White City

Arequipa is known as "White City" because of the colour of the volcanic stone found here, though thankfully it bears no resemblance to its London counterpart (it`s actually very attractive). The arequipeños are known for being fond of intellectual debate and for their independence from Lima - they´ve even designed their own flag and passport! It´s true that the locals look just as cool and urban as any limeño we`ve come across. There´s also a lot of very good restaurants and coffee outlets - whether this is to cater for all that intellectual debating I´ve no idea, but we certainly made the most of it. Unfortunately, the cuy (guinea pig) wasn´t the highlight of this gastronomic paradise, but when in Peru....

I´m not too sure about that one, but when in Arequipa, a visit to the Colca Canyon is a must. We took a two-day tour with an overnight stop in Chivay, one of the villages near to the Canyon. It´s a few hours´drive from Arequipa but we were kept entertained on the way by a whole host of camelids - llamas, alpacas and vicuñas. I posted a picture of a llama last time, so here´s a couple of vicuñas (my favourite camelid du jour).

To ease our muscles after the 2-hour trek that never happened (because of a massive ominous cloud ahead), we visited yet more hot springs. They were fantastic - they made up for the brown, tepid, fully-clothed affair in Huaraz. Also enjoyable were the folclorico show in the evening and the company of some fellow travellers in our group. But the highlight of the tour was, unsurprisingly, the Colca Canyon itself. While it´s not the deepest in the world (as the entrance ticket falsely claims), it comes pretty close. We walked along the edge (less vertiginous than it sounds) until we came to the ´Condor Look-out´. It was incredible to see these enormous birds gliding overhead. I recorded some footage on my camera, but to be honest you had to be there.

Back in Arequipa, we had a taste of the lively weekend nightlife but reluctantly retired back to our hostel before midnight as we´d been up since 5:30am seeing all that nature. We celebrated our last day in culinary paradise, and Spurs´win over Stoke (apparently this was an important win) by having lunch at one of Gaston´s restaurants. (Remember Gaston is the Peruvian God of food.) The fact that we´d just seen a preserved Inca child who was sacrificed in the mountains 500 years ago didn´t dent our appetites! And so for the price of a meal at Gourmet Burger Kitchen, we tried an array of top-notch local dishes, like sarsa de patitas, escribano, ocopa, solterito and adobo. It doesn´t matter what it means, it was delicious! The only downpoint was when I mistook a very hot chilli (called rocoto) for your bog-standard red pepper. I put a huge chunk in my mouth and couldn´t taste my seafood pasta for about ten minutes.

So we leave Arequipa satisfied - it definitely didn´t disappoint. Cusco, however, might well disappoint but I eventually decided that I wanted to check out the former capital of the Inca empire, even if we´re confined to Gringo Alley and its environs!