Oh Arequipa, how I will miss you!

This morning Brittany left me at 8 and I´ve been wandering the city by
myself since then waiting til my 8:30 bus to Cusco. I left the hostel at
noon after watching much TV and went to the Cusco Coffee Company, which is
apparently Peru´s answer to Starbucks. Kinda eeire in a way. I got a cafe
and a sandwhich and wrote for awhile then read a Marie Claire that was there
AND in english AND a new issue, it was very exciting. I was there for 2
hours then went to the Plaza and just sat. People watched and such. It was
really relaxing, just observing the people. Then his Peruvian guy comes and
sits beside me and we start talking. We went and got a drink then I went
around the city on his motorcycle. I had never been on one before and wanted
to but was really scared then just decided fuck it and did it. It was
cool...and thats all I´ll say about that...

Yesterday morning Brittany and I got up at 6 and went to the Plaza in Yanque
to wait for the bus at 6:30, since no one was really sure when the bus came.
Yesterday just proved how shitty of a town Yanque yet again. It was freezing
in the morning so we went into every shop and asked if they had tea. We were
greeted with crazy looks like ´´Tea? Why would we have tea?´´ Because the
rest of Peru doesn´t drink in constantly...freaks. So not only is there no
place for you to even eat in Yanque you can´t even get a drink. We sat there
for an hour waiting for the bus, watching the buses of tourists come and
stop to watch the locals dressed and doing folk dances around the fountain.
Fools, they probably think Yanque is such a lovely rural town, lies, we know
the truth. Thankfully there was a lady on the bus selling empanadas so I got
to eat. When we got to Cruz del Condor we at least felt that our boring ass
trip was worth it. It was really cool seeing the condors flying. There was 5
or 6 of them and they are absolutely massive and come pretty close to you
sometimes which is a bit scary. We asked the park lady what time the bus for
Chivay comes back and she told us 10:30, so at 10 we went up to wait and
were talking to this guy who was selling jewellery and he was like that bus
just left...we were not impressed. The lady claimed that we were the ones in
the wrong and said we would now have to wait til 1130 which we were not
impressed with considering we wanted to catch the 1230 bus back to
civilization (Arequipa), but thankfully some nice Peruvian offered to take
us back to Yanque in the back of his pickup. Not only did that save us the 3
soles for the bus it was way cooler and more fun than the bus. It didn´t
smell, no young kids were breathing their stanky breathe on us, no old ladys
deciding to basically sit on your lap while attempting to sit on the
armrest. The only downside was that after the hour in the back of a pickup
down a dirt road we were basically covered in a film of dust and my hair
felt so utterly nasty and dirty. Of course the 1230 bus was full so we had
to wait until the 215 one. We went to this Irish Pub in Chivay for lunch
that was playing a soundtrack of Guns n Roses, Areosmith and Nirvana, which
I found overly entertaining.

Getting back to Arequipa was the happiest moment of my week. We got back to
the hotel and asked the guy for a good place for typical food and spent 10
minutes in the taxi in crazy traffic because of a parade that just went by
to arrive to the restaurant that was CLOSED. Perfect. So then we asked the
taxi driver for his reccommendation and he takes us to this massive place on
the other side of town with a massive arched facade thats all lit up and we
were like ¿es carro? and hes like meh un poco, 13 to 20 soles. But I felt
sick and starving and wasn´t going anywhere else. So the ´typical´ Peruvian
restaurant we asked him to take us to was actually a typical Argenteanian
restaurant. Thanks buddy. It was good though. Then we went back to the
hostal and fell asleep to Mr. Deeds only to be woken up by the crazy loud
drum and bass coming from a club nearby that played until 430am. Today makes
up for everything though.