Kept in Arequipa – Peru

After returning from Cabanaconde, our plan was to travel to Cusco straight away the next day. How naive were we. A huge new $1.4b mine has been proposed close to Arequipa and the people are NOT happy about it. Protests kept us in Arequipa for another 3 days, with the roads all blocked with rocks and people. The main chant and slogan on banners was “Agro si, Mina no” (agriculture yes, mining no). The protest was split into two main groups, those peacefully protesting with green flags, and people with red flags who didn’t mind being a bit more mobile… We saw a car get rocks thrown at it for trying to drive and not join the protest.

In the time we had whilst waiting to leave, we mostly played cards, pool, observed the protests and drank. After drinking on one of the nights, on the way back we came across a pack of 6 street dogs. One of which really did not like Joe, whilst the other 5 accepted him as part of the pack and protected him from the one wanting to attack him, they stuck with us the whole way back to the hostel (as has now became common, we’ve met quite a few nice street dogs that have ended up following us around for a while).