23rd Sept - Arequipa

Happy Birthday Denise! My baby sister’s birthday (and Arthur’s Day - but that’s not as important of course)!

Woke up a bit tired after the craic last night, and pretty much had the day to kill unless something came up. Went for a walk around the city and was planning lunch when I ran into the Irish girls. They were meeting a couple of buddies for lunch so I said I’d go along too! Lunch outdoors at a lovely place in the passageway behind the cathedral. Very very enjoyable. I left after lunch and ran into the sound girls from the Juanita tour! Excellent! Within 10 seconds, felt a tap on the shoulder, it was the Brazilian again! What was she doing - stalking me?! However, even her incredible dullness couldn’t spoil what followed as we had an extremely enjoyable afternoon of card playing in the main plaza in Arequipa with all the British girls that Brazilian and her buddy. It really was completely unexpected but mighty craic!

I left them shortly after 5.30 and went back to the hostel to set off towards the bus station again though we’d been told that we were unlikely to go anywhere as the strike was continuing. Ah balls! The Aussie lads had already booked onto a local bus for tomorrow morning and we said we’d probably do the same if there was a problem at the station, we’d had enough of Arequipa at this stage.

Got to station - buses all cancelled. So we looked for the other local bus company to book on for tomorrow. Turns out we were in the wrong terminal for that. Had to walk between terminals, then walk back to original terminal and queue for ages to get our money back then argue for half an hour when they wouldn’t give us our money back, then march over to the other terminal when they agreed to give us bus vouchers instead of cash. This all took about 2 hours and as the only one of us who speaks Spanish, I had to handle it all. Was wrecked after it all!

So wrecked that when we all decided to go back to the hostel, we went outside to catch a taxi and I was delighted to see the sound taxi driver who dropped me off to my hostel the first night I landed here! What a coincidence! Anyway, got the taxi back to the hostel, I was chatting to him about his two kids, how were they since I last saw him etc. It was fun! I was back in the hostel about 3 minutes when I went to check my iphone. Ah… where’s my iphone? Oh fukk. Oh no. Oh NOOOOOO! I left it in the back of the f-ing cab. I’ve never mislaid a phone before and the first time I do it is in a random South American city with a population of 1,000,000 and thousands upon thousands of cabs in the back of a random cab. NOOOOOO! I’m such an idiot. Wait… I’ll ring it. Rang it. It rang but I was 99% certain that I’d left it on silent. NOOOOOO! This was an utter disaster. Ok calm down, what can I do? Only thing I could possibly do was go back to the bus station, I had after all met this lad twice in the same station and maybe he’d go back to the station again some tonight? Right, that’s what I’ll do. Ivan, the sound lad from Killeagh said he’d come with me for company. Very sound of him. Back to the station which was 20 mins away. I ran up to the taxi drivers and tried to explain the situation and did they know would your man be back any time soon? Blank faces. Ah crap!

“Ok, lads, I was here a few mins ago, the taxi driver that I had…” - as I spoke these words, my original taxi driver pulled in behind us. I didn’t see his face when he got there, but Ivan said his jaw dropped, he had after all dropped us off at a hostel in the city, turned around, drove back and there we were before him! I whipped open the back door and there on the floor was my iphone. I was so pleased. I hugged the driver, I hugged the other drivers in the rank, I hugged the phone. Then I asked could he drive us back to the hostel again!

Think about it, thousands of taxis in a random city, I was lucky he didn’t pick up a fare on the way back to the station, I was lucky he was based out of the station, I was lucky he wasn’t finishing up for the night, I was even lucky it was on silent as that way he was completely unaware that the phone was even in the back seat. I mean, I was very very very lucky. Had a couple of pints to celebrate my good fortune.

Oh and a quick line to the mammy who I know will be reading this - Mag, do you remember when I told you I no longer lose things? Ah… I might have lied a smidgen!