Getting to the Point

January 7. I took a quick flight and hopped over from Cusco to Lima. I had picked up three Argentinians - friends of Flor's. Andres, Lucho, and Manuel. My new travelling band from Rosario, Argentina.

The four of us crashed Flor's pad for a quick 5 days. Site seeing and partying. Days included
tours of the catacombs in the Cathedral and introducing the boys to Peruvian cuisine including my favorite bar in Barranco, Lima - Juanitos. Best sandwich and beer in town. Also, stops at Bigote for Ceviche - raw fish cooked in lemon juice, Jalea - a fried assortment of fish with a white fish filet at the bottom and some yuca, chicharron - calamari with great tartar sauce, tacu tacu - rice with beans, and of course lots of Cusqueña - the beer.

Eventually the 13th came, and we all had a flight to Arequipa to embark on the journey south. A goodbye lunch at Bigote and the boys went on their way to the airport. My plan was to stay in town and wait for my debit card to arrive the following day, forego my flight with the boys and take a 13 hour bus ride to Arequipa to meet them on the 15th.Luckily I ran into an exceptional amount of good luck, which sadly diminished the minute I crossed the border into Bolivia.....

The boys took off on their flight - leaving me behind and by chance, my debit card showed up at the apartment a day earlier than the tracking online had said. My original flight, an hour long, spent an actual three hours circling the airport in Arequipa, unable to land due to the clouds. So the flight headed back to land in Lima and rescheduled for 4am the following morning.

As I settled into the idea of my future possibly excruciating bus ride in Flor's apartment over a Pizza Hut pizza night the boys surpisingly showed up at the apartment to wait for their later flight.

In a whirlwind, I packed my bag and said goodbyes, figuring I could talk my way onto the flight at 4am. With some fast talking by Andres, the stewardess at the check-in desk asked some questions and got me on the flight to Arequipa. We got into Arequipa airport early morning and headed to a hostal to catch up on some sleep.

We slept into the afternoon and woke to get oriented...(Falk - a German friend of a friend, joined us in Arequipa to travel through Bolivia with us.) With two days in the second largest city of Peru, we didn´t do much. Manuel and I toured a museum to see Juanita - the child mummy found in the mountains nearby.And otherwise we relaxed to prep for BOLIVIA.....