Even though it only felt like five minutes ago that we`d embarked from a plane, after two nights in Lima it was time to catch a flight to Arequipa, to begin our acclimatisation to being at altitude.
Arequipa is a beautiful little town, its colonial architecture immaculately maintained and its streets clean enough to eat off. It apparently suffers from the same opportunistic crime, particularly on tourists, that other Peru destinations do, but if you catch one of the million taxis milling around (they literally seem to be the only vehicles on the road) in the evening it seems the danger is reduced considerably. We felt pretty safe the whole time, but we weren´t one of the tourists walking around with a grand`s worth of camera equipment swinging round our necks!
Whilst there, we visited a fascinating museum featuring the 'ice mummy', Juanita. Juanita was a little girl found at the top of a volcano in the last decade. She had been a sacrifice to the gods during the Inca period, and the cold weather meant that she was really well preserved over the hundreds of years. She was there for all to see in a little freezer cabinet at the end of the museum tour.
Our hostel, The Point, was decent, except for the fact that the bed was soft (and my back was getting worse) and people liked to party very loudly, way after us old fogies had gone to bed...
This aside, Arequipa meant that Peru was fast becoming one of our favourite destinations.
