Mr Ben

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There has been a big Hat swap around. Cas' cowboy hat has gone to Ed, Ed's baseball cap has come to me and Cas has bought a blue and cream hat. Hat already has a girly sombrero affair with lots of ribbon and material.
At Nazca bus station last night, Hat was so tired that she crashed out on top of her bags and we lifted her into the bus when it was all loaded. The overnight bus journey has the most comfortable chairs of any bus we've been on. Poor Ed woke up in the night and didn't know where he was and was quite upset and said he wasn't enjoying it; it took a lot of hair stroking to get him back off and then he slept very well and he was back to himself by the time we woke up and arrived in Arequipa.
From a night street vendor in Nazca we bought some Churros (straight Spanish donuts) and some moon snapped pastries filled with Ducle Leche. What a brilliant breakfast as we looked out the bus windows and saw our first sunrise come up over the Andes mountains.
Arequipa is high up, around 7,500 feet, so the air is noticeably cooler and more pleasant. It's Peru's second city, much smaller, but a real cultural centre stretching back to well before the Incas.
We took a taxi from the bus station straight to the hotel which was a lovely colonial building with pretty colourful gardens. Ed and Hat needed a food top up, so we joined their breakfast buffet which was great; pancakes, fruit, toast and other goodies. Our table was in a flowery and palm shaded part of the garden and Booted Racket Tail Hummingbirds zipped around us as we drank our coffee. The coffee is done quite strangely; a flask of very strong coffee which you then dilute. I've experimented to find a reasonable flavour, but Cas wrote it off.

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