Arequipa, Peru

Because I was crossing a border, I had to take a day bus and waste a whole day, but it was alright. We stopped in a tiny town on the border, the bus let us out, we walked across a bridge over Titicaca, and right on into Peru. We went into immigrations, but it would have certainly been easy enough to just stroll on in! A few hours later, my bus pulled over randomly in the middle of a bridge, everyone was frantically grabbing their stuff and pushing each other off the bus. Being the only tourist, I had no idea what was going on, so I grabbed my stuff and jumped off with them, stood outside freezing for 30 minutes, then followed them as they all calmly boarded back on the bus ... NO idea what all that was about.
Finally, a few hours late, I made it to Arequipa to meet Courtney and Eileen who had been waiting all day! We immediately went out for some celebratory food and drinks! The next day we had a ball just running around Arequipa exploring: we went to the Monestary (doesn't sound that exciting but it was lots of fun and gorgeous), all around downtown (including the ... noteworthy ... market (see pictures)), up to the viewpoint, and had an incredible meal sitting in the garden at a great little restaurant. For dinner, we went to a local penas show (live folk music) at a restaurant near our hostel, were the only people there for the whole three hours, and were outnumbered by the band. Luckily a friend of the band, our old pal Javier, befriended us and in our drunken spanish we managed to have a great time laughing and dancing. Unfortunately, because we were the only people there (and tourists) the restaurant decided to make up a 20% tax (food is not taxed in South America), and upon our refusal to pay we were chased down the street (and still refused to pay). That put a damper on an otherwise fantastic night.
We were regretting our 4 or 5 rounds of Pisco Sours at 3 am the next morning when we were getting up for our Colca Canyon trek. After a very touch-and-go bus ride, we stopped and got to see some amazing condors showing off flying above us, then started our trek all the way down ... and right back up ... and right back down, the deepest canyon in the world. We stayed at a fantastic "Oasis" right in the bottom next to the river, swam in the gorgeous pool, ate by candle light as there is no electricity in the canyon, and stayed in wonderful little huts. The next morning we took mules up to the top-- so much fun! We made a few more stops on the way home, and finally arrived in Arequipa just in time to shower, eat, and catch an overnight bus to Puno (after MUCH ado and a great deal of confusion, we ended up in first class- score!).