Nick and Darcie's Excellent Adventure: Peru: Arequipa Bound

First an apology: We have had unreliable internet access and so we have several posts to make all at once.

We decided Monday last that Graham was still not back to normal enough to travel to Arequipa by bus for 15 hours so we held off on leaving but bought tickets to Arequipa for the following day. Our taxi picked us up from the hotel at 6am and deposited us a few minutes later at the Cruz del Sur (Southern Cross) bus station. Thus did a whacky day of travelling begin.

While we stood around in the terminal waiting for the departure of our bus to be announced a baggage clerk came up and asked us our destination. The long look we got upon hearing that we were Arequipa-bound got us a little nervous and but he kindly directed us to the counter without divulging the reason for the long look. The digital sign over the counter had a disturbing lack of buses to Arequipa and sure enough it turned out that there were in fact NO buses to Arequipa because a miner’s strike had closed the Pan-American highway! To say this was surprising and irritating would be an understatement since we had bought the tickets the day before yet one day after the strikers had closed the road. We were told this was normal for Peru. Buses could get as far as Nazca but no further.

Nazca is famous for its Nazca Lines but that is pretty much it . As there was no idea on anyone’s part as to when the strike would end and we didn’t want to end up in an armpit of Peru for more than a day we decided to get a refund on the tickets and figure out another way to get to Arequipa. Flying was the only option and a little internet research (I love having a wifi-enabled computer with us) discovered that the tickets were only $40 more expensive than the bus and so off to the airport we went with a very chatty and helpful cabbie. He went so far as to escort us into the terminal and help us with getting the tickets, a unnecessary effort but he was so enthusiastic it was hard to turn him down. At the airport, just beyond the security gate/x-ray machines was a plexiglas box filled with confiscated items foolish people had tried to take into the cabin of the plane:

The flight was an uneventful 1.5 hours – they even served us a breakfast much to Graham’s delight. How that boy isn’t 400lbs is beyond me. We took a cab from the airport (15 soles ~ $5) to our hotel, Casa de Sillar,threw our stuff in a pile and then went wandering. We were given a room that would fit 5 people for a total of 90 soles ($30 a night total) a night including a continental breakfast!

We sorted our trek to El Canon del Colca for two days hence and then went for a walk. We checked out the cathedral, an odd building one block wide but only half a block long. It turns out the City Fathers had grandiose plans but didn’t have the funds to turn the dream into a reality so they settled on a cathedral half a block long instead of two block long. It is not particularly heavily ornamented, just a graceful, plastered structure with a couple of chapels.

On our way down to the Monasterio Santa Catalina we happened upon a sympathy march for the striking miners. It was all very peaceful despite the hordes of riot-gear clad police.

The monastery was amazing, two full city blocks long, founded in the 16th century and still functioning today albeit in a much different form. Originally the wealthy of the City would ensconce their second daughter in the convent, building them a house to live in, equipping them with servants and for the most part comfortable furnishings including such things as washing machines and pianos and so on. The cloistered life of relative luxury but potentially utter boredom was finally shattered when the a 19th century pope decided that monks and nuns should live a life of poverty, bye-bye servants, comfy private quarters and pleasant living, hello group meals, dorms and not enough food to eat.

We also stumbled onto a cooking school which we popped into with the goal of setting up a lesson for after our trek. The school, Escotur, seemed to be pretty new and when we asked if they did individual classes La Directora had to think for a sec before saying sure, no problem, when and what? We settled on ceviche, quinoa batida, rocoto relleno and of course cuy, a three hour lesson on Sunday, thank you very much and all for 60 soles each ($20). More on this in a later post.

We wound the day up at a museum dedicated to presenting the frozen remains of various Inca human sacrifices, the main one being the “ice maiden, Juanita” discovered totally by accident on top of a mostly dormant volcano (Ampato). On display were two ceremonial ponchos used to wrap the sacrificed children (boys and girls no older than 16) which were amazing, deep colors, really high thread-count and very beautiful and woven over 500 years ago. No photos unfortunately as the lighting is way too low and there is an injunction against photos to prevent damage to the delicate colors and in the case of the frozen remains the skin. There have only been 14 sacrifices found, all on top of various very high mountains. The mountains were gods to the Incas amongst others.

We dined at a local touristy restaurant that served cuy since we wanted to try the real thing, not just the chicharron de cuy we had had at the Restaurante Huaca Pucllana in Lima. As expected the cuy was served whole and deep fried to a crispy golden deliciousness. After the obligatory photos, our waiter quartered our crispy wee beasty for us. Delicious.