A trip to the south

Sooo it hasn't been as long as I thought it had been but a lot has happened in the past week! Last wednesday night four of us from the house took of on an overnight bus to Arequipa (about an 8 hour ride) and arrived at 6:00 am in time to meet Holly there, who was arriving from Puno. It definitely seemed like we weren't in Peru anymore, it is more like European city to me! We had some breakfast and then headed over to the Monasterio Santa Catalina, basically like this mini city within Arequipa. We paid the 30 soles to get in which was DEFINITELY worth it, it was huge and we looked around for about three hours, stopping for some delicious chocolate cake at a cafe in the middle. Lots of nice courtyards and such to explore. After the monasterio, we headed to a church to check it out, since it was the semana santa they were in the midst of preparing for the evening mass. Thursday was the 'last supper' day, so they ate 12 different dishes for the 12 disciples. Interesting! We were in there for a short while, we kinda felt as if we were intruding.. After the church we headed to a museum just beside it and had a sweet half hour tour for 5 soles each! Yeah! I guess it wasn't a museum well it was, it was a church that was now on exhibit as it is only used for classical concerts our guide told us? Because of the acoustics? Anyways we saw an old bedroom-turned-into-library and some replicas of the outfits people used to wear, among other things. We then headed out for lunch and charged our electronic items in the outlets of the restaurant YES. After lunch we went to the Plaza to chill out and found it was getting very busy as people were waiting for the churches to open for the evening mass. We ran into Barney, Spiderman, half bad half good Spiderman, a robot, and Elmo selling various items around the square!! We walked around and went through this really neat courtyard before it got too busy, and then walked around checking out the different churches around the Plaza (which were all absolutely packed!) After that we met up with some people from Mike's project who happened to be in Arequipa as well and went back to their hostel and chilled with thm for a bit before leaving to catch our 9:30 bus to Ica. We took Cruz Del Sur, a super nice bus company, complete with blankets and pillows, Rachel Holly and I all sat at the front of the second, so in front of a giatn window. It was so cool, tons of leg room, and a SAFETY VIDEO. It was nicer than a plane!! Man! We arrived in Ica at about 9:30 in the morning and caught a cab to Huacachina where we were staying for Friday night. We arrived at a hostel that Lonely Planet suggested and it was so perfect we came up with two rooms, one with three and one with two we had the top floor to ourselves and had our own bathrooms!! OH AND THERE WAS A POOL AND HAMMOCKS!!! Tell me about it. It was sweet. After a short walk around town, we went for a swim in the pool and went on a Pisco tasting tour. Some of it was super intense, but there was one called Cachina was actually pretty good!! I enjoyed it at least. We went to a second place to taste some more Pisco and it was like noooo thank you, it was so weird hahah it tasted like vinegar and also it looked like we were in someone's garage and there was like stuffed animals. I mean real animals, stuffed. Hmm yummy. After our Pisco.sweet wine tour we returned back to Ica to change and go DUNE BUGGYING AND SAND BOARDING!! It was sooo sweet. Sandboarding is hard though! Like a billion times harder than snowboarding!! Maybe the boards were a little ghetto maybe but it was still so hard hahha. We sand boarded for about an hour and a half and then went back to Huacachina, where we decided to climb this HUGE dune to see if we could see the sunset. We didn't quite make it, however I met someone from Calgary on the dune! She even went to high school at St. Mary's. It was so weird. First person I've met from Western Canada! Let alone Calgary.. Anyways we sat up there for a while it was so warm and so nice! Then we decided the fastest method to descend would be just to run straight down the hill. It was SO FUNNY I couldn't even handle it. I had to stop at one point because I was laughing so hard I actually couldn't breathe. It was also pitch dark and you get going so fast you can't even control it. SO fun. Anyways we descended from out dune and then it was about time for dinner. Needless to say I had the best sleep ever because we had done two overnight busses already. Next day we got up to catch a bus to Paracas, a coastal town about 45 minutes from Ica. We arrived and boarded a boat to go see the 'poor man's galapagos islands' also known as the Bollestas Islands. We saw some sea lions, pelicans, ravens, and peruvian boobies. Haha. They're the ones who poop everywhere and their poop is collected for natural fertilizer. There is even someone who has to live on the island to make sure no one steals the poop. That's valuable stuff. After our island tour we ate some lunch while being serenaded by a peruvian two man flute band. It was just awesome. Back to Ica to sit by the lagoon and chill out for a bit. Sebastien rented a personal quad for an hour and went and did that while the rest of us lounged and did some souvenir shopping. Once the sun cooled down, we climbed to the top of our favourite dune again in time to catch the sunset!! (And to run down it again.) After running down we went back to the hostel where they were kind enough to let us shower there!! Even though we weren't staying there that night! We headed into Ica around 8:30 to catch our bus back to Cusco, which was a helish 17 HOURS. We all felt like death afterwards, and its not that the bus was bad it was just so LONG!! We got back to Cusco and CRASHED! I had to move all my stuff to Fiona's apartment (where I stayed sunday as I am done at the Family House) However my planned trip to the jungle did not work out as there is an intensive strike from the farmers, who make their point by blocking all roads to and from Cusco and not allowing ANY cars through. And you're better off not trying, they got pretty vicious! They are protesting because, I think, something to do with the fact that the government wants to make them pay for their water? So the group I am with is going to attempt again tomorrow (after two failed attempts yesterday! (Yesterday was the worst case scenario day to the MAX) There were plenty of signs that the trip just wasn't going to fly haha. However I can't go tomorrow because I leave halfway through the trip :( I guess that just means I have to return!!!