So 16 hours after leaving Lima we arrived back into the mountains (again) in Arequipa. It's at over 2000m above sea level and has several volcanos surrounding it. I'm yet to check as to whether or not these are active and when they last erupted. Nevertheless I feel that if they had a large eruption then the entire city would be destroyed...
Arequipa reminds me of Cuenca quite a lot in terms of the architecture. All of it seems to be well, nice. Apparently Arequipa is the second most popular place for tourists in Peru and I'm not surprised by this at all. We've seen a lot of tourists.
After doing the standard task of booking ourselves into tours (patience required) we went on a souvenir hunt. Emma has been collecting bracelets from each country that have the name and flag colours on it. She found one in Ecuador that started her off on this quest, however so far it was seemingly quite difficult to find in Peru. They either had the name of the city or had no name at all. Mission accomplished for Peru now though until Bolivia and so forth. A couple of other items were purchased before we needed to rest from browsing.
The plaza of Arequipa is probably the most spectacular we've seen so far. All of the buildings are white, apparently mined from the volcanos themselves. Upon being denied entry to the cathedral for wearing shorts (what do you expect? I'm from England and it's hot) we decided to find a drink. Everywhere seemed to offer cheap drinks for happy hour. Perfect for trying new cocktails of Peruvian descent. The favourite was the highly colourful Macchu Pichu cocktail. Picture underneath.
Arequipa seems fun but unfortunately our tour starts at 3.30am tomorrow so we can't continue the party too much. Maybe tomorrow!
