Up Into the Mountains July 22/2011

A couple of days in Lima and we were set to head off. We had spent one evening wandering around the streets settling on a sidewalk cafe as the locals went looney over the tournament football game which they ended losing to Uragauy. We had also spent the afternoon at a trendy mall shopping for warm clothes. The mall was precariuosly perched on the cliffs that form the coastline here.One good quake and you would bet it would be gone. We had booked a ticket on Cruz de Sur bus line for the 16 hour trip up to Arequipa where we were hoping to rendevous with Cheryl and Karen from Interlude IX who were heading up from two weeks in Chile. We were all booked into the same hotel the Viza located near the town centre. After checking out, the hostal stored our bags and we had a last go at the town also looking for some snacks for the bus ride. At the mercado I had an incident at the checkout, where in the ten item or less line the woman in front of me first held up the line while her husband went to add to the already overextended item list. Its a funny set up with two cashiers sharing single line in tadem. I asked in spanish, permisso, to sneak by with no response so turning away from her I made my move and pushed by with my daypack nudging her. Well the world came to an end and all I got was a Senor followed by some verbolose so being on good behaviour I said Los Seinto, plus disculpe, but that wasn´t good enough so at the point my bitchometer tripped in and I just ignored her as she chattered her self away. Still it didn´t exactly set the mood for the bus trip. But the trip was a surprise starting at the station where the security was almost airport like. They wanted passports searched carry ons and videoed all the passengers for security. I joked to Deb that the filmimg was just to identify the remains as the South American roads are notorious for losing their travellers especially in the mountains. The bus chairs are called camas and are basically full recling lazyboys which were extremely comfortably along with stewardesses, blankets and movies but I put the IPOD on shuffle and immeadidiately dropped off. Hours later I noticed the light peeking in from behind the curtains and taking a deep breath realized I had no headache which meant hopefully no altidude sickness. Great I thought as I opened the curtains only to see the ocean and its long waves breaking on miles of sandy beach. Certainly had misjudged the timing on that one. Even worse the road was a series of switchbacks which while very dramatic suffered from a serious lack of real estate in fact such a shortage seemingly under the wheels that I immeadtialy dialed up my innner coward who drew the curtains back across. Looking out the other side only brought miles and miles of sanddunes, no lets call them wind straked hills the like of which I have never encountered.A short time later we seemed to head inland into a scene out of a spaghetti western, adobe huts and tumble garbage mostly bluebags and plastic waterbottles punctuated by the beginnings of snowcapped mountains in the distance. All very exciting but a bit desolate. Around one pm we enterd the outskirts of Arequipa and pulled into the bus terminal. A short taxi ride brought us to our hotel where we checked in and hit the sack for a couple of hours shuteye.
to be continued