Greeting's Club. Latest News from Peru:
I am in a place called [Arequipe] ( Ari-kipper ) where I am sitting in the back internet room of a camera and ethinc goods shops, one of millions around here.
In the front of the shop are our good friends the Travel Agents whom we happened across on Tuesday. As we were looking for some sunglasses Paul asked a group of people hanging around a wooden table in this shop where we could find some. After much discussion they sent one of their number to take us to a market. Unfortunatley her grasp of English is not so good and she gets simple words like Father and Younger More Good Looking Friend mixed up but generally we got along fine and showed us to a very nice sunglasses shop.
Later we needed to buy a ticket to Puno so we went back to the people since they appeared to be operating some kind of travel agency off their small desk. The leader is a pregant woman of around 40 years of age whom we were to discover later despairs of finding a husband for her and her child but is a romantic and believes that she could find the right man for her, or maybe not so good - maybe better as she would say. The leader has two lieutenants in the shape of the trainee travel agent who led us to the sunglasses shop and a person called Susannah who is but a child and serves no obvious purpose other than to giggle at Paul.
We soon discovered that buying a one way coach ticket is no simple process, firstly we needed to be informed about all the wonderful things we could do here and book through this agency. When it began to dawn that we had no time to book anything else then there was the sale of excellent quality cheap clothing happening near by right now ! The Leader herself was going to this as soon as she could get away. Eventually we decided on a ticket ( "roads are not so good, you will have a smooth journey", "this bus is more comfortable and it has a toilet, all buses are good - no difference" ) and arranged to come back later to pick it up.
We dropped in later to quickly pick the tickets up and go and get some food, 1hour later we left having recitied the names of numerous birds, viewed the reciepts of the excellent clothing bought by the Leader earlier ( why you no go down there too like I say, maybe next time you are here I will take you" ) discussed the unliklyhood of the Leader ever marrying and 8billion and 1 other subjects not related to travel in any way.
To be honest though this is just a good example of how extremely friendly and amusing Peruvian people generally seem to be.
Today we saw some Condors ( including this [Condor] ) and ate some more horrible food, did some stupid walking ( what's wrong with the van? ), and saw some traditional Andean running dances - Steve you would be well in here, as was [Dancing Paul].
Arequipe is in the shadow of a huge volcano ( [The Misti] ) of which we had an excellent view [Up On The Roof] of our hostel, Paul was admanant we stayed in this particular hostel because the book recommended so highly it's roof top views. Also on the roof was an incrediably rickety bar whose roof you could also climb on if you had no fear of death at all.
On the way to the [Colca Canyon] we passed over the Peruvian [Lucky Rocks|Altiplano] at a height of just under 5000M, at this height it is a real effort to do anything. Coca Leaves help with altitude sickness enormously and we were able to buy some at a small cafe place near the summit. In the cafe were some [Local Kids] and sugar loving [Alpaca]. The Colca Canyon is the 2nd deepest canyon in the world and is in the middle of some very impressive country side indeed.
Going now to no doubt get into another hour long conversation with the travel agent posse lurking outside.
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