Why spend £280 when you can spend £60?

   Arequipa was quite possibly the most photogenic city we have been to in our trip and we took full advantage of the sunshine and the Santa Catalina convent during our two days in town.  We also spent a good chunk of time trying to work out which three-day trip to take to the Colca Canyon.  The main question plaguing us was, why spend £280 when you can spend £60?

   The range of options was staggering and they all seemed to offer the same thing.  We ended up with the cheapest tour going and prayed that our bus would turn up the next morning at our designated pick-up time of 3:30am.

   We had not had much luck with buses in Arequipa.  We took a unwanted tour of the seedier suburbs when trying to get into town from the bus station owing to a breakdown in communication between myself and the conductor (the person hanging out the side door of the minivan converted to take 15 passengers).  Our mistake was compounded when Kizzy was assured by the man next to her that this bus was going into the centre of town.  I think neither of them wanted to disappoint us so they told us what we wanted to hear.  

   At 3:30am on the dot a minibus with a loud and frenetic music system pulled up outside our hostel.  Kizzy was dubious.  I was simply glad there was a bus.  At 125 Peruvian new soles per person (about £30) for a three day/2 night guided tour with accommodation and meals I was half expecting the whole thing to be a scam.

   3 hours later, our views on this were converging.  We can now explain why you might pay 3 ½ times the price for this tour:

1. On one tour you leave at 7 in the morning in a comfy bus.  On the other tour you leave at 3:30am in a rattling bus driven by three overgrown children who like to demonstrate their prowess by speeding past overturned lorries on icy roads and driving through mountain tunnels with no lights.    
2. On one tour you have reputedly the best guide in Arequipa making you comfortable for every step of the way.  On the other tour your driver speaks to you once when you board the bus, “you need to vomit you tell me and I stop quick”. 
3. On both tours you get breakfast in Chivay on day one.  One of these breakfasts involves banana juice topped up with boiling water (why? to avoid food poisoning), stale bread and some syrup masquerading as jam.  We have no idea what was in the other breakfast but I bet it was marvellous.

By the time we got to Colca Canyon at about 8am, Kizzy was grumpy that she´d not got a wink of sleep with all the potholes.  I was grateful.  Our driver showed much more concentration when he had the potholes to contend with.  It was around breakfast time that we realized everyone else in Chivay was doing pretty much the same tour as us … except they all had guides.  Even the guys driving our bus weren´t too sure what we were doing there.  “Don´t worry,” they assured us, “someone will know you when we get to the canyon”.  Kizzy looked at me with dread.  We´ve had experience with these type of assurances before.  “We are not getting off this bus until there is someone here who knows us!” she hissed at me. 

   Of all the amazing things, there was someone waiting for us at Cruz del Condor.  Our guide, Angel had come from Arequipa with the three others in our trekking party and he was amazing.  Kizzy and I, and Jannick, Sarah and Jen were immensely fortunate to have such a wonderful guide.  Funny and knowledgeable and really easy going.  We had a fantastic trip and it turns out that the extra £220 we could have paid would only really have gained us 5 hours less excitement (trepidation) and a stonking breakfast on the first morning.