Day
42 – Arequipa, Peru (29 April 2012)
When
I awake we are almost in Arequipa. I can
see the lights from the city. This city
has a million people living in it. It is
a very wide spread city, so it feels like we are driving through it for
ages. When we arrive, we take a taxi to
a hostel called Le Foyer. We get a room
for 50 soles a night (25). As it is 7am
in the morning, we use the morning just to chill out and catch up on some
sleep. We then get up about mid morning
and we head into town. It is a very nice
city centre. There is a large plaza with
a cathedral. The noticeable thing about
Arequipa is that all the buildings are white.
They are all made of sillar which is the stone from the neighbouring
Volcano’s. Also, this city is very low
level. There are no high rises
here. It makes the city look a lot
smaller than it actually is. We walk
around the city and we book ourselves into the Colca Canyon Tour for the next
day. This costs us 45 soles each (22.5) plus we have to pay for our park
entrance fees of 70 soles each (NZ 35). What a rip off, especially when
Peruvians only pay 20 soles each for park entrance fees. We then have an early
lunch since we are starving! We go to a
restaurant which is upstairs overlooking the plaza. There are some great views over the Plaza de
Armes (city centre) at this place. We
end up getting the set menu for lunch which is 15 soles each (7.50). We get a soup, a main and a drink. I get the vegetable soup, a main of lamb
saltado which is a Peruvian dish and homemade lemonade, which is fantastic. Ann decided to try the Pisco Sour for her
drink. The Pisco Sour is the Peruvian
national alcoholic drink. The saltado’s
are delicious! So good in fact that I
see a pamphlet for a Peruvian cooking class that I want to do (I inquired about
this class but it was only Ann and I that put our names down for the class so
it didn’t go ahead, doesn’t matter because google will solve everything). After lunch we go to the Museu Sanctuarios
Andinos for 20 soles each (10). This
museum is run by the local university and is devoted to the discovery of
‘Juanita’. Juanita is a 13 year old girl
who was found up the top of a volcano in 1995.
Juanita has been dead for over 550 years, but as she was killed up the
top of a volcano, her body, organs and muscles are still fully in tacked. In ancient Peruvian times, they use to
believe in sacrificing to the gods.
During the La Nina season when there were droughts, the Peruvian’s
thought that the gods were communicating that they are mad with them. Therefore, to appease the gods, they would
send a sacrifice. They would choose the
most important child and walk them up to the top of the Volcano. This would take about three months. Then once at the top, they would get the
children to drink highly intoxicating alcohol and they would then give them a
big blow to the head to kill them. They
would then burry them in the Volcano.
They didn’t bury Juanita very well, as she slid 80 metres down the
volcano. This is why her body is so well
preserved. The earth of the volcano is
very hot, so the other children that have been later found up there are burnt
and in very poor condition. So in this
museum we got to see the clothes and shoes that she was wearing. The blood stains are still there from the
blow to the head. Then we got to see
Juanita ourselves. She is kept at -27
degrees and 99% humidity to ensure she does not deteriorate. It was so fascinating. She looks like a real human being. No photos were allowed to be taken in this
museum.
After the museum we decide to go to the Monasterio Santa Catalina which is a
450 year old convent. I was not that
keen to check this out but I went along for a look anyway. This costs us 35 soles (17.50). This convent was pretty big. We are given a map so we can navigate our way
around it. This convent was used all the
way up to the 1970s. There is now a new
convent in the same block that the nuns use.
The old convent is now purely a museum.
Here we saw the ‘cells’ that the nuns lived in, the rooms that were used
for them to communicate to the outside world.
The communal bath that the used, the main kitchen, the temples, the
cemetery and the church. When this
convent was set up, a lot of the nuns were used to living a wealthy live, so
when they moved into the convent, they were not keen to give this up. Therefore, the convent has streets inside it
so it feels like a town. Also the
majority of the cells are very large and come with their own kitchen and oven
and outdoor area. It takes us a good
couple of hours to get around this whole place!
After this it is time for dinner. We go
to a Turkish place across the road from our hostel as we have heard that
Arequipa is not a very safe place at night time. We then go back to the hostel and go to bed
since we are being picked up at 3am the following morning for our Colca Canyon tour.
What a ridiculous time right?
No comments:
Post a Comment