22nd Sept - Arequipa

Uh oh. Bad bad news. There's a f-ing election on sun week so the good people of Peru have decided that going on strike would be a great idea. They strike over anything and there's nothing anyone can do about it. In this case, lads living about 2 hours before Cusco are demanding better water access and have completely barricaded a town on the route from Arequipa to Cusco. Result - there might be no buses for a week. Kryste, I could be stuck here for ages.

Booked a ticket for tonight anyway and then decided to go see Juanita, Arequipa's most famous resident. She's a corpse! She was a human sacrifice by the Incas in the early 1400s, the Incas sacrificed a lot of children back in the day to appease their mountain Gods. Their most beautiful children would know from a v early age that their fate was to be this human sacrifice and would prepare their whole life for it. They'd then walk to the summit of the volcanos near Machu Picchu - over 6,000m where it's almost impossible to breathe and it's so so cold - where in a ritual ceremony they'd be put to sleep with herbs and alcohol then smacked with a heavy blow killing them. They could walk for up to a week to get there wearing the lightest little sandals, it was truly amazing. Back to Juanita, she was found in the early 1990s, but the thing is she was found almost completely intact. She'd been frozen solid for 500 years so looks as she did when she died.
Here she is (no cameras allowed in there so i swiped this off the net):

Juanita

Scientists can even tell what her last meal was! She's removed from the museum for 2 months per yr for further testing. Also all her clothes, artefacts used in the sacrifice ritual etc were all found also. It was a class little museum in fairness. Got chatting to 3 girls on my tour - they all went to college together in England, an eclectic mix, Taryn from Blackburn with the South African name, Bronwyn from Zimbabwe with the Welsh name and Ying who lived in China till she was 4 then moved to Glasgow and spoke with a Glaswegian accent! Sound girls and they gave me plenty of useful info on what to do in Ecuador when I get there!

Left them, pottered around then went back to my hostel to pick up my bag.
Decided to move to Bothy Hostel where Irish girls had stayed, they said it was a good laugh.

The girls came back and we all got a taxi to the train station. Well we were late and needed the taxi to go rapido. He wasn't going v rapido and then the bollix stopped at a red traffic light and ran into a shop! Lights went green and red again obviously before he came back! I was outraged and fukked him out of it. "I needed change!" he said! I went mad again. Turns out it's a lot harder for me to remember Spanish when I'm flustered! He got the message anyway and drove like an absolute total f-ing lunatic the rest of the way. At one stage there was a 3 lane street, 2 lanes going our way, 1 coming against that. Make that 3 lanes going our way as he hurtled into the oncoming traffic with gusto BEEP!!! BEEP!!! BEEP!!! BEEP!!! Time to close the eyes and think of... well anything really!

Anyway got to the bus station, ran in, and after all that... no buses running. Ah Kryste. Met the Aussie lads again and a sound lad from Killeagh in Cork. We all decided to book tickets for the following night instead then go on the piss to forget about it. This we duly did! Great craic in fairness.

I couldn't find the lads for a while so was forced to have a pint with the incredibly dull Brazilian who I ran into on the street. Aaaaaah!

Was also chatting to a girl at one stage who was engaged to be married until yesterday but had found out he was cheating and was heartbroken. She was some barrel of laughs I'll tell you. Other than that, mighty craic!