A homage to the most heard song in Latin America!!!

Cañon de Colca

A beautiful valley leading to the world´s deepest canyon. You arrive there through the dry, high altiplano. A place that sucks the moisture out of your eyes, where llamas, alpacas and vicunas wander free and you wonder how anyone can ever survive living there.

The canon now is a bit of a tourist mecca with 400 cameras being pointed at the soaring condors. We stayed with a lovely family in a village called Yanque (something to do with the Americans I think) a bit away from tour central. It was an amazingly peaceful place. To bed at 8pm, up with the light. The majority of the inhabitants working in the fields all day. Quinoa is the main crop which I had never realised was such a beautiful plant.

Arequipa

From Cuenca, Ecuador to Lima, Peru and yes, all in one go

So we left Ecuador and raced down to Lima, Peru in a bid to try and get some distance under our belt (a 7 hour journey followed immediately by an 18 hour one). Our aversion to bus journeys was almost cured by the wonderful cama deluxe buses you can take overnight in Peru. Films, food, almost reclining, squishy, leather seats, attendants at your call. And all the while racing through amazing landscapes, that we felt a million miles away from in our little bus capsule. It was great to be living the luxurious life, and we didn´t feel at all bad about leaving the local buses aside for a while.

We stayed one night in Miraflores, a quiet seaside area of Lima, thankful we weren´t moving for 24 hours before getting on another 14 hour night bus to Arequipa where we are now in hiding from any glimpse of an attraction that might necessitate another bus journey, building up our bus-fitness to carry on to Bolivia and Lake Titicaca.

Sorry Peru, we are missing you this time. Next trip....

Amazing Cuenca, where I got bought flowers, bought a hat, got shaved (OK that was Tiago) and moshed to a punk panpipe band

We loved Cuenca. World heritage, clean, green, ancient city. We spent our time wandering the city appreciating the many sites (lots of churches), eating wonderful seafood, drinking too many mojitos, buying the famous panama hats (which are infact from Ecuador but were labelled as from Panama as they had to pass out through the Panama canal for export) and dancing in the square to a loud punk band, the most violent moshing to panpipe music you can imagine.