Pachacutec, Arequipa

The journey from Lima took fifteen hours. After half watching the Italian Job in Spanish my body finally relented and allowed my consciousness to sink into a sleep for a solid five or six hours. My seat on the bus which had initially seemed relatively comfortable slowly began to rebel and conspired against me to allow no further rest past five in the morning.

By now a milky dawn was beginning to descend and allowed me to look out at the window and take stock of surrounding landscape. I had anticipated a view of mountains, but the visa that appeared out of the window was an eerie landscape, flat and desolate covered in moonlike sand and dust. It was only when I caught sight of something grey rising and shimmering on the horizon that I realised that this was no mountain plateau but that I was actually still at sea level.

The road had followed the coast as far as I could tell and passed compound like settlements that seemed to have been built on the sand. Presently the road began to rise and soon enough the pressure in my ears informed me that we were now raising in altitude.

At around nine in the morning, some fifty or so hours after setting off the bus pulled into Arequipa where I was more than relieved to find myself finally meeting Jose, the director of the organisation I was to be working with.

It would have been nice if this had marked the end of my exertions for the time being however it seemed Jose had different plans. After taking me to one of his homes and introducing me to his son, daughter and ex-wife I had barely time to take my bags to the room before Jose was taking me off in his car to show me the office.

I had visited Arequipa once before, some ten years ago, and at that time had not realised quite how large the city was. It took us about thirty minutes to drive across part of the city to where CIESCU’s main office was. Here also was Jose’s second house and family who I was able to meet. I had some lunch here and then Jose took me off again to show me some projects.

My this point I wasn’t particularly together and although I tried my best to focus on what was being said I wasn’t sure how much I followed. As the afternoon drew on we finally left the project we were visiting and went back to the office. I managed to get a brief nap here and at six had some food with Jose’s second family.

It was now getting dark and I was informed that Jose was too tired to drive me back to the place where I’d left my gear and toiletries and I was offered the spare bed adjoining the office for the night. With no other choice apparent I accented and after using the internet for a little while in a vain attempt not to go to bed too early I finally retired at about 8pm local time, closer to 1am according to my body clock. Sixty –five hours or so after I had last been able to get some proper sleep.