Arequipa

We have just spent three days in Arequipa. This is the second largest city in Peru. It has a very attractive city centre and some amazing buildings. Our hostel was located really close to town and we stayed there with some Americans we met on the bus.

Arequipa is surrounded by volcanoes, some still active. We did a mountain biking tour in which we drove part way up one of the volcanoes and biked back down. We started the ride from 4 800 metres high. It was exceptionally cold and this made it extra difficult to ride. When the cloud cleared we had amazing views across the town and towards the other mountains.




I have to admit that I freaked out a little from the cold and my inabiity to ride a bike on a very bumpy road in the clouds and so I choose to sit in the 'support car' for a while. Once we got a bit lower the guide encouraged me to have another go. I ended up riding about two thirds of the ride. The highlight was the shortcut we took that was on softer sand... I felt like a real BMX rider!







Don't worry too much Greg, we were very safe at all times on this adventure!

I really enjoyed exploring Arequepia and the hosts at the backpackers were very entertaining. I had a chance to work on my Spanish with them as they kept insisting I try to speak to them in Spanish. By the looks on their confused faces I don't think my sentences are making much sense!