Well I just left Arequipa after spending 10 days there. It was a great city and a great hostel, so I stayed.
Although by the end I had definitely outstayed my own welcome, I stayed for the 450th birthday celebrations of the city which was great fun.
I also went to Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world. While the canyon and surrounding scenery was beautiful, and I got to see Condors flying really close by, the trip didn´t wow me.
I also went to this amazing museum display where they had a 500 year old Inca Sacrificial princess that they had found on the mountain. It was fascinating and kinda creepy. I liked Arequipa because it felt like a real town. It didn´t have an overbearing in your face tourism feel that a lot of places seem to have and it was relatively cheap. I also did a real cultural experience that I had absolutely no desire to go to, but ended up being convinced. I went to a cock fight which was possibly one of the most horrific things I have ever seen. It is legal in Peru and we were the only foreigners in the place. It was a proper ring like spectacle with happy music to hide the horror that some of these roosters die. They attach razor blades to their feets, and then leave them to it. It seemed so normal for these Peruvians, but I could barely watch it. A good thing was that if the rooster does die, they do eat it after so it isn´t a completely senseless death, but I watched with half horror and half interest at the way the Peruvians treated this as completely normal. I am in Cusco at the moment, but in a bit of a bad way. In true Theresa style I was coming down the stairs in Arequipa yesterday morning, and I slipped and fell, falling onto the edge of the step with my back. The noises of complete and utter pain that escaped my mouth were horrible, but luckily at exactly the same time, these guys checked in and they had some first aid training. They gave me iboprophen and sugar in the form of coke to deal with the shock and then went down to the pharmacy. I was so lucky there doesn´t seem to be any damage to the spine. It seems just badly bruised around the muscle, but god does it hurt, and the 12 hour bus ride here did me no favours.
And now, here I am in Cusco, where there are heaps of walks and treks (not to mention Macchu Picchu, although I was never going to trek that anyway) and now i can´t do much. I´m pretty sure that there is a granny way of getting there, so I´ll check that out. I´m definitely in the wars this trip.
