Monday 11th - Everywhere

We are finally in Arequipa after an epic journey...after Heathrown first Madrid, then back off the plane and Madrid for a little while longer (3 hour delay) then 12 hour flight into Lima, an excited little run around the airport trying to rearrange our missed connection and finally a flight into Arequipa, where we discovered Sarah´s mum´s suitcase had gone missing. She had already fallen over some woman´s suitcase in Lima airport and we hadn´t really slept for what seemed like about 5 days so all was not going that well.

Since then we have made it into Arequipa with Emma, who looks suitably tanned and exotic, and got ourselves settled in a guesthouse with high ceilings made of huge blocks of stone. After the most welcome shower ever, we had lunch in the sun on a balcony overlooking the main square, met some of the people Emma is lodging with (the aunt is trying to marry her daughter off to an Italian) and and had a general introductory potter around the town, which is quite colonial-looking with big white shiny buildings and squares with grass and trees. We also tried our very first pisco sour...not as close a relative of a mojito as I had hoped but still nice, particularly considering it apparently contains egg white. For lunch Sarah and I toyed with the idea of ordering some deep fried guinea pig but the picture in the menu looked so much like road kill it put us off. Maybe when we are less jetlagged.

First impressions of Peru (from the plane as we flew into Arequipa) were that it is huge and incredibly barren, with mile after mile of brown/orange/grey/beige with the only signs of life around rivers. I had had in my mind that it would be a lot greener - but then we aren´t anywhere near the jungle yet and I think that will change when we go up to visit Cusco etc.