Sun 23 July 2006 Early Sunday morning we had managed to catch a bus from Nasca to Arequipa, but we didn't get much sleep before people were opening their windows to the sunshine. We tried to cover our eyes and keep sleeping, but the busdriver turned on the music and there was no sleeping through that.
Tourists do not rank high on the bus line care list, so Jason and I found ourselves tossed into the very back of the bus right up against the toilet door. By mid-morning the smell of human waste and vomit was so foul that even die hard travellers that we were, both of us felt sick.
It was a pretty miserable ride for the next few hours and we were extremely grateful to finally arive in Arequipa! Robyn and I raced straight to the bathroom at the Arequipa bus station, and discovered that they charged $0.50 per person just to enter the bathroom. We should have used the bus toilet, but it was so nasty we had avoided it. Now we grudgingly had to part with $1 just for a chance to pee in a room that still smelled bad, but wasn't moving so we could squat more comfortably. At least the walls weren't covered in waste and vomit.
We quickly hailed a taxi and headed to the La Reyna hotel, but they were full and recommended we try their sister hostel. The place was so nasty we walked right back out! Our taxi driver suggested we try Vallecito Inn, which was not as nice as we'd hoped, but not as bad as the hostel. By that time were were all so exhausted we didn't mind the lack of luxury.
We dropped our bags off in the room and walked down to the Plaza de Armas. It was a nice little central square lined with shops that had restaurants over them. We circled the square once and found that every restuarant had a host or hostess on the street hounding passerbys to eat with them. It was funny how they immediately picked Jason out of the crowd for his height and girth. You could almost see the dollar signs dancing in their eyes as they literally chased us across streets trying to convince him that he needed to follow them to the best eating.
Several hostesses risked their lives to run out into the street, stopping traffic to chase Jason and compete with the other hostesses hovering like flies around the man that stood head and shoulders taller than any of them. Jason is NOT of a temperment to mind such idiocy in his presence, and his polite refusals quickly turned to foul spanish curses. 
We returned to one of the first restaurants we had passed, a place called La Beveda and had our dinner on their open air balcony. The view was beautiful, the food was good, and as a bonus we found that there was a nice little hostel in the same building with open rooms for us to stay in the next evening at HALF the cost of the Vallecito Inn.
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