Peru Tour - 8 - Arquipa

1 Jan 2006 – Puno -> Arequipa

Happy New Year!

And I am sleeping in a sagging bed with a bad pillow in a room with no electricity in a house with no running water. It’s back in the dark ages! And my shoulder is hurting from the way I slept. At least I was not cold at night (although I did sleep in my jeans and sweat shirt and all!) Oh the rooster started talking in the morning! I have not heard those for a while.

I laid in the bed till 6:30 am even though I got up at 5 am. It was raining outside so I did not want to even go to the restroom.

Eventually got up – did whatever and washed my face with cold water and got ready to check out. I went down at 7 am to let our host know that we were ready. Placido was already there.  Breakfast was ready! Mrs. Fortunata must have gotten up really early to make the breakfast.  There was baked bread (really good!) and such good pancakes. There was no plate to keep the bread on, only bowls, so it was a little hard to eat all this. She did not open the strawberry jam package, and none of us did either.

Mrs. Fortunata is a great cook, even a good vegetarian one, but I think she could really use some more kitchenware. It must be the poverty there. I wish we had known about that so I could have taken some different gifts for her.

So we had coca tea and got ready to leave. Mrs. Fortunata had already gone down to the boat. I think she took food for the captain of the boat. The trek down was not so bad. The rain had stopped but the ground was all muddy and had small rivulets. We said our good byes to our hostess and left.

I slept part of the way.  Woke up to see Uros Islands again. I am constantly amazed at the people here. They live with so little and I am sure they are happy or they would have left – the city is not far away.

Reached Puno around 11:30 am. Walked around in need for food. We found one vegetarian place that had some pizza – just miserable.  But I was hungry!

Went back to the hotel and ate some snacks (yeah – still hungry). Placido came at 1:30 pm and drove us to the airport. I still slept part of the way to Arequipa. Placido had been a really good and sincere guide. It’s usually hard to find people like that.

We were in Arequipa in 30 mins. The scenery had changed completely. It was all brown, desert like with plenty of mountains but all brown.

Our guide, Alejandro, was there to pick us up. Hotel was good and only 5 blocks from Plaza de Armas. I showered and packed for the overnight trip to Chivay. We took some rest and went out at 7 pm to the Plaza. The walk to it was quiet but the Plaza was busy. We thought we would go to Govinda for dinner but it seemed far away, so we ate a pizzeria. We ordered a small pizza and lasagna but it still turned out to be so much food. Pizza was really good.

Good ending to a good day. Tomorrow we are off to Colca Canyon!