South America Part 7 - Arequipa
(actually pronounced arekipa for all you gringos) (by Ant and parts by Nick)

We caught the taxi from the hostel to Cusco airport. We literally walked out the front door and one of the world´s smallest taxis stopped and collected us and our three bags and two day packs and took us via the scenic/possible mugging route to the airport. Things didn’t get off to a good start, as the taxi was from the TitanicTaxi Company. We didn’t have time to do the “King of the World” moment on the front of the local version of the Daewoo Matiz.

The airport was uneventful, and so was the flight. We left 12 minutes early (¿perhaps Qantas should learn something from this rather than 25 hours late?). I wondered why we took a roundabout way to Arequipa, but when we arrived the really really really big volcanoes made me feel better that we went the way we did. Everything looked like it was covered in dust from a volcanic eruption last week. Either that or it was just generally dusty. And it was a lot bigger than we expected. Lonely planet includes lots of useless information like the address of consulates for tinpot African countries, but neglects to mention that Arequipa is the second largest city in the country with over 1.5 million people. ¡Bloody Lonely Planet!

Another local dude was waiting at the airport with our names on a sign for the short trip to ¨Hostel Casa De Tintin.” This place must breach at least one international copyright law, but the owner looked like one of the characters so I guess its OK. They were clearly trying for the Colombian drug lord fortress look at the Hostel (more about this later).

After checking in, we went for the “short walk” into town. Im my mind short walk means no more than 10 minutes. However it was around 2 and a half kilometres, through the back blocks of Arequipa with car yards, and a strange Casino Militar which we originally thought was a military base but actually was a casino. Perhaps the military operate the casinos?

Once we got into Arequipa after our forced march, we thought this place was pretty cool. All the buildings are in a colonial style and built of this volcanic rock called Sillar, which is white. It was pretty apparent that Arequipens were wealthier than those people in Cusco, despite living in the middle of a desert with tumbleweeds and cacti.

We went for a walk around yet another Plaza del Armas (every town has one) and only got touted by 5 different restaurants within one block. So it was generally pretty quiet.

We checked out the big cathedral on the square, they were in the process of setting up for the Immaculate Conception shindig. This seemed to comprise installing big f### off speaker stacks suitable for a heavy metal concert in the cathedral. So we sat there listening to white noise, feedback and the universal sound check “once, dos, tres”. Nick thought that Arequipa might be hosting Sonic Youth as part of the Immaculate Conception.

We bailed once the feedback became too much, and headed into the “retailing aka pirated s$$$” district. It was pretty crowded so we had to keep a sharp eye on our stuff. We walked past the Restaurant Machu Picchu (grr) and got touted by a transvestite who was selling bubble gum. It seemed that the peach harvest had come in, as there were several trucks with loads of peaches but of course following the strict eating advice for overseas countries (basically, don’t eat anything) we didn’t get any.

We had dinner, or late afternoon snack at Johnny Coyotes´ a Peruvian fast food chain. Nick had the Coyote Baby and Ant who was feeling hungry had the Coyote Grande. Coyote Baby was the size of a large big mac meal, obviously Johnny Coyote studied Super Size Me when working out portion size.

We headed back for a “nite of tee-vee” at Casa de Tintin, South American style. One of our favourite shows was a Latino version of Home & Away except the mandatory school uniform was tight fitting blouse with a mini skirt (2 inches long) and knee high stilettos whilst the guys had chest hugging shirts (unbuttoned half way down the chest) and everyone had to wear red ties (not done up of course). Their school appeared to be situated at a Cancun resort where they drunk heaps of cocktails by a seaside pool. There was a lot of women-on-women stroking and dancing and of a lot of shenanigans (which of course weren’t shown at a G rated timeslot). This of course had the production value of “Breakers” or “E Street” or cheap porn. If you want to check out more about this fine latino program - then check out this official site - http://www.esmas.com/rebelde/

We had to get up early for a 7 o´clock start for the Colca Canyon tour…. It was going to be a very long day for Ant but the story continues in the next part….