Blogs from Arequipa, Peru, South America - page 4

Breakfast 630 depart 7. Basic breakfast bread butter a bit of ham and some plastic cheese. We drove a little over an hour to get to the condor viewing spot. On the way we drove through a village which and a few lookouts but were told we would stop on the way back. Before arriving at the view point we stopped on side of road for some pictures as a condor was eating a cow. Condors live off dead animals - they don't attack like eagles. The condors work with the foxes. Condors signal where the food is by flying in circles and the foxes come in to kill. The fox eats first and the condor scavenges off the left overs. However livestock in the area also fall over the edge of the mountains sometimes and ... read more

I felt as if I was tossing and turning all night but I must have managed at least 3-4 hours sleep as one of the few times I woke up the sun was starting to rise and it was just before 6 am and I felt good and not tired at all. We got our bags and jumped on a bus to our hotel. We were told we would have same bus driver aka private for the next few days so that makes it a lot easier and more comfortable. It was a full size bus too so most of us were able to have a row to ourselves to stretch out and keep all the stuff we keep accumulating, Andreas did the best he could to try get our rooms ready in time and we ... read more

One last dip in the hot spring pools and we were off again. Colca canyon was the last destination before we start to retrace our steps, which are well over 1000 bus miles to return back to Lima. We took another taxi this mornings, a 3 1/2 hour trip through the Salinas y Aguada Blanca, a vast expanse of strange shaped volcanoes, giant looking sandpits, herds of Llamas and Alpacas and bizarre rock formations perched almost unbelievably on top of sheer rock faces. Then, at the very top of the pass where you could see El Misti, the 19,000 ft volcano that overlooks our destination, Arequipar, there were hundreds of these little stone piles. Not conucal cairns as we know them, but single stone balanced upon single stone and so on. They looked like minature people ... read more

It was a bit of a struggle to get down to the hot springs, but I took my time and it was worth it. After larking about in the pools and switching back and forth between the hot and cold pools we got down to some good old fashioned home schooling in a hot spring pool. First up was maths: we did some times tables, addition, subtraction and we almost succeeded in explaining percentages to Hat. Then we did geography and geology, the canyon was perfect for showing things like erosion and how stalactites and stalactites form, finally we did some literacy in the form of 'what does this word me'. I'm not kidding when I say that the kids were all in and very enthusiastic. When asked, they said it was because it was an ... read more

Took a taxi to a recommended Peruvian restaurant and it was great; musicians playing pipes and those little guitars had us all jiving on our seats. Ed quite forgot where he was and began to jive at the table, that lad has good Latin rthymn. Ed and Hat both tried new food and enjoyed their meals. The roccola (stuffed peppers) were excellent. On 20 mins walk back to our hotel we bought a tennis ball and in the gardens of the hotel we did a games lesson. This consisted of catch and then we did target practice to see who could get the ball into the mouth of an enormous pottery urns. The urn was so big in fact that both kids could climb inside at the same time, like Ali Baba. Hat and Ed were ... read more