- It has become a habit that I wake up at 7 or 8 am in the morning. Took a nice hot shower to start the day. (You don´t always have hot showers in Peru, so once you have it, you learn to appreciate it).
- Met up with Victoria and Camille at the Cathedral and came up with the day´s game plan: Walk to Yanahuara Mirador (Plaza is at Downtown district. Yanahuara is another district Northwest of downtown)- a vista point which gives a great view of the city and the three volcanic mountains surrounding Arequipa (Chachani, Misty, and Pichu Pichu), and then take a bus/cab to Sabandia to check out the Sabandia Mill.
- It was a nice 30-min walk to Yanahuara Mirador. The Grau Bridge was supposed to be a ghetto-ish area, but it wasn´t bad, at all. When we arrived at the plaza, we found out that some kind of construction was taking place: Huge white cloths were hanging from these long bamboo sticks which completely blocked the view to the mountains. Great! The bonus of our trip to Yanahuara was the ice cream cart by the museum which served traditional Peruvian ice-cream (Queso Helado - we got the tips from the Tourist Information). It was soooooo good, and I had 2 cups. That, together with an empanada I had earlier, was my breakfast for the day.
- After Yanahuara, we walked back to the Plaza and another 20 minutes to the bus station that took us to Sabandia (with the help of a local, Rosa, who steered us in the right direction). We got off at the first stop at Sabandia, and not knowing exactly where the mill was, we started following the path up the village. It was a super hot day and all of us were feeling the weather. We tried to locate a restaurant - any restaurant, but there was no food/store in sight. Finally, we waved down a bus and asked the driver to drop us off at any place that serves food. The people on the bus were super friendly and (it appeared) they were debating among themselves where they should drop us off.
- Once we arrived at the restaurant, the server started serving us drinks. We asked for ´el menu´, and whilst she said ´si ... si´, she started bringing us soup and entrees. Where was the menu? It was then we realized they served one set menu (probably daily) and that was it. The soup had pig intestines (my guess), potatoes, corn, alpaca (my guess again) and many many other things. The entree was a huge portion with veggie and ... alpaca meat? (i guess). Honestly I had no idea what I put in my mouth, but they tasted delicious. The lunch costed us 5 sol each (less than $2 USD). How amazing was that? As we left the restaurant, we saw some cute quys kept in cages and Victoria was convinced that we just had quys. Umm ... not sure about that.
- We decided to end our trip at Sabandia early since both Camilla and myself needed to get ready for tomorrow morning´s trip (03:00 am pick up). We headed back to Downtown, got some dessert at the same dessert place (we loved the place!), and made our way back to our hostels.
- After trying to stuff everything in my daypack (which felt like an exploding ball), I decided to take my big bagpack instead (and leave the rest of the stuff at the hostel). It provided better back support, and just felt right.
- Water, water, water ....
