flights like ours. So at like 2am I got Papa Johns and Jose got a dish called Lomo Saltado which is a Peruvian dish with beef. We then went into the terminal and tried to sleep but between all of the announcements and the workers making sure we were waiting for the correct flight, it was pretty difficult. It´s amazing how different security is in third world countries. They didn´t care if we were wearing our shoes, didn´t check for liquids at all, in fact we brought water bottles (the reusable ones filled with water) through and they didn´t care. They even let me take a picture of a huge container with confiscated items like scissors that they had sitting there.

The flight to Arequipa seems like a dream. Jose and I were both so tired that we were drifting in and out of sleep for the whole ride. We took off at about 4:30am and landed at 5:30am. When I opened my eyes I saw that there was no real airport, instead they just pushed those stairs up to the plane and we disembarked. We were both woken up by how COLD it was! And then thë "baggage claim" was a joke. Just a guy putting luggage onto this tiny belt for us to pick up. We grabbed a cab and ended up at the hostel at about 6am.

We woke up the woman who runs the hostel and she tried to tell us that a room wouldn´t be ready until 10am! She was like "go check out the city, you can leave your backpacks here" (except in Spanish). And we told her noooooo way! We were exhausted and wanted to go to sleep! So she said that they´d set up a temporary room for us. Well an hour later, at 7am, they finally finished "cleaning" the room and let us sleep! When we got up this morning we had to wait around for probably about an hour and a half for them to clean the room we were supposed to have today. And then the ensuite bathroom we were paying extra for had no hot water like they had promised. So we waited another 30 minutes for them to clean another room! Jose and I are not very happy with this hostel, but fortunately we won´t be there long. I guess that´s what you get for only paying $14 a night for both of us!

We walked around Arequipa today and it is a beautiful city. It´s very colonial and the stonework is incredible. The Peruvian people here are all so friendly and happy. Everyone asks Jose where he lives, he says the US and then they say "but your Spanish is so good!" and he tells them he´s from the Dominican Republic originally. Some of the people have never heard of DR! Jose gets shocked every time. The city is surrounded by a volcano called El Misti and tons of mountains. When you go high up in a building it´s absolutely beautiful to see. The clouds weren´t too heavy today so we were able to see some of El Misti. Whenever we´ve told anyone we´re traveling to Puno they say "it´s so cold there" and when we say we´re traveling to the Amazon they say "it´s too hot!" so apparently we´re in for lots of different temperatures!

Tomorrow we´re going on a 2 day/1 night tour of the Colca canyon so we won´t be able to update the blog for a few days. After that we leave almost right away for Arica, Chile so we might not be able to update it until we get to Chile. It´s free for Jose to receive texts so feel free to text him! (though he doesn´t always have service).

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Comments

[Caitlyn]

I wanna see pictures of Jose with no hair!