first stop in Peru = Arequipa.....time to party....or so we thought

Crossing the border from Chile and into Peru would prove annoying! All Brits are entitled to at least 183 days on their Peruvian travel visa but for some strange reason the douche bag border control guy decided to only permit us 30 days, which messes up everything as we have the inca trail lined up in 30 or so days meaning we obvisouly didn`t have enough days. This stressed Jen out somewhat and put her in a bit of a strop for the following few days despite my comical genious. Anyway, we got the hostel lady to ring up the immigrations office a week later and we were told that we would only have to pay an American Dollar for every day we stayed over or we could exit the country and come back in. Even though we should have more days, they wouldn`t give them to us by restamping, probably as they are after the money! O well, we`ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

So after the annoying border crossing we arrived to a place called Tacna, where no one travels to as it`s a horrible little town. It simple serves as a stop off to get to Arequipa. So with no Peruvian money we rocked up to the bus station and started our mission to find a reputable looking company to take us on to Arequipa. As soon as we stepped off the bus we were acosted by loads of blokes trying to sell us tickets, the boldest of which wouldn`t leave us alone and walked us about everywhere as we needed a cash point, which didnt work, so he walked us to another which also didn`t work but it did when we used the credit card. He then took us to the bus company he was working for urshering loads of other blokes offering us tickets away as we were obviously now "his" and ordered our tickets for us....looks like we were going with that company then! Turned out the 6  hour bus journey would only cost us 25 soles (about 6 quid) so we happily got these and then gave the bloke his tip which he asked for of course!

Rocking up to the bus we saw a girl who was in our hostel in Arica (Although we didn`t speak to her much there) and she told us she was on the same bus for 20 soles. Thought that was a bit odd so we checked her ticket which said 20 soles on then checked ours. Expecting to see "25 soles" written down we were surprised to see "15 soles" written there! Seems we got done over by 10 soles each, or 5 depending on how you look at it. O well, only a fiver between us.

Enough of being annoyed, we caught a taxi from the bus terminal in Arequipa along with that girl I mentioned along with a Chilean who didn`t speak a word of English as she was going to the same party hostel as us "Wild Rover" (Irish owned).

Being about dinner time, we ordered up some burgers from the hostel`s kitchen which turned out to be mega tasty, we thought we might be in for a winner with this hostel. Happy hour approached so we grabbed some beers on the cheap followed by some rum and cokes, pisco and cokes, anything that was on happy hour really.

Looking around, we started to realise that everyone was a bit clicky, hanging around in their same groups and thought they were the cool kids. Determined to have a good time ourselves we drank away but these kids didn`t wanna know anyone else. The "leader" who thought he was a funny boy (he really wasn`t) thought he was hilarious and did weird poses whilst lying on the bar much to the delight of his crew. I think I`ve laughed more when I once saw a McDonalds sign which had a yellow M instead of a golden one....now that was funny that.

To add to the annoyance of the clientele, literally everyone but us was smoking whilst at the bar, there was a smoking area about 5 feet away but no one seemed to care. That would be smokey clothes then. O well, we were determined to have a good night and drank away whilst cheap, and were met by the Chilean girl who didn`t know anyone else so we took pity on her and let her awkwardly stand next to me and Jen whilst my attempts of Spanish failed. There`s only so far "Como estas" can get you! Time for bed me thinks!

The next day we decided to see what Arequipa had to offer, rocking up first to the main square "Plaza de Armas" which was pretty cool.  Cool fountain in the middle surounded by nice architecture with the mountains in the backdrop.

.....even more impressive with the sun coming down

Saturday night approaching, it was time to party some more, this time with some actual nice people. They weren`t hard to find, this night would be the hostels 2nd year anniversary so they had gone all out and decked the place out along with a live band and other entertainers. This all meant that everyone was in party mood so we met lots of cool people pretty easily. It didn`t take long however for the same douche bag and his mate to dress up and take to the bar again, thinking they were hilarious.

They ended up doing this about 3 times, each time in a different outfit, such as a lycra body suit onesie thingy, this no funnier than the antics from the day before.

With me spending more money on drinks (cos I is bad azz) Jen opted to spend her share on getting some face paint, which she proudly paraded around for the rest of the night. I think more beer was the better choice personally.

After meeting some pretty cool people and having a fun night we decided to call it a night and headed back to our dorm. Now this is where the story of the "image that will never go away" starts! We were in a room with only two bunk beds..... me and Jen in the one, and two guys who didn`t know each other in the other. Being pretty merrily drunk from our activities we passed out in our beds pretty quick and were in for the night....that is until the guy from the bottom bunk turned up from a club at about 3am with a girl. They were obviously getting pretty cosy in the bed which is something you come to expect in a party hostel. However their lack of hostel etiquette (if there is such a thing) was something quite unexpected. After the blokes advances the girl finally gave in with "what...here?" and they started going at it on the bed about 3 feet away from us. Not really knowing what was going on in our half asleep drunk state I peered over to see literally everything that you wouldn`t want to see in that situation....the two of them at it, not even hidden under the covers, with his white arse bobbling up and down. Great sight. Thinking that old casanova would be done in a few minutes or at least cover themselves up I put up with it pretending they hadn`t woken us up. With her groans growing ever louder and literally 30 minutes later still in plain sight like they had forgotten they had a duvet or that others were in the room we had enough so I jumped out of my top bunk making the loudest sound I could and left the room, with Jen following me. Off we went to reception in an attempt to stop this live show (I`m not up for cock blocking but in this instance it had gone far enough!). The guys went to apparently sort it out so after about 15 minutes we went back to our room to find them lying still so off we went to sleep again. Literally about 10 minutes later, a white arse appears through the dark room and noises start happening. This time Jen isn`t having any of it so she says loudly "are you being serious" so their obvious answer was to leave the room stark naked and go to the toilet to finish off their little canoodles. A while later we hear the door open for the both of them to stroll back in still completely naked and settle into bed for the night, with is hoping we could now get some sleep.

A bit over 3 hours later and 8am arrives, for us to be woken up by yet more noises. I was in no mood to take any more of this, especially in our tired state so as soon as he even attempted anything I jumped outta bed again and said "I ain`t gott put up with this shit" and went out to the toilet for a wee wee. Seems I forgot that was their back up destination and gave them some evils as they both strolled into the toilet as I walked out, at least this time they had clothes on. If you think the story for us so far is bad, have you thought about the guy who was on the top bunk the whole time this was going on?! The poor guy was being rocked about everywhere, with the guy below not really attempting to hide his macho moves. Bless him though, the top bunk guy remained up there the whole time, either too drunk to notice or one hell of a resiliant chap.

Trying to put what had burnt into our eyes behind us, we went out to book a trek in Colca Canyon, which had some awesome treks where everyone based themselves at Arequipa before heading out. We also went and found a different hostel for before and after the trek as there was no way we were staying there again.

With the day behind us we went back to our hostel dorm to find that not only was this guy a inconsiderate douche, he was also a genious with his awesome attempt to conceal what was going on.

Not willing to go through this again we went to try and move rooms but there were none spare so we went back to our room sheepishly. However casanova genious boy over here seemed to have fell foul to assumption and was not joined by his lady friend in his fort knox of a bunkbed and we got a fairly decent nights sleep, even though we were sleeping with one eye open, ready to give him a piece of our mind should he attempt the same antics!

The next morning it was time to check out which we were more than happy to do! As we tried to tie up our bill from previous nights (they offered the dangerous bar tab system) we kind of knew what we had drunk and were surprised to be told our bill was a good 80 soles more than expected. We asked to see the list of drinks attributed to us which had magically been accompanied by 4 long island iced teas we didn`t drink as well as 4 blood bombs which we didn`t even know what they were. We made her go back through the records and got them stricken off and got out of there paying what we owed with not a second thought to the worst hostel we had been in, in all of South America.

With one night remaining before our early morning start to our 3 day Colca Canyon trek, we settled into our new hostel and chilled with a film and got a decents night sleep.