Arequipa, what can i say? I must love as ive stayed here over a month now.

Its an amazing city. A wealthy city where the people take particular pride in their houses, gardens and patch of lawn on the footpath outfront. The city has a strange layout as while it is quite big {Perus second biggest} it is scattered with farmland and has a river running through it. Its odd to see city living and cuntry living so close to or amoungst each other. The hostel im living in is in Vallecito which is the cities wealthy area but even beyond here the streets are clean and lined with trees and the homes are quite big, very pretty and well looked after. THe houses here in Vallecito though are sometimes nothing short of mansions and painted lovely colours {my favourite is the pink and white hotel down the road, it looks like a barbie house and is amazing}.

The streets are filled with only half a dozen different types of vehicles; little yellow taxis {that many drivers like to decorate with neon lights spoilers and sometimes even massive speakers on the roof}, old school beetles and combi vans, small buses, normal vans and of course the occasional private car. The vans, combi and normal are used as school buses and cheap transport similar to that of Asia where the money man hangs out the door shouting the name of the places its going.

Peru so far has been lovely in the fact that everywhere there is heaps more greenery and flowers, even the centro city streets have small trees lining them. The main plaza is beautiful (plaza de Armas) is beatiful with big palm trees, a fountain in the middle, millions of pidgeons and plenty of three year olds chasing the pidgeons. Then of course there are the people selling icecreams, seeds for the birds, photographers and men that sit with type writers and type documents for people.The four streets surrounding the plaza are pretty touristy, mainly restaurants, travel centres and those shops that sell llama crap and ´peruvian´ clothes all for way too much. But if you go to the streets behind, theyre much more local and wayyy cheaper.

The night life in Arequipa is not too bad, all of the clubs in centro being in one or two streets, women sit out on the street all night selling awesome burgers and skewers of heart meat cooked on hotplates as you order...ive even tried the heartmeat and it wasnt too bad.

The food generally here is pretty average. They have more variety and more vegetables than Argentina but they tend to go for convenience as well so there are millions of tiny burger shops, heaps of chifa or chinese shops and lots of chicken shops there you get a quarter of chicken and chips. You always get soups an entre and every meal is served with rice or chips or both. I hate rice now. The only meal i have really enjoyed so far is Chicharron which is kind of like deep fried pork and potatoes. Its amazing.

Ive been to some pretty awesome places here in Arequipa. The bar manager at the hostel has been here for about 4 months and has some Peruvian friends here in Arequipa so theyve taken us to some awesome MASSIVE university parties. Last weeks uni party was held in a huge open park thing with a stage and DJ and famous peruvians on stage holding dirty dancing and bikini competitions with people from the crowd. These parties start in the middle of the day and finish at 8. You only drink beer and you drink peruvian style...you stand in a circle and buy a crate of long necks (noone drinks small beers here), some starts with one beer and a cup, pours themself a bit of beer, passes the bottle to the next person, drinks the beer, passes the cup and it goes aroudn the circle like that. BUT if your female and you have a male to your left, when he gets the bottle and cup he pours you your beer you drink it give back the cup, then he pours himself a glass and then passes the bottle on to the person to the right of you. Sounds complicated but it works and its a great, social way of drinking.

Ive been to some other local spots, like a pool in the middle of a paddock way on the outskirts of town where families taxi drivers and teenagers spend their day drinking beer, listening to music and eating meals like chicharron. I went to another university party the other week where we were filmed and interviewed (being the only gringos there) by a local TV crew.

Arequipas pretty famous for its Canyon Del Colka which i went on a trek in and will post photos from soon. It was pretty amazing with an oasis at the bottom and traditional villages that still live like the Incas did, and wear all the traditional clothing. Peru has alot of comforts from home but its a nice mix of comforts, and traditional differences so im really enjoying it. I will be moving on soon though to Cusco i think.

Think that should be more than enough for now.

Sending my love...

Lauren