arequipa to lima

arequipa is a beautiful city. we fell in love with it right away. emily and i did the colca canyon trek. i´m happy to say we were in 3rd and 4th place the whole trek. rgiht behind the mexican triathelete and the swiss guy. behind me was the australian guy who was carrying his wife´s bag plus his own. that sucks. then the swiss girl, then the australian lady, and last the sunburnt girl from croatia.of course it´s not a competition and we have the advantage of being acclimatized and used to treking :) we felt good about ourselves. this trek was nothing compared to the one we did in cuzco. it was sooooo much easier. the people on the trek weren´t as cool as the last one either but we still had a good time. we got to stay in a hostel in the canyon. our room had those mud brick walls. it was pretty cool. it also had a solar shower with really hot water. hot showers are hard to come by in this country. on the second day of the trek we got to go swimming and then after had to hike up the canyon for 3 hours in the sun. it was pretty rough. last night we caught a plan ¨air taca¨ to Lima. we are staying in central lima which the guide book says to avoid but we love it. there is so much more to do here then there was in the district of barranca. today we shopped for ourselves. i got a bunch of things. so cheap.

puno and copacobana

after cuzco we headed to puno and did a boat tour to the floating islands. these islands are made out of reeds that the island people replace about every 6 weeks. it was really cool. when you walk around the ground sinks under your feet. it´s a crazy way of life. all the women sit around making things to sell to tourists. as for the town of puno it wasn´t so special. we went out for dinner with some of our peeps from the cuzco trek. the next day we took a bus to Copacobana, Bolivia. that city is so chill. it was great. the food was so much better then in peru. we ate a lot. it was also way cheaper. the first day we rented a sail boat with the english boys. the boat was the shittiest thing i´ve ever been in. it´s sail was duck taped in places. we sailed around the bay for about 2 hours. it was nice but cold on the water. the next day we climbed up a small mountain where there were crosses and graves at the top. in the afternoon we took a boat to an island. the isla del sol. it ended up that we should have done the full day island trip. we spent 1.5 hours on the boat getting there. had 40 minutes to explore and didn´t have time to find the Inca ruins and then had to catch the boat back. if only we´d known. that night we went out to a club that had a live band and people doing the tango. it was really cool. before we left bolivia i bought so many funky earrings. they were so cheap and i had to spend my bolivianos right? ;)
emily and i caught a tourist bus back to peru. it took us to puno where we had to change buses. we were so mad to realize we´d have to take a local bus to Arequipa. we got ripped off. oh well. we found a nice hostel in arequipa and went out for food and to have a drink in a bar. we ended up in a local bar that was so fun. we sat at a table with this lady in her 40s that introduced us to her friends who were our age. it was pretty hilarious actually. the band played only old english covers. we heard two songs by bryan adams and one by alanis morrissette. go canada. this morning we signed up for a 3 day trek to the colca canyons. we leave tomorrow at 5:45am!