Arequipa

It is six in the evening and it has already been a very long day. We arrived this morning at nine after a long twelve hour bus ride. We had not booked a hostel before but we had written a couple down. New rule, write the name of the hostel and the address. This will save time and hassle. We found our hostel, La Postada del Virrey, after almost two hours of walking and asking directions. Luckily a friendly front desk attendant at a very nice hotel phoned the place for us. A lady met us at the hotel and walked us up streets that we had already been, just a little further up than we went of course!

From the moment we arrived we both have had an agreeable sense of this city. I like it much more than any of the other towns we have spent time in. The streets are clean, the taxis don't honk as much, the food and the lodging (if you look in the right place) are cheaper. It has a more homely feel to it, instead of a mall it has a market and the town square is beautiful.

We have booked a three-day hike through Colca Canyon. We start tomorrow morning at 3am and finish on December 29 at 5:30pm. Originally we booked the 2-day hike but for $10 more per person we get an extra night's lodging and 3 extra meals so we decided to go for it. We are still learning how to budget properly and how to balance time with money spent. Six months is a long time and though we have not been spending money frivolously we have been blowing through our budget. Unfortunately due to dollar prices fluctuating, the Christmas season, and learning how to travel it has been a challenge to understand how to do so on a shoestring. There are some things we would have done differently had we known and some things we are paying closer attention to for the future. It is a large learning curve but we are enjoying it.

We have to go make dinner now. Would you believe how difficult it is to find ingredients for tacos in this country? Oh irony.

The photos were taken while writing this. There is one of the setting sun in the city, one of our room (on the right), and one of the Volcano "Mismi" that towers over Arequipa.

I've got to go make dinner. Will post again after our trip to Colca Canyon as we will not have internet access there.

Erik

To sleep or not to sleep?

1am.
2 hours to sleep.
Make our way to the airport at 3.
Arrive at 4.
5 more hours until we fly.
6am our flight leaves.

And now a Haiku.

I am so sleepy
But I have to stay awake
Or I'll catch typhoid

 Erik

the time ashley almost died

Hello again. It was quite late when I posted last night and I found myself drifting off to sleep, much like the car that was drifting off the road. Here are a couple more tidbits of information that Ashley and I found to be some of the highlights of the event.

First of all the driver had a few classic quotes that clarified the incident. Ashley said she saw him a minute prior to the accident zooming past us and thought "That dummy is going to get in an accident." After he all was said and done he articulated what had happened inside the car this way "I felt the mother f*$%er lose traction and start drifting toward the snow bank so I slammed the f*%$ing breaks as hard as I could." Sigh...

The most exciting part after the accident was hanging out just between the old toll booth and the great bear snow shed for forty minutes. It was two lanes, icy, and cold. I herded the group from standing by the crashed vehicle to standing in front of our car that was parked and had its hazard lights on. I didn't feel comfortable exposed on an icy highway but we were waiting for a tow-truck or emergency response or just anything.

At one point Ashley was in the car warming up while myself and the two others were standing in front of my car. I was annoyed with how few people even tried to slow down. I was even more annoyed (and terrified) when I saw that a semi-truck had applied his breaks to slow down and was now drifting sideways towards the vehicle that Ashley was in.

It was interesting to see the situation register on Ashley's face. I shouted her name to warn her of the danger and she looked up at me and then turned to look out the back window. She saw the semi's trailer sliding toward her and she was out of the car and climbing up the snow bank before I could shout for her to stay in the car (I don't know what was safest).

Luckily the truck straightened out; skidding to a stop just after our vehicle. I may have shouted something at him that wasn't very supportive of his driving skills.

In the end we were all safe and sound but it was an exciting ride.

Does this look like the start of a grand adventure?

We were two cars behind and saw this vehicle swerve straight into the snowbank with a puff of snow. It would have been magical if the potential for harm wasn't there. We responded to the accident with one other fellow and found that no one had been injured but they were shaken up of course. Ashley scanned for injuries while I helped with phone calls. In the end they stayed with a BC transit manager while we went on our merry way. We are both happy that no one was injured.

E