Cordillera Blanca

Our travels really are at an end now. Since leaving Arequipa we headed to the North coast by Trujillo for a week, and stayed in a really great place caled Huanchaco, where surfing allegedly originated 4000 years ago on reed float things (will provide a picture at a later date). It felt like a proper holiday with sea, sun and a bit of surf...although my patience for falling off a surfboard over and over deteriorated pretty quickly.

After a week of sunning ourselves and generally over-indulging in nice restaurants, we headed back into the Andes to Huaraz and the Cordillera Blanca mountain range, where FINALLY we paid for a proper guided 4 day treck (Santa Cruz)through some really stunning scenery. It actually wasnt as arduous as I expected as we had 3 donkeys and a donkey driver between our group of 4 to haul all our stuff over the mountains. Luxury. We also had all our food prepared for us by our guide which was brilliant, as I doubt we would have had any energy for cooking a decent meal after 8 hours of pretty hard trekking every day.

The other two people in our group were a super-nice Dutch couple, who luckily had a decent digital camera. I thought I would be able to upload the photos thay gave me now, but the computer in our hostel is a real dinosaur and can´t handle that sort of stress. Pah. As I already said though, the scenery was amazing- snowcapped mountains, the bluest lakes and deep green valleys. We actually did the trek in 3 days rather than 4, as we took a shorter route on the 3rd day due to one of our Dutch friends suffering really badly from the altitude at our 2nd campsite (4,200 m). I´m glad we have been at altitude on our recent trips to Puno and La Paz, otherwise I think we would have been sick as well.

At the moment I´m waiting for Steve to come back from a second treck he decided to set off on yesterday. I cant remember what the mountain is called, but it´s big and it has snow on it (that really doesnt narrow it down around here). He wanted to do a proper climb to the summit with crampons and all that shiz, so he hired our Santa cruz guide Benito to take him by himself for 2 days. When he gets back we are getting straight on a bus back to Lima and staying there for a night before flying to new york for the day and the flying home that night. We are going to be KNACKERED when we get back! Can´t wait for NY though!!

End of an era

Things had just started to settle down for us in Arequipa...and we decided it was time to leave. Due to the running out of money (as always seems to happen) we have decided to take our original march flight home instead of postponing it as we had thought we would. But the thought of coming home (wherever that might be...!) is pretty exciting.

Yesterday we left our Arequipa life- job, apartment and frinds (sob!) and travelled to the Northern coast of Peru for some Trujillo sun and some hiking in the Cordiera Blanca before we come back to Europe. Travelling feels a bit funny at the moment (...and a bit tiring to be honest), but that might be due to a bad nights sleep on a bus last night- I´m sure when we hit the beach tomorrow it will all feel jolly nice indeed.

The bad news is that our wonderful trusty camera was pickpocketed at a big festival we went to a few weeks ago, so I cant share any photos. Not being able to take any has been pretty torturous as well, as since then we have had a brilliant week in Bolivia (which was beautiful- especially the jungle), and Trujillo where we are now is also pretty darned photogenic- all colonial architecture painted in bright colours. Maybe when we get back and get some films developed from Steve´s Olympus Trip (which has saved the day) I can scan them and upload a few.

Anyway, that´s all for now- feeling a bit bus-lagged, but felt the end of our Arequipa life should have a quick mention. It´s been brilliant.

Lots of love xxxx

Ps. In the last post Steve suggested I have a problem with swearing verging on Tourettes. It´s so BEEPing well not true. Just thought I should clarify that.

Christmas holidays

Happy New Year yaalll.
Firstly, I want to acknowledge the sad loss of the original written entry for this post. Lucy lost an hour and half of her life into the unsaved regions of cyber space. After one or two swear words, she very politely asked me to "write the BEEEEPing thing, it's your turn anyway!!! BEEEEEEP. " and so i obliged.

We spent my birthday and our Christmas at home in Arequipa where we enjoyed ourselves opening a few presents, watching Home Alone 2 and cooking and eating a huge Christmas feast. I treated myself to a christmas/birthday present, a recorder (seen below) which has been a delight to both of us as I have been practicing the Harry Potter theme tune pretty much constantly ever since.

In the evening we had a group of friends over for mulled wine and a slice of my amazing nutty Italian chocolate birthday cake, made by Lucy.



Peruvians celebrate Christmas with a midnight feast on the 24th and we were invited to spend it with with the family of our spanish teachers. It was fun watching the kids ripping open their prezzies before we tucked into another massive meal. There was a strange dish of mashed sweat potato that was roasted with marshmallow and sugar, which I had only just managed to eat. yuk!

On boxing day we took a 12hr bus journey up the coast to meet with some other friends. We stumbeled into this fiesta of the virgin where we saw plenty of dancing and fireworks. Unfortunatly all the hotels in the town were booked up so we ended up with accomodation that seemed to double up as a guni pig farm. Still, after all the buzz we slept pretty well.

A photo of part of the Arequipa crew from our visit to the pre inca remains tambo colorado.

This candalabra strangly etched into the sand near Pisco is thought by some crazy yanks to be mearly a sign post for visiting UFO's pointing the direction to the Nazca lines.

The day that we went to the Ballestas islands and saw a million birds and sea lions.

Teasing some pelacans... they deserve it.

Racing in the desert.

YEEHAAAAaa. The day my life ambition was fulfilled. Driving around like a redneck in a 1950's ford pickup truck on the same day that we thumbed a lift on the Pan American highway in a fuel truck.
Living my dreams.

New Years Eve
Due to a slight cock-up involving bank holiday bus timetables we celebrated the beginning of 2011 while stranded in the a tiny fishing village surround by barren desert. We rented a room in the back of a beach shack style restaurant where we were invited to share Panaton and watch their firework/TNT display.

Finally we made it to Camina to meet with some other Peruvian friends and their family for a nice day on the beach.

The White City

I'm aware that we havnt really done much blogging about Arequipa (the city we are living in), and since we are both absolutely loving it, I thought it should have a mention. The city is in a desert region of southern Peru, about 2 hours from the coast on a bus, and was only founded about 380 years ago by the Spanish- so all of the architecture is colonial (the buildings in the city centre are all made from the local white volcanic rock- hence the city's nickname), and the vast majority of the population fair skinned and catholic. At first it felt strange coming from places which had a deep Inka history and traditions to a place where there are virtually none... but as the Ariqipenans say "Arequipa is not Peru" (They have a joke sort of AQP passport thing, and really hold themselves apart from pre-catholic Peruvian culture). Once I got used to this attitude the city really started to grow on me.

The Plaza de Armas and the cathedral

The monastery

There are several dormant volcanoes around the city- one is called El Misti which is 5,800m (steve wrote about climbing up there a few weeks ago, and the other is a cluster of 5 vlocanoes- the highest being Chachani (6,100 m). Theyre really stunning things to have in the cityscape, and at night they glow pink as the sun sets. In fact they are problably my favourite thing about the city- Sometimes I feel like cities lack an empathy for the natural world...it seem to get swallowed up in the bustle, but you really cant help but feel humbled every time you look at them. I felt my second earthquake since Ive been here last night. It was only about a 4 on the earthquake scale, but it woke me up. Felt like a massive train was passing right outside our apartment and the cupboard doors rattled for about 30 seconds. I always thought earthquakes would freak me out (and Im sure a big one would!) but I enjoy the little ones. I feel comforted that theres something bigger and stronger than mankind. Hah!

One of my favourite things about the city is San Camilo Market. It doesnt smell like rotting death like most big Peruvian markets Ive been to- not even in the butchers section. And you can buy pretty much anything here. Every town has its own area of production in the selva (jungle), so pretty much everywhere has a good supply of farely local exotic fruit and veg. Papaya is my new favourite fruit- I've never really appreciated it before now.

yum

yuck

Its not just food in the market though, theres ALL sorts of stuff. I found pretty much the only evidence of arequipenan non-catholic belief in at the stalls that sell tea and herbs. Some of the vendors also do coca leaf readings for customers, as well as selling dried animal fetuses (not exactly sure what the animals are...maybe foxes or something) which are used as sort of sacrificial offerings to the mountains when people need to ask for something. They are put into a bundle of offerings such as food, coca leaves and gifts, and ceremoniously buried on the mountains. My Spanish teacher said he has a friend who is a 'wizard'- a kind of traditional healer (although theyll also put curses on people for you if you want!!) - who apparently buys human fetuses from the dodgy abortion clinics to use instead of animals. He said the remains just get fed to the dogs otherwise. This tale sounds a bit tall...but I dont think its far too tall to be true.

On a lighter note, here are some pictures of our apartment. It's in a quieter part of town, across the river from the center and close to my work. It's an open plan 'studio' apartment on the third floor, built onto the side of a house. Im really happy we found it- it seems to be a handy location for everything. Our neighbours are the very nice family who own it and live in the main house, and an eccentric, creepy, sexist old guy from Florida who lives in the ground floor apartment (who we avoid).

Back to my favourite topic of conversation- food. There are some great cheapy little lunchtime places on our street, one of which is a cevicheria- a place specialising in the traditional dish cevice. This is marinated chunks of raw white fish in a spicy onion chili and lime salad. They serve it with corn and sweet potatoes. Yum. Peruvians cant get enough of corn and potatoes.

Ceviche

So it's all good in Arequipa- the baby avos are coming along nicely too!

Fodder

Hello! I havnt written on this for what feels like ages. We worked out today that we´ve been in Arequipa for nearly a month now. Can´t believe it´s been so long!! We hadn´t done any of the tourist things in the city until today, when we went to a very good archeology museum and saw a 500year old ´íce princess´- a 12 year old girl who was sacrificed on top of a nearby volcano as an offering to calm the mountain gods who were v.upset and causing lots of volcanic erruptions at the time.

Last weekend we went to a very tasty gastronomy fair that was held just outside town, (where we met these little fellas, who´s fate is unlikely to be better than the ice princess´s) and got inspiderd to blog a bit about Peruvian food - which is SO good! a bit too good infact, as I seem to have got myself a few foody friends in my stomach from all the streetfood munching ive been doing...but thats another story. Nice.

So where to begin? Maybe with the avocado tree we have in the garden of our apartment. Not sure how fast avos grow, but hopefully theyll be ready before we move on in a few months, as we can pick them from our bathroom window. We are both tremendously excited about it.

It´s been fab having our own kitchen since we got here, although when we moved in there was just a gas hob for cooking, and I´d got myself all excitied about baking when we were apartmen´-hunting...so Steve splashed out a bit and bout us a mini oven which is amazing! its sooo mini- and it bakes cakes perfectly. And it cost about 35 quid which seems like a lot of money nowadays, but not for whole oven with bags of baking potential!!!

The fruit and veg here is amazing- I´ll get some market photos posted when I´ve got the patience (it´s running a bit thin now as this computer is a silly speed of slow), but we have been gorging on tropical frit salad for breakfast since we arrived in peru. Heres one of the funkier looking one´s we´ve come across... Peruvians seem to be psyched on making grains puff up, and sometimes they go as far as dying them shocking colours of artificiality. These ones reminded me of fruit polos, and got me round to wondering if they still make them...?

I´m just about to run out of patience entirely, but before I go I HAVE to talk about the most incredible fish stew we ate last weekend. I can´t describe how incredible the stock was- Ive never even dremed of such good fish stock. We live a block away from the best fish restaurant Ive ever been to- and this stew (as well of being of the best stock EVER), had lots of big chunks of fish, octopus, calamares, and other unidentifiable but really tasty seafoody things. Oh, and to top it off, it was served in a washing up bowl-sized bowl. Might have to go back for more tomorrow- maybe it can become a sunday lunch ritual. Heaven.

Shame I´m such a messy eater though!