Arrived in Arequipa

Morgan and I took a bus into Nazca where they have the famous Nazca lines on Friday, Saturday morning we took a flight up on a very small plane with 6 others (7 in total) to view the pictures from the air. The flight went well and no one got sick so I´m considering it a success. The town itself is in the desert so while the car fumes aren´t as toxic as they were in Lima it was very dirty and dusty and hot! We were excited to get to Arequipa and get some fresh air and the dinner they served on the bus was quite good (pinapple chicken and rice with steamed veggies and rice pudding). We were expecting to arrive in Arequipa around 10:30 but the trip took a little longer than expected. Along a short stetch (4 miles or so) where the PanAmerican HWY flows next to the ocean, we noticed that the sand had blown and caused drifts covering 1/2 of the HWY. We had to pull over again and again to play leap frog with on coming traffic considering we were all sharing the same lane. In the end we didn´t arrive until 1am so we picked a hostel we had heard about that was know for is muy grande breakfast. The room was less than desirable and there were no towels, toilet paper or soap. Too exhausted to put up the effort to find another place we just went with it and passed out..... until we laid on our beds. Mine had some wierd lumps and was what I would consider horrible but at least I couldn´t feel all the springs like the last one. Morgan didn´t complain much about his but neither of us slept well. When breakfast rolled around we were also let down but the woman we ate with who had traveled to Peru 5 times commented it was the largest she had ever seen. My wheat allergy has made breakfast interesting, I couldn´t eat the crepes or rolls but they did scramble up an egg and I had a tangerine and avocado left over from the day before so it all worked out. What I would really love is a cup of Lighthouse Roasters coffee!



We packed our bags and headed to a different hostel recommended in the Lonley Planet, Casa del Melgar. It it so beautiful. A spanish cathedral style place with high stone cielings, an amazing courtyard enclosed in the middle where we spent the afternoon lounging in the sun and listening to song birds. It was very relaxing to be in clean warm air with some greenery surroundig us. I´ll be posting pics soon of this establishment, I´d love to spend the entire week here but it´s about 48 US dollars a night so it´s just not gonna happen, we just needed one night in a clean comfortable bed with hot water!



Tomorrow we check into the spanish school and will assess how much we want to commit to. I need it more than Morgan does so I may stay for the week while he does a river trip then we will meet back up to do a 3-4 treck in the Colca Canyon.