After leaving Sucre, it took a full twenty four hours of traveling to get to Arequipa, the White City of Peru. At this point I'm getting a little tired of busses. I don't understand how South American's aren't bothered by how warm they are. No ventilation and they can fall asleep under a heavy blanket with a jacket on.
I learned from the father of the woman running my hostel that it is called the White City not just because of it's Spanish colonial architecture, but because a couple generations ago it used to be an incredibly white city full of Europeans. It has since become a much more mixed city.
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| Weird cupid statue at the mirador |
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| Lots of colonial architecture |
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| Election time is coming. So many protests. |
I arrived around 10pm and went to bed not soon after. I spent the next day exploring Peru's second biggest city. It's central market was a lot cleaner and more organized than the ones I had seen in Peru. Although it seems there's just no way around the awful butcher-smell in the fresh meat sections. It seems like every time I go to a market, I see new (and interesting stuff I'd not seen before). Stacks of cow hearts. Or a strangely skinned cow. A pair o cow testicles hanging on a wire. The vendors were organized by their products, and the second floor had a variety of types of cheap restaurants. I love these market lunches. Its around $2-3 for a big bowl of soup (yay) and a basic dish with rice, potatoes/corn and meat. In my opinion, most of it still doesn't compare to the SE Asian street food, but its tasty.
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| Do you see the nose? |
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| Inside look at one of the churches |
After lunch we wandered through a museum about some of the child sacrifices the Incas made. Now I can't claim to know much about Aztec or Mayan sacrifice to compare, but the Incas only used child sacrifice for incredible huge events or offerings to the Gods. Usually they sacrifices small animals or llamas. There are two large volcanoes that can be seen towering over Arequipa, and several other volcanoes in the Inca empire have revealed the graves of child sacrifices. The were usually healthy young women from noble families. They would go to Cuzco to get some education and preparation. Then they would walk from Cuzco to the top of the mountain. To get to Arequipa this took weeks of walking, then climbing up a mountain into the cold, suffering from the altitude. At the top of the mountain, they gave her corn booze (chicha) and then it is unclear how these girls died. The first one discovered, named Juanita, was killed by a blow to her head. She was found by archeologists after ice melted on the top of her volcano and she rolled down out of her grave. After her discovery they found a couple more girls and a boy on the same mountain. They actually keep Juanita and one of the other girls frozen and alternate displaying them. The bodies were preserved in incredible good condition because of the cold. So they aren't really mummies, but I don't know what else to call them. I got to see one of the tiny frozen human sacrifice mummies.
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| Outside of said church |
Now, the scientist in me understands the want to analyze and understand everything about these bodies and their resting places. They were usually left with offerings for the next life as well as tiny dolls resembling themselves. But, there is also a superstitious part of me. And that part of me wouldn't remove a well preserved Inca sacrifice from the top of a volcano so that I could poke, prod and scan it. Seems like bad juju.
We also went and saw this museum that used to be an old monastery. The monastery was like a city within a city. And so incredibly photogenic. Lots of bright red and bright blue walls with white trim. The nuns had their own rooms and many had their own kitchens. [Insert woman-kitchen joke here] It was fun to wander around in this labyrinth of bedrooms, kitchens, and outdoor patios.
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| All sorts of old medicines and chemicals |
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| How cute is this? |
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| Or this? |
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| Kitchen! |
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| Strange wheelchair |
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| Courtyard |
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| "Silence" |
For dinner we went for a traditional Arequipan dish of stuffed peppers with potato cake and cheese. Yummy! Minus the peppers. Bell peppers are strange.
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| Nom nom? |
The next morning we got up and prepped ourselves for Colca Canyon. Aka bought snacks and looked halfheartedly at a map before heading to the bus terminal. We took the afternoon bus so we had the evening to sit in our hostel and plan. You can see
this post that outlines our trek in more detail. In summary, it was awesome. We got to see seven or eight condors and the river was amazingly strong and fast, which meant no sitting in thermal baths. You can do the hiking without a tour really easily, and there's no reason to rent a tent or sleeping bag. There are little hostels to stay in every city.
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| Hiking is serious business, yo. |
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| The view back on the bus |
After we got back from Colca Canyon, I took a hot shower, fed myself and was off to Cuzco to meet a friend to climb up to Macchu Pichu! Hello Wonder of the World!
