Llegamos antes que las mulas!

Just as Mike promised we had our handful of adventures in Arequipa! A city filled with coloquial buildings from the 1600s made from all white rocks, which i think looks even lovelier at night! We spent the first day enjoying the town we even got a view of the Plaza de Armas from the same roof Mike and Matt were at 4 years ago! We of course later strolled through the plaza like the couples do. By the early afternoon we decided we´d seen what we were going to see and booked our three day trek for the 2nd deepest canyon in the world, the Colca Canyon. We were woken up at 2:30am to get ready for our trip, and by 4 we were on our way! After about a 4 hour ride we arrived at the over crowded and super touristy Cruz del Condor, which we weren´t all that excited about at first. We walked past the crowd to a quiet lookout and after a few minutes started seeing Andean Condors all around us! It was incredible to see them flying over us with their 3 meter wing span! We ended up seeing about 15 even though we were only supposed to see 1 or 2 since they are at risk of extinction! After quite a few pictures we raced back to our bus and drove just a bit longer to where our trek would begin.

The first day we hiked 8 kilometers downhill. It seemed like a breeze, but my muscles didnt agree the next morning! At the end of the day´s trek we had warm alpaca waiting on our plates, and it wasn´t tooo bad! On day two we hiked 5 kilometers (filled with ups downs and straight across-es) through two villages. In one of the villages we stopped for a small tour in a local museum and some chicha (the national fermented corn drink). We ended the day at an oasis at the bottom on the canyon where we dipped in a refreshing pool while we waited for more food! Before going to bed in our grass and adobe rooms we were told that we had the option of finishing the trek on a mule instead of hiking the 6 kilometers uphil for 3-4 hours =/. I pondered the idea since I don´t exacly consider myself a good hiker, but although the experience seemed pretty cool to us both, I didnt want to feel like I´d given up so I decided to hike! We headed up at around 5:30am on day 3, and after thinking we were almost there a few times we finally made it up in less than 2 hours! The best part? We beat the mules we (well probably more like I) would have ridden up! It felt great to make it up and we were rewarded with some wonderful hot springs then headed back to Arequipa.

After a night of trying to sleep during super loud techno music we decided we deseved more fun and went on my first rafting trip in the Rio Chile! We both managed to stay on the raft the whole time, although sometimes maybe more by luck than skill! We had a great time going down some rapids and even getting some speed in that rocky and oh so chilly river! Since then I´ve been trying to recover from some funcky virus, but we´ve left Arequipa and arrived in Cusco this morning ready to explore! You´ll get to read all about it when we come back from Machu Picchu some time next week! Oh and a small bummer... technical dificulties.... something went wrong with our memory card and we dont have access to any of our pictures =( But we´re hoping to get out files extracted somehow and we have a new memory card for new pictures!!! YAY!!!