11 August: Arequipa

Arrived in Arequipa this morning at about 7am and got taken to our hotel, the Tierra Mistica Majestad. We had a shower and then set out to see the town and go for a wander around a local market.

Quite cool to see everything all on display, it reminded me of the markets in Spain I went to. Weirdest part tho is definitely Jugo de Rana ... Juice of the Frog. Yes, apparently they juice live frogs right there for you to drink. Understandably, none of us was willing to give it a try - yuck! It was also nice to try some of the different fruits that they have that we hadn't seen before.

Arequipa was our first free time of the trip, we had the afternoon to spend as we pleased. So, The Ageing Aunt and I bought some rolls and avocado from the market for our lunch which we ate back at the hotel. After that we went for another walk around the main square. I'm struggling a little today because she is being so slow and wants to stop at every single little Alpaca wool shop to "price" the jerseys (one of her missions for this trip is to buy loads of jerseys?). Whereas I just wanted to have a wander around the town and see the place. My feet are also quite sensitive although I seem to have managed to avoid getting any blisters - yay.



Spent the rest of the free afternoon having an afternoon snooze, a luxury on a trip like this where usually I'd want to be out and seeing and doing things, but there's not much left within walking distance I want to see. Before dinner we had a briefing from our next Tour Guide (we used numerous Tour Guides along the way who were specific to the area we were in at the time whereas Intrepid provided a Tour "Leader" just to manage all the logistics etc.) on our next few days which we'll be spending visiting various places around the Colca River.

We went to Nina Yaku for dinner, which was delish. We even ordered a Guinea Pig (Cuy) to all share as a starter. It was just plain weird. Most especially because it arrived at our table whole, like a spatch-cock Guinea Pig with it's head still on! Thank goodness they took it away and cut it up for us because I don't think we could've eaten it looking like that. It was really strange, there wasn't much meat at all (and no, it didn't taste like chicken! Haha) and it was very odd eating around all these tiny little bones. I certainly wouldn't order it again, thanks.

When we were done we all went back to the hotel, but since it was only about 20h30 and we'd both slept that afternoon, @UselessRob & I decided to go for a drink. It was surprisingly hard to find a spot (Can you believe that the Llama & Leprechaun was closed?!). We also tried a little place that had a table in the window with a mannequin dressed up like Che Guevara, but it looked more like a food-place so we ended up at a place next door to the restaurant we'd eaten dinner at earlier. Tried the Cusquena beer this time and we stayed there chatting till about 23h30.

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It was very strange walking back to the hotel at that time because the place that had been bustling during the daylight was now quite deserted. And then we walked right past out hotel because they'd closed the outside doors! Haha. It was a good evening :)