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Whitneys on Tour
We left Cusco at 7am, the morning after finishing the Inca trail. We wanted to fit another place in our brief time in Peru and plumped for it's 2nd largest city, Arequipa. We managed to get a flight from there to Lima for a mere $64 each which rather helped our decision. However, this still meant a lovely 10 hour bus journey from Cusco. It passed through some fine mountain scenery to get there but the journey was rather characterised by screaming children, an increasingly unpleasant stench from the toilet, large Peruvian peasant woman standing in the ailes and shoving their fat arses in my face plus the odd Peruvian trait of charity beggars getting on the buses. This involves sopmeone getting on the bus and making a long ( and I mean LONG) impassioned speech to the passengers to part with their money for their charity in return for a chococlate bar or something. Every Peruvian bus journey we've taken has been subjected to this and this one had two of the buggars getting on. It does get a little tiresome and we can't even understand what they're talking about!
On the plus side the pills Jo had been given by the doctor in Machu Picchu had worked a treat and she was back to normal which was a huge relief. It's a condition thats going to have to be watched though as it can return as she's found out to her cost already!
We finally arrived in Arequipa at 4pm and were taken to our rather comforatable hostel (a hotel in all but name) near the centre of town where we just chilled and went out for dinner later. The next day we walked around the city taking in it's interesting architecture and visting the huge monestary and the Inca museum. These were most enjoyable visists. The monestary is huge, almost like a town within a city and is most attractively painted in various colours inside as well as having much religious art. The monestary is still used by nuns in 30% of it's area.
The museum's centrepiece exhibit is normally an almost perfectly preserved 13 year old Inca girl who was sacrificed on one of the nearby volcano's some 550 years ago. She's called Juanita and the story of how she was discovered and her history is fascinating.
We had dinner that night in the towns lovely square and flew off to Lima the next morning.
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