Arequipa

We arrived bright and early in Arequipa after the overnight bus journey from Nazca and we´d managed to get a bit of shut-eye during the journey so we were ready for exploring once we'd sorted our hostel and dumped the bags.

Arequipa is Peru's second largest city - it´s really pretty and is such a contrast from Lima in that everything is within walking distance and the smog isn´t quite as bad! El Misti, the local well-loved volcano, towers over the place and is visible from most parts of the city as are snow-capped mountains which is quite strange as the place is basking in sunshine and really hot during the day.
It´s a really nice place to spend a couple of days just pottering around and is the base for loads of trekking tours which makes it a must visit place on the way through Peru. It´s also quite well travelled so there are plenty of Gringo bars and restaurants!

It must be the altitude (or the night on the local cerveza) which lends itself to the most horrific hangovers so spent most of the next day in bed wary of hitting the local juice again. We did manage to book ourselves onto a tour of nearby Colca Canyon though which is why most people are in town - we decided against the trekking option which was described as 'difficult' and involved seven hours of trekking per day for three days. Bus tour all the way for us!

When we were in Lima we saw a couple of protests but didn't think too much about it at the time. Seems that word has spread and there are now full scale strikes across most towns and cities in Peru involving teachers, miners and agricultural workers. Credit to the Peruvians, when they strike they do it properly! All transport in and out of affected places is blocked which means, as the road is king here, there are all kinds of problems. All pubic services have shut down - there have been so many marches around the Plaza de Armas and the shop-front shutters are constantly going up and down to avoid any broken windows .... as I'm typing this Rich and I are currently locked in an internet cafe!

We were picked up from the hostel at 4am on Wednesday (1st day of strike) instead of the usual 8am so we could be in with a chance of crossing the picket lines that were (and still are) blocking all the roads in and out of Arequipa. Destination Chivay and the hot springs before the Colca Canyon tour on Thursday. We managed to drive about 2 miles before we hit the first roadside fire and saw police kitted out with riot shields and tear gas ... seemed like quite a peacful demonstration though so we carried on through. How serious can they be at 4am?!

Erm, they take their strikes pretty seriously! We were forced to turn back a bit further down the road after they refused to let us pass any further ... after turning around we drove past another strike group only they weren't as passive this time and started chucking huge great rocks at the bus. Luckily they only managed to hit the sides and none of the windows went through even through they took a battering. A minibus also on our route was a bit worse off and had one of it's windows put through so it seems we did okay!

By this point we had been forced off the road into a nearby village and it was still pretty dark. Our driver decided that there might be a way to hit the road over to Chivay ... after negotiating the battle bus through a huge shanty town and on some very dodgy roads (the bus nearly tipped a couple of times!) we made it onto the mountain road. Hoorah! On the way through, the villagers wern´t giving us an easy ride either and we had a couple of rogue stones stones thrown at us by old ladies and kids too!

Eventually hit the road after FOUR hours trying to get out of Arequipa and we were still only two miles or so from the hostel! Next stop Chivay for the hot springs and the Colca Canyon.