Arequipa and beyond

 Well, its been a while and a few more things have been taken care of.

The keyboard I am typing  on has is totally dodgy and the space bar has decided to work 2 out of 3 times so i will not be writing much... here´s just a snapshot of the last  few days.

• Flew to Arequipa in the morning and basically acclimatised until our city tour in the afternoon.
• Amazing city square and we had a tour of the Santa Catalina convent and catacombs as well as the city cathedral.

• The next day, we took a 2 day tour to Colca Canyon / Colca Valley and stayed at an Eco-lodge in Chuvay.  Read eco = no heating at altitude!! (See 4 below for more details.)
• During the 4 hours drive to Chuvay, we stopped at a lookout where you are surrounded by the three main volcanoes in the immediate area.  Altitude?  4900m... and I survived.  Mind you I basically shuffled  to the shop and the loo.  Lucky we had a 40min stop.  Would probably only have made it to one of those locations even if they were both next door to each other!  Also bought bright green alpaca socks... which came in might handy that night!  (See 3 above for more details.)
• Best hot springs around in Chuvay.  Clean, sulphur-smelly, wonderful location, relaxing and not too many folks to crowd you out.  Was a truly magical time-out from our on-and-off-the-buses activities.

• That night we had dinner and a cultural show where I decided I was going to steal the little boy who was "playing" in his dad´s band.  He would have been all of 6yo and had the stage moves of Elvis... too cute!!

 

• Next day, off to Colca Canyon to see Peru´s condors in the wild.  We were there for an hour (after a 2+ hour drive) and as we were getting ready to leave, four of the buggers turned up and decided to put on a show.  I still managed to get some shots.  If you are interested in black dots against a blue sky, am happy to post!

• After a 5am start that day, we finally drove back to Arequipa at around 5pm.  A mojito and light dinner was the trick for a good night sleep.

• Today, was technically a free day but our guide Mario found a Agro Fair and we decided to go.  Agro as in agricultural, not a "biffo" type of fair.   It was great as it was purely filled with locals and there was food tastings... think Easter show but heaps teensier. We saw an Alpaca judging and took photos of best Macho Alpaca in show AND I bought a hand woven throw made out of Alpca straight from the lovely lady and her husband who wove it.  I was SO excited... what a tourist!

Anyway, that´s enough for now.  I was going to post some photos with this but the pooter doesn´t have USB ports... so maybe from  Cusco which is where we are heading tomorrow!!

Cyas!

POSTSCRIPT: Back home now so photos have been added for this post.  Enjoy!