Arequipa

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Arequipa is the place to get stranded at when your hostel manager screws up your reservation for your bus out of the city. It's definitely the best place we've stopped at in Peru so far. Great night life, great pastries, great prices, great gringos, great views, great everything. Of course, there are still sketch areas and people, but every city has those.

As soon as we were dropped off at the bus station in Arequipa from Ica, we found a nice man offering us maps and information about the city. He even offered us a free ride to the Plaza and suggested a hostel that had everything we needed at a reasonable price. It turned out that he was the manager of the hostel he brought us to-- shocking. The place included breakfast, wi-fi, hot showers, TV, and a private bathroom. The name of the hostel was called La Posada del Characato. The manager gave us a "special price" of 60 soles a night when the regular fee is usually 110 soles per night. After a much needed shower, we headed out to explore the Plaza later that night.

The next day we booked the Colca Trek through our hotel manager and spent the rest of the day walking around the Plaza. The first place we searched for was a supermarket. The plan was to get water and healthy trekking food but instead we walked out with pops and cheap ice-cream. We found tons of vegetarian restaurants for Cheryl. Seemed like every place had vegetarian options or specialized in vegetarian food. We hit the jackpot when we found a delicious pastry place that had vegetarian buffets for only 6.50 soles. That is ridiculously cheap compared to anywhere else we've been to so far. The restaurant was called Colca Inca Kakao Stube. After dinner we headed back home early as we needed to be in the lobby and ready to go the next day at 3 am. Time for the Colca Trek.

We arrived back at our hostel at about 6 pm from the Colca Trek. We decided to book our next ticket out of this city to Cusco through our hostel manager, but he wasn't in that night. We had to speak with him the next morning. The night ended there as we were so tired from the Trek and the bus ride back to town.

First thing we did next morning was book the Cruz del Sur bus tickets to Cusco through the hostel manager. We checked the official Cruz website for seat availabilities prior to speaking with him and it didn't look good as all the seats were sold out for that night and the next (12th and 13th). However, the manager guaranteed us, ''100%'' that he could get tickets for tomorrow night. We took his word and didn't book for the day after tomorrow (14th) through the website. He didn't even try to make a profit by overcharging for the tickets. How nice. We checked out some markets and took it easy because we were still so sore from the trek. Didn't stay out too late as the checkout time for the hostel was super early at 10am!

The next day when I went out to the lobby to checkout and collect my bus tickets, the manager avoided eye contact with me until I pursued him for my tickets. It turned out that he was unable to print off tickets for us because our names were not on the seating list that night as the bus was already booked up. Pretty irritating. Now we couldn't book the Cruz tickets to Cusco until the 15th because the 14th was already booked up. He apologized and suggested different bus companies in place of Cruz del Sur. We quickly did some research on the other bus companies and read horrific and deadly reviews on them. We wanted the Cruz! The hostel manager said he'll book tickets for the 15th and pick them up personally and deliver it to us. He also agreed to cut down the nightly rate to 40 soles per night for us. We agreed, but we still weren't very impressed.

The next 2 days were spent on more window shopping at local markets and a lot more carb ingestion. People here love the white carbs. We checked out the Santa Catalina Monastery for 35 soles each. Tuesday and Thursday nights are suppose to feature a different atmospheric mood in the Monastery. We discovered that actually meant pitch black rooms at night time and dark environmental surroundings. The place took up 5 acres; I felt lost at every turn in such dark conditions. 70 soles was a rip off. Other than that, we pretty much just bummed around town and relaxed. Now it's time to take our altitude pills in preparation for Cusco!

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Photos

Ladies in custom clothing selling dolls
You can see they are excitedly running towards the gringo's taking pictures... fresh meat!

Santa
This guy stood on the street every night trying to sell chocolate bars for 1 soles (about 30 cents)... we felt bad so we bought one

Comments

[Wonder Wong]

Enjoy your trip, We miss you!!
Guys we are so proud of you, keep in mind safety #1. Love Wonder, YoYo and Ian