Lima and Arequipa: We met our Berkeley friends and ate incredibly well

After our rest days in Panama we followed our trip to Peru. Our first stop was Lima, where our friends from Berkeley, Alvaro, Julen and Eli, picked us up from the airport. We spent three days with them and they really took care of us. Thank you guys! They might have thought we were too thin because we spent most of the time eating really good food! We were surprised by the great quality and reasonable price of the restaurants. We went to Cala, Jose Antonio and San Antonio, where we had an awesome breakfast.

Jose Antonio restaurant

Cala restaurant

Besides eating we also visited some touristic attractions: the "Fuerte Real Felipe" and "La Punta". In our last day, we took the touristic bus from Miraflores, Mirabus and we visited the Cathedral. We didn't know that the remains of Pizarro were kept in there. If we had to do it again we might take a taxi instead of the touristic bus, because for 2 people is more cost effective and more flexible.

Fuerte Real Felipe

Fuerte Real Felipe

La Punta

In Mirabus

Pizarro's remains

Farewell at the bus station

That same night we took a 16h bus to Arequipa, the longest we have taken so far. Tired from the trip and carrying our backpacks we started to walk around Arequipa. We visited a couple of hostels but were full. We discovered that there was a mining conference and most of the lodgings were full. Then, we sat at a cafe and called all the hotels listed in the Lonely Planet. We were lucky that the last one in the list, "El Tumi de Oro", had empty rooms. The hostel was managed by an old endearing couple and we felt like being their grandsons.

At Tumi de Oro

We liked Arequipa very much, especially the Plaza de Armas, Sta Catalina's monastery and "Juanita", an inkan girl who was sacrificed in the Ampato mountain and whose body has been perfectly preserved due to the low temperatures of the mountain.

Calle Cordoba inside Sta. Catalina Monastery 

In Arequipa we also ate wonderfuly well. We specially liked the ostrich fondue in Zig Zag and the creps, coca tea and apple tea of Crepissimo, both restaurants from the same group. Crepisimo also had a nice terrace upstairs from where you could see the cathedral and the monastery.  

Fondue at Zig Zag

Mate of Andean herbs in Crepissimo

Views from Crepissimo's terrace

From Arequipa we took a 2 day tour to "Cañón del Colca". We spent the first night in Chivay. On the road we found alpacas, Vicuñas and Llamas, the local camelids. We also went through a pass of 4910m above seal level, the highest we,ve ever been. At this altitude we felt the lack of oxigen! We stopped for a Coca tea and to see the stacks of stones, which were offerings that local people gave to the mountain. We had dinner in a traditional restaurant in Chivay where there was a Preuvian band playing. Victor was asked to dance twice and he was dressed with traditional clothes.

Four Vicuñas

Dancing with traditional clothes

The next day we went to actual Canyon, which is one of the deapest in the world, being 4100 m deep, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. We had some stops in the towns next to the road and some view points overlooking the pre-incan terraces. Finally we stopped at the Condor's Cross, where we could see a group of spectacular Condors flying very close to us.

Condor's cross

In that trip we met two spanish girls from Madrid, Vane and Tere. They had some problems with our guide because she left without them twice in that trip.

Then we went to Cuzco. We took it easy speacially to get used to the altitude. Luckily we had some medicine for the altitude and we didn't feel much besides the lack of oxygen when we had to climb the steep stairs to the hotel. We spent the first night at Los Niños hotel whose owner was Dutch. The rooms are around an arched patio and it is very eco-conscious. Some of the profits go for a non profit organization that deals with kids in trouble. 

Stairs to Loki hostel

Since Los Niños was a little bit pricey for our budget, we moved to the Loki hostel, the biggest hostel we have stayed in. It is very well organized, it has a pool table, a ping-pong table, there are activities everyday and it even has a travel agency inside. The only problem is that every single night they have the wildest parties in town until 2 am. We specially suffered that when we had to wake up at 4am the day we left to the Salkantay trek.

Cafetin at Los Niños

Patio at Los Niños

We took a day tour through Cusco and we saw the Cathedral, the Qoricancha (Incan Sun Temple) and the 4 archaeological sites including the incan walls of Sacsayhuamán. Our guide was a crazy old man who liked to tell  his own metaphores about love and liked to tell set phrases. A woman in our group had altitude sickness and had to stay in the car. She ate an entire bag of coca candies that made her delirious (or she already was) and even called the guide poet and philosopher.

Cuzco's  Plaza de Armas

Incan windows in Qoricancha

12-sided stone

Laura with a baby alpaca hat

The restaurants we liked the most in Cusco were the Inka Grill and Limo. The first one had live peruvian music and in that restaurant we won a price to eat a $35 menu in the second one. 

We spent the rest of the days resting and getting ready for our NEXT STOP: the Salkantay trek.