We woke up in time for breakfast at the lovely hostal, we slept so well in an amazingly comfy bed at Mochileros who were sooo kind to put us up for a couple of nights while we were in Arequipa. We were as fresh as daisies and didn’t even mind so much that we had to go straight to the mechanics, do not pass go, do not collect £200…here we go again!
We rolled on up to the mechanics and instead of the usual hand gesture explanations we let Luis do the talking.
He explained that it was when we were going uphill that we had the problem, we had already adjusted the timing for the altitude and blah bla blaaahhh bla and the guy nodded and set to work. We sat there and sat there and sat there. Freddy came along and did some filming which made the day go quicker and as the sun started to disappear, turning the snow that covered the peak of Misty a glowing pink, we slowly drove Peggy back to the hostel. We were excited for evening to really come as we had been invited to yet another GREAT restaurant called Chi cha Arequipa by Gaston Acurio  At 9 we jumped into a taxi and arrived at the bright blue restaurant and were seated in front of a fabulously lit and very well stocked cocktail bar. The menu was fantastic and it was so hard to choose. From Alpaca steaks to cuy (guniea pig) to traditional Peruvian stews, soups and ceviche dishes we were spoiled for choice! As we were introduced to the floor manager we told him how we were struggling to choose and he offered to let us try a wide range of the most traditional dishes on the menu! We were thrilled with this and excitedly agreed. we chosea bottle of great wine and waited to be amazed…and we were! We started with cuy cooked in an almost crispy duck style with bright purple wraps! It was so good, if a little weird eating an animal we had as a pet as kids! Our next course was a bowl of some of the best soup I have ever eaten, creamy bacon and potato soup. I still dream about it and even asked Lucia and Patricio for the recipe it was so great! As we ate we enjoyed the whole feel of the restaurant, fancy but not pressured, the waiter explained each dish and kept our wine glasses topped up without us even noticing. I think there is a fine line between offering good service and intruding on a meal as a server and this guy had it just right, we were never needlessly disturbed, never pressured to rush and he was never too far if there was anything we needed. It was perfect!

Next we had a dish with the most unusual creature in it that I have ever seen but it tasted so good! It was a river shrimp which was like a normal prawn only quite big and with one HUGE claw! Like a crab claw! That was lovely and by now we could barely move but we still had one more course to come AND a desert! We of course forced ourselves (:-) ) to soldier on through more amazing food, a plate of tender beef in a beautiful tomato sauce and meat juices melted in our mouths and the 3 bite size sweets for desert were just perfect! We enjoyed the night so much and only felt a tiny bit guilty for not saving any for Luis and Freddy who took a few snaps as we ate. We rolled out of Chi cha and headed to take Freddy and Luis for a drink or two and eventually staggered back to the hostel. We slept so well again in the lovely bed and unbelievably after all the food the night before even managed a big breakfast! We had to take Peggy back to the mechanics today to complete the work he had started and I planned to stay at the hostal and get caught up on some blogging. Alex kissed me goodbye for the day and I had just settled down to start to write when he returned with a serious look on his face. He asked me where the camera was and I checked all of the bags we had taken into the hostal in the middle of the night the day we arrived…it wasn’t there. We had for the first time, left it in the van…and it was gone. Peggy had been broken into in the night and the camera and video camera stolen. I just burst into tears, I couldn’t believe it! we had been so stupid to leave it in there, though it was unintentional and we had just had so much on we had paid the price for being so careless. I was more upset about the pictures and videos we had lost, 2 months of blog images and luckily only a week or so of video footage. There were clear fingerprints on the windows where they had forced the windows open (no broken glass or locks luckily) to get in, so Alex headed straight to the police to report the incident. I was useless for the day and tried to write but with little success, Alex as always was a superstar and reported the robbery, dropped Peggy at the mechanics and ran around the black markets wit Luis to see if he could get the camera back. He didn’t come back until after dark and told me all about his day. He had gone to the police station and as he drove with the officer to the finger print station, Peggy’s radiator blew up in the middle of the busiest street in Arequipa. The police officer had left him to it but luckily Luis was not far behind. They waited an hour for the radiator to cool down enough to refil it and drove her to the mechanics. I felt terrible for being so useless all day but he reassured me that it was fine but that we had one last thing to do before we could snuggle down and forget all about the day…we had to move. He told me the hostal hadn’t expected us to stay so long (of course this was Peggy’s fault having yet another miniature break down) and that we had to move into another hostal into a DORM! I didn’t complain (although I wanted to…a dorm meant bunk beds and sharing a room with 8 other people) as Alex had already had such a long hard day I didn’t want to make it worse by being spoilt and having a paddy. I packed up our things and thanked the hostal for having us, they really had been great and we had loved our room. We got into Peggy and followed Luis around the corner to where we were staying. We pulled up outside a fancy hotel and I still didnt get it, I was looking across the street for the hostal but there wasn’t one there…they had tricked me! We were staying in an amazing 5 star hotel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!