Weather fine, temperature 23 - 9 degrees, sunrise 6.07am and sunset 5.20pm

Beautiful weather here in Arequipa, the sky is so blue but this is the typical weather for this city as it hardly rains . We are staying here for a couple of nights to acclimatise us to the raise in sea level. Tomorrow we gradually ascent further above sea level and may even need altitude sickness tablets.  Geoff doesn't as he has previously been up high when he was working in Argentina and visited the Andes Mountains.

A start with a short 10 minute drive to see the terraces which the Inca's had started and to this day they still farm like this here. The background view of the volcanos were stunning. The names are El Misti and Chachani. One is dormant and the other is active. The last earthquake they had here was in 2000 and this was approx. 7 on the Richter scale.

While we were driving to get off the bus there was a demonstration by the local squatters who want the services of water and electricity supplied by the local government for free, There were hundreds of people but a peaceful protest which stopped just next to us so we quickly moved on to the first place to visit on our city tour. We visited a cathedral where there was a children's performance, they were so cute.  Next was a Convent today.  This was interesting to see how nuns were taken into the convent and the rooms and small village which resulted because of the amount of nuns which lived here There are still 15 nuns who live here but do not practice the old ways of being silent. This religion is much more lenient.
 
This afternoon we had a couple of hours of free time where we looked around and I bought a baby alpaca wool scarf with pictures of alpaca's on it. Not too bad of a price but at least we know that it is alpaca unlike if sometimes you buy these type of things at a market.

I have a sunset for you tonight over Arequipa for our last night here.