Arequipa
The second-biggest tourist capital in Peru — after Cusco — Arequipa is a beautiful, laid-back, and reasonably-priced city to visit. The big attraction in the Arequipa area is the Cañon de Colca, a massive and scenic canyon to the city's north, where you can watch wild condors soaring on the winds. There are also volcanoes and mountains to be climbed nearby. Great place to relax for a bit, to get out and party some, and to have some wild adventures.
Protests in Arequipa
For our first day in Arequipa, Chris and I awoke to find the city overrun by protestors. Seems that there's a teachers' strike going on here: staff in the city's pre-schools, primary schools and high schools are off work, and have taken to the streets, (presumably) demanding the usual things such as higher wages and better conditions. The demonstrations are fairly peaceful, but they're disrupting traffic really badly, and they're resulting in numerous road closures.