We decided that instead of the rather more expensive excursion of downhill mountain biking down a volcano (this did sound fun) we would take the much more economic bus tour of Peru's second largest city and it's surrounding countryside.
Our tour started late, of course. Despite the fact that we had stomped through the cobbled streets, a slowly cooling bag of empanadas in hand. At least the tour was going to be in English, or so we had been promised. This turned out to be largely a lie. There was very little said in English, but that was ok, it was mostly a sight-seeing tour instead of an informative tour. After stopping off at two picturesque viewpoints for much longer than necessary, it was time to stop off at our first mentally stimulating location. This was a llama and alpaca wool factory. Here we were treated to information as to the differences between them (one is bigger than the other is all I could gather) and a view of seeing a local woman in the process of creating a colourful table cloth on a loom out of naturally dyed wool.
After driving around in the bustling streets, we finally hit the countryside. The change was instant from dusty streets to fields and farms. As we were driving through, the only other English speaking people were behind us and I couldn't help but overhear their conversation. One girl was from Germany and the other was a guy who was originally Peruvian but lived in Northern Ireland. After hearing them go through seemingly textbook conversations over travel and family they then reached the topic of food. Once the German girl claimed that English people don't eat any food with spice I couldn't help myself any longer and decided to interject. I informed her this simply was not the case. She said that she had stayed in the Newcastle area on an exchange; says it all really. Not long after we arrived at a bull fighting museum. For the entrance fee of roughly a singular pound I thought I couldn't refuse. Despite the guide speaking rapid Spanish I was still just about able to understand the concepts of what was going on thanks entirely to the pictures on the wall and their accompanying text. This particular location and it's club (is that the right phrase) had a proud history for a hundred years of training bulls to be champions of champions. It reminded me of a boxing schedule in the way they had posters advertising different fights. This bull fighting wasn't bull versus matador but bull on bull. The cracking of skull and horns to decide the winner. This was only the museum and I didn't actually see any bull fighting. This would have been much to the disgust of my sister who is well and truly against anything or the sort. A few more minutes on the bus and we had arrived at potentially the stand out feature of why we had signed up to the tour; horse riding. It was indeed time again already to try something new. I was actually pretty excited about trying it. Of course the scenery and setting didn't hurt at all - mid-twenties, not a cloud in the sky, flat fields leading up to impressive snow-capped volcanoes. The feeling of being several feet up in the air on an animal that you are essentially trusting was a new experience. Thankfully the horses were very well trained and knew the route perfectly. This is definitely something that I would try again for longer than 15 minutes. It's quite a big thing in the remaining countries that we are visiting so I'm sure we won't be short of opportunity.
With that brought the end to our tour. It was a good way to finish off our time in Arequipa. Following Arequipa we are onto Cuzco - just a short distance to Macchu Pichu. More exciting adventures to be had.
