Arequipa

To recap any first timers, I´m currently taking spanish classes in Arequipa Peru, the country´s second largest city. At first glance, it´s your typical latin american urban center, crowded streets, and diesel fumes, but as you get to know the place it really grows on you..

We´re at about 2300 m here, for those of you less metrically inclined suffice to say we´re higher than Demver. Altitude isn´t that noticable, although this is the lowest we´ll be all trip by a good 800 feet, so if the altitude isnt a problem now, it will most likely be in the future. Arequipa makes sense as a place to acclimatize our selves before pushing on to Titicaca, Bolivia and Cuzco.

Last night I enjoyed a typical Peruvian dish called Cuy, which you may know better by its english name Guinea Pig. I kind of thought they had different guinea pigs here (I was picturing something like a Capyberra) but when they brought it out it was just about the same size as the millions of animals running around on wheels in cages back in the states... It was spretty good, tasted like, suprisingly enough, chicken, although as you can imagine, there wasn´t too much meat on it!

Classes are going well, it never ceases to amaze me how quickly my broken, childlike spanish returns to me. This weekend, we´re touring Colca Canyon, the world´s second deepest, and next week we´re looking to climb an 18,000 ft mountain. After that we bid Arequipa goodbye and push on to Lake Titicaca, the world´s highest navigable lake.
(Last sentence was from the original email. Actually, there are plenty of higher navigable lakes throughout South America. Apparently, they always say that about Titicaca because it's the highest lake of significant size.)