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Arequipa is Peru's second city and I loved it. After laid back Copacabana I was ready for some action and had booked into The Point hostel, home to the wonkiest pool table I have ever played on. There was a BBQ planned for the evening and plenty of drinking games with the party-at-the-drop-of-a-hat Irish folk…bring it on!
The city itself is home to 1 million Peruanos and is known as 'The White City' due to the white masonry used to build the monasteries and cathedrals around the historic city centre. The San Bernard monastery is like a city within a city and to top it off you have the giant snowcapped peaks of El Misti and Chachani supplying the backdrop. Add to that one of the most picturesque Plazas on the continent and a kicking nightlife scene… what's there to dislike?
The next day brought a humungoid hangover. Some of the guys were planning to climb Mt Chachani, one of the easiest 6,000m peaks in the world but as I only had the time for one excursion in the area I decided on a 2 nights / 3 day trip to the nearby Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world with depths of up to 4,000m. So I spent the day selecting a tour from the myriad of providers, researching Spanish courses for the following week and swearing to myself that I will never play drinking games with Irish guys again.
The Colca Canyon trip was amazing. There were only three others in our group - two English guys, a Danish girl and Carlos, our local guide. The first day started early with collection from the hotel at 04.00 and a four hour drive to the Canyon. After checking out a couple miradors (viewpoints) and lunch we began the long decent into the canyon itself, enjoying stunning vistas down into the depths and the handful of villages contained within. We spent the first night in a small village were life has not changed much in hundreds of years. The locals farm the steep terraces and wear traditional dress and are grateful for the extra dollars that the small but growing amount of tourists that venture down there bring in, allowing them to buy the essential items they would otherwise do without. Carlos told me about government plans to build a road down into the canyon, so it was good to get down there now as change is surely afoot. We spent the night with a local family, great to see how these guys live in the bottom of their canyon.
The second day brought three hours trekking along the bottom of the canyon, lunch and then the grueling three hour trek back up the to the top. Exhausting yet exhilarating with condors flying overhead and the occasional convoy of mules heading back down in the opposite direction. We spent the final night in the village of Cabanaconde in a hostel with another impossible pool table before heading back to Arequipa in the morning.
The second week of my time in Arequipa was study week. Rather than the party hardy Point Hostel I booked into Los Andes B&B, which offered cheap private rooms and the chance to knuckle down to some hardcore studying. I had arranged for four hours a day of private lessons. My teacher, Alan, was very good but alas my Spanish still sucks! Still, I'll crack it someday.
In this second week final I also experienced my first earthquake - a tremor that registered 4 on the Richter scale and knocked items of the sideboard in my room!
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