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Published: June 29th 2012
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We left Cusco for Arequipa, Peru's 'White City' and a place that contained something that elicited more excitement in Andrew than Macchu Pichu, the Salt Flats or Lake Titicaca - a food court containing a McDonalds, a Burger King AND a KFC. We spent a few days there doing little other than watching the England v Sweden game and visiting 'Juanita', a fascinatingly well preserved girl who was sacrificed by Incas on a mountain near to the city and then kept in pefect condition by the ice. She is now on display in a freezer within a small museum - creepy.
We left in the middle of the night for a two day hiking trip to the Colca Canyon, known for being nearly twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and a great place to spot huge Andean Condors. We saw a few on the first day before trekking down to a town known as the 'Oasis'. On the way we passed a number of tiny traditional villages and some unbelievable scenery - the ony problem was the tough trek back up the next morning.
Arequipa has an excellent setting, surrounded by the El Misti, Chachani and Pichu Pichu
volcanos. On the bus back we were treated with excellent views of all of these, as well as being shown the mountain where the Amazon river begins. We were also kindly taken to a field where we could see a large herd of alpacas and llamas - as if we hadn't seen enough of them already. One thing we've realised is that Peruvians love their camelids.
In Arequipa we were, of course, staying at the Wild Rover hostel. To be honest I could have done with a change, but they offer a fetching free t-shirt if you stay at all three. We probably stayed in Arequipa a little too long - although we did do some good White Water Rafting on the nearby Rio Chili - and after a few days we left for Huacachina, a 'Lawrence of Arabia' style oasis in the middle of the Peruvian desert.
Here we bumped into a few travel buddys, spent a couple of days relaxing in the powerful sun and then went sand boarding. Sand boarding is kind of like snow boarding except, yeah, it's on sand. I can't really do either. The dunes were amazing though - high and, crucially,
soft, so we all had an enjoyable and injury free time. Just as fun as surfing the dunes was the journey there, on a huge sand buggy with a slightly mental driver.
Eventually we left Huacachina and decided to skip the expensive Nazca lines, instead moving up the desert to Peru's capital Lima, and Andrew's final destination. On arriving in the beachside suburb of Barranco, we found our hostel was celebrating it's ten year anniversary, meaning there was a massive party and our rooms would only cost $1 for the night - a nice surprise.
Most people who had been to Lima told me it wasn't the best city in the world. I couldn't help remember a paragraph from Moby Dick where the main character Ishmael says what a depressing place it is. It is fairly miserable. For the first few days the wild coast of Barranco was covered in mist, making it look a little bit like Scarborough in winter. The main city centre was a long taxi ride away and contained some grey buildings and a few good museums. Miraflores was better and was surprisingly sophisticated but overall Lima falls a long way behind Rio de
Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Cusco in the list of great South American cities.
After watching England crash out of the Euros in a local seafood restaurant (really nice Ceviche but perhaps not the best location to watch it) and visiting the Museum of Archaeology, I tearfully said goodbye to Andrew as he took a taxi to the airport for his flight home. Andrew has been a great travel companion over the last couple of months, responsible for some hilarious moments. If you're reading, thanks very much for coming.
Being on my own felt surprisingly strange and the general melancholy of Lima was starting to grate, so the next day I took a long bus up through more desert to Mancora on the Pacific Coast. Mancora is not the most amazing beach town I've visited but it is the first beach I've sat on since Brazil so therefore I love it. I've spent a few days here and plan to travel over the border to Ecuador tomorrow.
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