Arequipa

We´ve just taken a few days off, we´d been on one city per day for the last week and it was showing. We´re now in Arequipa, with the deepest canyon in the world (eat your heart out Grand Canyon) - going to go hiking in it tomorrow. Arequipa is nice, not particularly spectacular, warm - this blog might sound like everywhere we visit is superlative, but this is a plain old normal town.

Cusco got better the 2nd time around, we´d followed our senses to what we thought was the non-touristy part first time round, it turned out to be the tout-ly touristed area. We accidentaly stayed for Corpus Christi, the first sign we had that it was a special event was the entire town eating roast guinea pig in a huge market (yes, yes, its a small fluffy mammal but is it any cuter than rabbit?). Then -it was like deja vu all over again- marching bands, a procession, and people holding up gold leaf objects. Inti Rahmi, the Inca winter solstice festival is in a week or two.

The bus to Arequipa was particularly bad, we were promised semi cama and "directo", which as far as I can see, means "stops anywhere for anyone for any length of time". They kept showing movies through the night, even turning the volume up at midnight.

Next up; Nazca, for the insanely big drawings of aliens in the desert, Pisco, for grape brandy and sea life, Hurraz for trekking ("the highest concentration of tropical glaciers in the world" says the guidebook - the only concentration, surely?) and then we fly out on the 27th.