Out and About

We've mostly spent our weekend exploring Arequipa, our temporary home. We may have found an apartment, so it would be nice to be settled by Friday(ish). If it works out, our new landlord is American and we'd live on top of a very nice, clean, flashy westernized supermarket with a delightful selection of assorted cheeses and cornflakes. I'm pro this. We've been staying in a hostel that I kinda like - it's got wi-fi, lots of locks and gates, 24 hour hot water and an adorable little bell-hop named Gustavo who I caught clipping his toenails in the courtyard.

We were set to move to a different hostel in another part of town because it was cheaper. Turns out, there was no wi-fi and that was a dealbreaker. We came back to our current place, negotiated our rate down and then agreed to stay. We headed back to the rejection hostel to get a refund, but they refused, said it was impossible. Really, they just wrote Ben's name in a notebook and it had only been about twenty minutes. Ben is too nice. He was hemming and hawing and giving little "I understand, but it's only been a few minutes. Please?" I finally asked where the tourism police office was and Ben AND the hostel proprietor freaked out a little - it's good cop bad cop, what's wrong with that? It got him 1/3 of his money back. Pfft. I could have gotten it all back.

We were set to go white water rafting yesterday, but there was a problem with the tour bus and after waiting at the stop for 3 hours, decided to reschedule. We treated ourselves to Starbucks (for the hundredth time) and walked around the city. An adorable little street urchin, about 2 years old, chased after Ben with his hands out. He was so cute and when Ben leaned down to give him a coin, he grabbed the Starbucks cup out of Ben's hand and ran off. Ben chased after him, even though there were only about 3 sips left, but he couldn't wrangle it out of the little boy's hands. No interest in that coin, apparently, just jonesin for some caffeine.

We tried for the rapids again today, but we got quite a heavy rain last night and the rapids were too dangerous for the rafts and kayaks - well above level 5, so we'll need to go another day. We really needed to get out of the city, though, so we took the river guide's suggestion and went to Sabandia de Molina - a horse ranch outside the city. We took a taxi, but traffic was so insane-o because of the elections that we sat in a smoggy stinky intersection for almost 20 minutes because nobody would let our driver make a left-hand turn. So, I got out of the car and blocked all of the cars from moving so we could get through. It was just what we needed. We finally got to the horse ranch and some 13 year old kid gave us a couple of horses and led us around the valley for about an hour. It was awesome. My horse was kind of a jerk and kept wandering into traffic and trying to stand around and eat grass, but I showed her who was boss. . . by gently petting her head and begging her to keep moving so that I didn't fall off the saddle into a pile of horse shit.