Arequipa, Peru - part I

the bus ride from Puno was 5 hours.. it was quite nice, they showed 2 movies on board, served snacks and held a bingo game :D once i arrived to the bus station in arequipa.. i took a taxi... first i asked to go to the central plaza.. so we drive and chat.. after a while the taxi driver stops in front of an hotel and tells that i could just go and look to see if i like it... central plaza was 2 blocks ahead of us.. location seems fine.. i went to look at the room and it was nice and clean.. so it took it for 2 nights. arrived at the hotel at about 8:30pm... didn´t go anywhere.. took a nice long hot shower and crawled into bed.. watched tv for about an hour and went to bed.

luckily the breakfast is included.. so i ate at the hotel and headed to the town. dropped off some laundry to be washed and headed for the central square. it is beautiful. figured that i should check the coca canyon and other tours first and then do some sightseeing.. so walked into a travel agency and checked what is available... now i´m booked for 2 day colca canyon tour starting tomorrow morning at 1am :) and i get back to town on the 12th at 4pm... and i´ll try to catch a bus to Ica same evening around 8pm... bus ride to Ica is about 12h.

then i went to do some sightseeing... well.. at one of the churches the guide was trying to tell me the story of the paintings but the yelling at the streets was soo loud that i could not hear her.. so i asked what is all this noise about... and what do i hear: people are striking against government.. it has been going on in different cities around Peru and this midnight to come, the real strike will start, covering the whole country! and if i´m planning on traveling anywhere in Peru i should do it today :D .. well.. well.. i have my colca canyon trip booked so i´d like to do that first. the tour lady was very sceptical that the coca canyon trips will even happen. i´ll go by the travel agency again to see what they say. also it is not known of how long the strike will go on for. the strike will cover all services, including transport (so all the buses, local and between cities)

oh well.. arequipa seems like a nice place to get stuck at.. i´ll exchange some money today to last me a week or so and lets see what happens... main worry will be not to miss my plane back home from Lima... if worse comes to worse then i´ll have to skip Ica and all the wonderful things i wanted to do around there and take a flight from Arequipa to Lima... that is IF the airplanes are going at all :D .. otherwise.. a long taxi ride? hitchhiking? will see :D