Bus tour to Yura and Chivay

 

Waited over an hour for our tour bus/van.  Today we drove up into the mountains, stopping at viewpoints on the other side of the volcanoes that surround Arequipa.  We saw a lot of wild Guanacos and some pretty nice scenery during the ride.  We stopped at the highest point of the trip-almost 16000 ft, both of us had headaches from elevation.  I had been chewing Coca leaves to stave off the elevation sickness, but it still got to me some.  

We also stopped and hung out with Llamas and Alpacas along the way.  We stopped in Yura and Chivay-where we had lunch.  We got to our hotel above the town of Chivay, and we had the rest of the afternoon ourselves.  Of course, I still felt like crap (elevation didn’t help) so I took a nap when we got there.  I woke up freezing, it turns out there was no heating system in the hotel.  

We just had a small heater that didn’t warm up room at all.  All we had to help us was heated mattress pads.  So if we were in bed it was fine, out of bed, not so much.  We just ate at hotel restaurant, all they had for heat there was a small wood burning stove, the workers were wearing winter coats, very bizarre.  The food was pretty good, just had to eat it before it got cold.  Poor night of sleep-air is VERY dry and I couldn’t get comfortable.

Just a long and tiring day for me, did see some good stuff though.