Customized Tours In Arequipa and Colca Canyon

Arequipa Colca Canyon

Live the “White City” of Arequipa, or La Ciudad Blanca. Lying in the shadow of three volcanoes, including the perfectly-symmetrical El Misti, the city was built using white volcanic rock called Sillar which gives the city its name.
Guarded by not one but three dramatic volcanoes, the city enjoys a resplendent, of seismically precarious setting, earthquakes regularly wrack this region, the last big one causing significant damage in 2001. Fortunately, the city’s architecture, a formidable ensemble of baroque buildings grafted out of the local white volcanic sillar rock, has so far withstood most of what mother earth has thrown at it. In 2000 the city’s central core earned a well-deserved Unesco World Heritage listing and the sight of the gigantic cathedral, with the ethereal image of 5825m El Misti rising behind it, is worth a visit alone.
Pretty cityscapes aside, Arequipa has played a fundamental role in Peru’s gastronomic renaissance; classic spicy dishes such as rocoto relleno (stuffed spicy red peppers), chupe de camarones (prawn chowder) and ocopa (boiled potato in a creamy, spicy sauce) best enjoyed in the city’s communal picantería restaurants, all hail from here.
Twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and the best place in South America to see giant condors soar overhead. Suiting its reputation as an outdoor paradise, Arequipa also enjoys perfect weather: more than 300 days a year of sunshine, huge blue skies, and low humidity…Let us take you there.!

Visa requirements	Yes
Languages spoken	Spanish
Currency used	PEN
Area (km2)	63.345,39 km²
Country name	Peru

Sports & nature

Sight-seeing, Trekking, made for outdoor types, and culture lovers.

Nightlife info

Arequipa has a pretty hopping nightlife in the old quarter, with plenty of bars, restaurants, and discos catering to both gringos and locals. On a busy night, Arequipa does its best impression of the Cusco bar scene, and the alleyway just behind the Cathedral (Pasaje de la Catedral) is Arequipa's version of Cusco's "gringo alley," though more respectable. Just as in Cusco many bars are housed in impressive colonial digs, in Arequipa you're likely to do your drinking in a bar with vaulted sillar ceilings. Sunday through Wednesday is usually pretty quiet, with things heating up beginning on Thursday night. Virtually every bar in town advertises elastic happy hours, with basic cocktails going for as little as three for S/18. Calles San Francisco and Zela are the main hot spots, while there are also a number of bars along Santa Catalina.

Culture and history info

The commercial capital of the south, Arequipa not only looks different; it feels dissimilar from the rest of Peru. Arequipeños have earned a reputation as aloof and distrusting of centralized power in Lima. Relatively wealthy and home to prominent intellectuals, politicians, and industrialists. Not surprisingly, the city has produced one of Latin America’s most influential novelists, Mario Vargas Llosa, the literary genius who ran unsuccessfully for the Peruvian presidency in 1990. Arequipa has a haughty air about it, at least in the view of many Peruvians who hail from less distinguished places, but you'd hardly know it in the evenings, when the historic quarter is alive with bar and restaurant patrons. As beautiful and confident as it is, Arequipa has a history of natural disaster. The most recent devastating earthquake (which registered 8.1 on the Richter scale) struck the city and other points farther south in 2001. Although international reports at the time painted a picture of a city that had caved in on itself, thankfully, that wasn't the case. The colonial core of the city survived intact, as elegant as ever. Pretty cityscapes aside, Arequipa has played a fundamental role in Peru’s gastronomic renaissance; classic spicy dishes such as rocoto relleno (stuffed spicy red peppers), chupe de camarones (prawn chowder) and ocopa (boiled potato in a creamy, spicy sauce) best enjoyed in the city’s communal picantería restaurants, all hail from here.