Arequipa, Peru, South America

I had a pretty bad tour today. It was totally disappointing. I got up at 2:45am, and was ready for my pickup at 3:15am. We had a three hour drive to our breakfast stop, and I had the most uncomfortable seat on the bus. It was the last seat, so I didn’t have a choice, but I was over the wheel well, so had no leg room, and then the girl in front of me put her seat back and would not put it forward because she wanted to sleep. I had to sit crooked with my legs out in the aisle, so my back was killing me by the time we got to Chivay.

The breakfast was an absolute joke. It consisted of two bread rolls with jam. That’s it. No eggs, no cheese, no ham, no juice. Just bread. So that was awful. We then had another two hour drive to the Cross of the Condors, and the view was pretty good, but we didn’t really see any condors. Apparently I saw one flying away, but it was too small to even take a photo of, and I wouldn’t have known it was a condor except for the guy who actually saw it when it was closer. We stayed there for an hour, and no one in our group saw one because we weren’t given any information on where to look from our guide.

We got back in the bus and headed back to Chivay and stopped a few different spots on the way. We saw one spot that had lots of terraces where they could grow many different types of vegetables due to the microclimates at this altitude. That was the only interesting thing I saw all day. We stopped at a church that the guide tried to build up as this amazing church with beautiful paintings. It was not. It just looked like any ordinary church you would find in a small town like Maca.

We went back to the same restaurant for lunch, and that was also horrible. It was a buffet, but the only thing that was even tasty was the friend rice. It cost 25 soles, and it didn’t even include a drink. It was very disappointing, again. I couldn’t wait to get back in the van and head back to Arequipa. Luckily, I could switch seats with the guide, so at least I had a seat that I could fit in for the three hour return ride back to Arequipa.

The ride back was really annoying because our driver was one of the slowest drivers I’ve ever witnessed. We were being passed by everyone. Taxis, small busses, big busses, old ladies walking on the side of the road. It was ridiculous. I was really tired and annoyed at this point, so all I wanted was to get out of this van and be back in Arequipa.

We finally got back around 5:45pm and I was thoroughly disappointed with how my whole tour went today. I got back to my hostel and had a message from Karin (who I met in Nasca and Cusco), and she had just arrived in Arequipa this morning. We met up for dinner and exchanged stories about our treks to Machu Picchu. It was really nice to see her again. There were fifteen of us on the tour today, but none of them were friendly in the least. I tried talking to everyone, but there just weren’t any very nice people.

I had a good dinner with Karin and then had to come back to the hostel. It was only about 8:15pm by the time I got back to my hostel, but it felt like it was 3am. I am so exhausted now and am just going to have to call it an early night. I have my bus tomorrow at 10:30am, so hopefully I’ll be able to sleep a little later in the morning. I could use the rest!