Tears and tequila

The final stretch of my travelling before I went to Mexico for four months took me from Arequipa to Lima, with pit-stops in Huacachina and Paracas along the way. Arequipa is a beautiful city, and is the gateway to the famous Colca Canyon. This was our final stay in one of the Wild Rover hostels, and it was the least enjoyable out of the 3 we’d stayed in, although the pool at this one was highly appreciated. We spent the afternoon drinking in the hostel bar, before realising we should probably eat something and heading out in search of some food.

Arequipa square

Before finding somewhere to eat, we took a walk over to Alpaca World, which is, as the name gives away, basically a petting farm full of alpacas and llamas. Alpacas are the cute fluffy ones, llamas are the slightly less cuddly slightly more overgrown-rodent-like ones. I love them both though! It was a wholesome little trip and was exactly what we needed. We then found a restaurant called Indian Cuisine, which was great as I’d really been craving curry. From what I remember, we were the only people in there, but the food was lovely and most importantly it lined our stomachs for a night at the bar. Well, at least I thought it did.

Alpaca at Alpaca World

Turns out the food hadn’t lined my stomach well enough to handle the obscene amount of tequila shots I found it necessary to consume that night. There was a “drink for your country” competition, and I decided not to enter for England with everyone else, but to enter for Holland, and I made it my mission to single-handedly win it for Holland, much to the amusement of everyone around me. I think in the end I had something like 14 tequila shots, around half of which were suicide shots, meaning you had to squeeze the lime in your eye and snort the salt before doing the shot. As you can imagine, on top of the several cocktails and beers I’d also had that night, it didn’t exactly sit right, and it’s absolutely fair to say I made a fool of myself. I woke up the next morning feeling absolutely horrific, and that feeling was only made worse when I was told about my ridiculous antics. We live and we learn, I guess.

That day was spent attempting, pretty unsuccessfully, to ward off the hangover from hell, and it ended in a pizza place, which was absolutely lovely but I can’t remember the name of it for the life of me, sadly, even after extensive Googling. Whatever that restaurant was called, it finally got rid of that awful hangover, so kudos to them.

Our final day in Arequipa was spent doing a day trip to Colca Canyon to see the condors. From what I understand you can also do 2 or 3 day trips which involve a pretty intense amount of hiking, but we chose the 1 day trip as we were short on time by this point. The Canyon is incredible – the condors swoop so close to you you can practically touch them, though I wouldn’t recommend it, to be fair. It was amazing to see these enormous birds so close up, and I’m so glad we decided to go on the trip, as it’s probably a highlight of my travels.

Condor in flight across the canyon

After Arequipa, we got a night bus to Ica, where we caught a taxi to Huacachina to go sandboarding on the dunes. We decided to do the sandboarding at sunset as this is supposedly when it’s most impressive, so killed some time drinking cocktails in a bar called Huacafuckingchina. Huacachina is incredibly pretty, with the dunes surrounding a small lagoon, and so I was excited for the sandboarding. I enjoyed the buggy ride across the dunes, but as soon as it came to sandboarding, I realised I absolutely was not going to enjoy it. Sand was flying everywhere, the board kept getting stuck, and so, in a tantrum, I gave up after one go and sat crossly at the top of a dune until everyone finished. In my defence, I was also gutted as it was my last day in Peru before I headed off to Lima to catch my flight to Mexico, so I was a bit emotional anyway.

Huacachina

Anyway, after that delightful activity, we spent the night in Paracas, where we went to a bar (shock) and celebrated our last night all together. There’s some sort of nature reserve there that you can take a boat trip too, but sadly I didn’t have time as I had a flight to catch. The next day was filled with tears from me as I bid farewell to Tim, Adam, and Alice, and then took a horribly uncomfortable coach to Lima. I had a pretty stressful time at Lima airport, but I’ll leave that until next time.

Hasta luego,
Lola x

Comments

  1. Sounds amazing. Thank you for clearing up the alpaca/llama difference, and thank you for deinking for Holland. I would say, don't do that again, but guessing you will!!

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