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After the slightly stressful week of Bolivian mountain exploration we booked ourselves into a 5 star hotel, "The Ritz", and lorded it up (like all good adventurers?)… We are not ashamed to say we got a suite, with cable (English movie channels), sofa and all the trimmings - including actual hot showers (which did not dole out electric shocks) and a delightful lady who turned down the bed and gave us little cakes before bed. We supplemented this feast with in suite breakfast, lashings of good (Bolivian) wine and short term membership to a nearby sports club, where we swam, sauna'd and jacuzzi'd our way back to contentedness…
This buffet of gluttonous living lasted two days, before we set off again for our second trip of a lifetime to Peru. The bus La Paz to Arequipa took about 12 hours. For those inexperienced in Latin American bus travel it is worth pointing out that this is a relatively short journey, and it passed easily on large air conditioned buses with loads of leg room, movies (we watched Taken with Liam Neeson - who has "a very particular set of skills" that enable him to kick the ass of lots of unpleasant criminal French people - and we highly recommend it…), occasional stops and comfortable seats.
We spent a day acclimatizing to beautiful sunshine and balmy 25ish degrees, and considered our next steps. As are all good tourists, we were told that we are supposed to do Colca Canyon, another part of the Andes with glorious views, condors, trekking, lots of trees and altitude to make your head spin. But, frankly, we couldn't be bothered. It was about a 5 hour trip each way and we felt we had spent enough time exploring the amazing Andes for a while at least. Besides we have to leave something to do for when we come back next time.
We did however sign up for a white water rafting trip on the Rio Chilli near Arequipa. We paddled, ducked, dived, dipped, rode and generally nailed those rapids for a morning and had a really great time. We will definitely both be trying to find some more rafting to do on the rest of our trip, bring on Chile and New Zealand… Someone nicked Richard's wrist watch from his bag (may they rot in purgatory) but other than that the trip was top class. And anyway, he managed to buy a new one which he likes even more! (probably stolen from someone else).
The other main thing we did in Arequipa was some Spanish lessons. In short, Richard tries to do much of the speaking but has no vocabulary and is therefore quite crap. And Michelle is actually very good and understands most of what she hears, but can be slightly hesitant in coming forwards, the comfort of "hablar ingles?" coming out all too often before anything else. But now with 6 hours tuition under our belts, thanks to our teacher, Emanuela, we have been making some improvements!
We visited the Convento de Santa Catalina on Saturday and really enjoyed looking around. The convent is still home to 20 nuns and is really well maintained… see the photos. Saturday night we hit the town for some Halloween festivity… all the kids were dressed up collecting sweets, it was VERY cute! We went to our favourite bar in Arequipa and discovered a new amazing cocktail, made by our amigo Leo! A take on the pisco sour, but with maracuya fruit. Awesome!
We are leaving Arequipa tomorrow morning heading to Mancura in the north. We've heard good things so hopefully it'll be worth the flight and 19 hours on a bus! Tonight we went to the cinema with Leo and saw Sector 9 (which was a bit weird and not the greatest movie!). Unfortunately Rich was not feeling so good so we missed the end… (Leo - let us know what happened). I went to the pharmacy and got Rich some drugs and a nice rehydration drink thing… looks a bit like battery fluid but I'm sure it'll taste delicious??!
Other things to note: Cards score is Richard 4 vs Michelle 4; Richard scraped the flesh of his toe by tripping on his flip flops; Michelle got chilli burn by scraping the seeds from a chilli (which she thought was a pepper!) whilst cooking (and no, this was NOT an amusing injury); none bar one of our friends or fellow climbers actually made the top in Huayna Potosi because conditions were so bad; Cusco coffee shop does really good coffee; the kids don't trick or treat at Halloween, they just all dress up and collect sweets; topitop is Michelle's new version of topshop; all the taxis are tiny cars imported from China.
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