It felt kind of strange walking down Mercaderes and seeing Starbucks, KFC, and Pizza hut lining the streets. I opted for dinner at a local cafe instead, recommended by the Indian guy in my room who came out for a walk. It was a long day spent on buses, so after dinner I called it a night.

The next morning I joined the free walking tour, which took us all over the city centre - to restaurants, museums, cathedrals, and even chocolate factories. I had lunch at La Benita and experienced a true Peruvian lunch - a huge, heavy, starchy meal that left me struggling to finish. Something rare for me and food.

Arequipa is a beautiful, European-like (note: never been to Europe) city. It doesn’t feel very South American and is certainly a huge contrast to what I experienced in Bolivia. So it was a great city to spend some time in, and celebrate my 5 month anniversary of leaving home. Luckily it happened to fall on a Saturday night.

I’d made friends with Eddy, a high roller from Manhattan and he brought along two girls from France for dinner and some drinks. A few drinks turned into a few more drinks, and before we knew it we were at a VIP table, taking selfies with expensive drinks (hey, we were well drunk by this stage) and partying at the multi-story nightclub Forum. It was the perfect way to dust out the cobwebs and celebrate 5 months on the road, with some really fun people who had become good friends in less than 48 hours of us meeting.

With the little sleep I had on Saturday night, I mustered up the energy to visit the Santa Catalina Monastery with Eddy. It’s a huge, beautifully coloured place built in the 17th century that now only houses about 20 nuns. It actually feels like it’s own little city within Arequipa. After walking around there for a while I had no more energy, so went back to the hostel for a nap before dinner.

On Monday I tried something different - a Peruvian cooking class. Located conveniently across the road from the hostel, we whipped up some local foods - Causa for entrée and Lomo Saltado for mains. The cost of the course was worth it because the chef had me, an otherwise terrible cook, making roses out of tomatoes like this:

It had been more than a couple of days in Arequipa before I’d actually done any serious sightseeing, so Tuesday was set aside for a 2 day trek of the Colca Canyon.

With a depth of 3,270 m, the Colca Canyon is one of the deepest in the world, more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the United States. It’s a colourful Andean valley with pre-Inca roots, and towns founded in Spanish colonial times, still inhabited by people of the Collagua and the Cabana cultures. The local people maintain their ancestral traditions and continue to cultivate the pre-Inca stepped terraces.

We had to wake up at 2AM on Tuesday morning to be ready for the bus. We hadn’t even begun any hiking and it was already hard. On the way we stopped for breakfast and a viewpoint for spotting Condors, which there were many. Then it was time to start the trek. A total of about 6 hours trekking to the bottom of the canyon, where we were to stay the night. By the time we arrived we were all exhausted, so we had a quick meal then went to bed.

Then, at 4AM it was time to get up again. Still aching, we began a 3 hour uphill trek back out of the canyon. Just like Death Road, I pushed myself to exhaustion to see how fast I could make it up, and ended up clocking in at around 1 hour 45 minutes. Then our guide crushed my sense of achievement by telling me he once did it in 55 minutes.

Our group after the hard trek out of the Colca Canyon

We demolished a breakfast, and soon after, lunch - then took the long drive back to the hostel, most of us falling asleep on the way.

So, the rest of my time here in Arequipa was spent recovering from the past 2 days in the Colca Canyon. This morning I visited Mummy Juanita at the Museo Santuarios, the well-preserved body of a frozen Inca girl from the 15th century, regarded as one of the world’s top 10 discoveries. And tomorrow I’ll take the bus back down to Puno. Yes, I'm going back down from the way I came, but the intention was always to head back to Puno to take the train - a supposedly beautifully scenic journey through the Andes - to Cusco.