Another colonial city

  Arequipa, Peru Monday, March 21, 2016

After our exciting day at Nasca, we whiled away the day and waited for The Big Red Bus Of Adventure to pick us up in the evening and take us on to our next destination; Arequipa. Arequipa is Peru's 2nd largest city and is slightly further away form the coast and up in the mountains making the climate much cooler for us - and more bearable. Nasca had been almost unbearably hot. First we had to survive the journey. No-one got off at Nasca which meant the people on the bus had been sitting comfortable all the way from Huacachina and had spread themselves out nicely - meaning no seats for us!Well we persuaded one or two to move and settled down in uncomfortable seats for a night journey and knew we would not get any sleep. And we were right. We were dropped at the door of our hostel at 6am and luckily the room was available for us to just go straight in, straight to bed and straight to sleep! Our hostel is on a fairly busy main road but when we were inside, it was like a little haven of tranquillity where all we could hear were the birds in the garden. Perfect! Arequipa is a similar style city to Quito but our first impressions were that Quito was a bit ahead in the pretty city stakes. We were pretty hungry that first night and being in a large city, we got onto Trip Advisor and found an Indian Restaurant (we haven't had Indian for months and Cathryn Robbins keeps talking about all the Indian food they were having in York on Facebook and it was driving us mad!!) so it was a done deal - Indian it was.And it was divine. Just a tiny restaurant with 5 tables and the food came out slowly. But it was oh so worth it! Arequipa turned out to be a really nice city. It was sunny and warm during the day and the temperature dropped to cardy level in the evenings but never got really cold. The streets were pretty and the people lovely. It is also a great place to start a trip to the world's 2nd deepest canyon - Colca Canyon. And this is why we were here. But as always - we have written about it separately. Living in this city, were a family from Portland, Oregon, USA who were friends with the family we had got on well with on our Galapagos cruise and had kept in touch with - Dena & Judah and their two daughters; Leah & Naomi. Dena had suggested we all meet up for a beer and so we did. Amy & Cliff had taken the plunge and taken their youngest son Gus, out of school for 3 months and moved to Arequipa to experience something new. We really admire people like them who have the guts to give their children experiences they could never get otherwise. Anyone we have ever met who has done it have all said how much their children benefitted from seeing other types of life, and they don't grow up thinking the whole world looks like Disney!We had a really lovely evening with Amy & Cliff and agreed to meet again later in the week. Which we did but with coffee this time not beer. It is really nice to feel like you have a friend in a far off place sometimes. We tried a "free walking tour" here too. We know they are not really free but the one in Medellin had been so good we thought we would try it again. Unfortunately it wasn't anywhere near as good and after about an hour we were bored rigid so we dropped off the back of the tour and hoped they didn't notice. After our Colca Canyon trip we switched hostels. Mainly because we were fed up of walking up the fairly steep hill to get to any restaurants or shops which were located further up near the Main square. But also because we wanted to be first on the bus to Cusco so we could get good seats when everyone else got off (and we knew now where the first drop off point was)So our new hostel was pretty comfy and we had plenty of room to unpack all our bags and repack them a bit more sensibly. It's surprising how disorganised they can get. We had good internet here too so it was nice to Skype family for Easter. It sounded a bit manic at Jody's mums; her auntie and two cousins plus dog had descended on her and we think the homemade wine was flowing. Although they deny it of course! Well we have enjoyed Arequipa. There isn't much to say about it really, but it was a nice stopover. We are very excited about the next stop - Cusco. It will be a long bus ride again but it will be worth it.   [gallery columns="4" ids="12402,12405,12407,12409,12411,12415,12420,12424,12428,12435,12443,12449,12458,12463,12468,12475,12489,12500,12510,12519,12526,12535,12551,12562,12570,12579,12586,12593,12599,12609,12621,12629,12634,12643,12651,12658,12666,12672,12678,12686,12690,12695,12699,12705,12710,12712,12716,12722,12726,12727,12731,12735"]