Arequipa and Colca Canyon

Arequipa is Peru´s scond largest city and it shows. My friend and I took the midnight express bus from Cusco at 8:30 (which actually left on schedule) and arrived into Arequipa at the crack of dawn, 6am. At this time of day, the streets were completely empty.

We checked into a hostel and had some breakfast.  We went back to the streets at around 8:30 and it was bumper to bumper with cars, mainly taxis, sometimes blanketing entire city blocks. Car traffic was definitely more intense than Cusco and on par with Lima. At intersections, there are standoffs between opposing cars and basically whoever moves first has the right of way. As a pedestrian, cars won´t stop for you unless you make the move to cross the street. Flinching causes drivers to hesitate, then hit the gas when they see me coming to a stop. If they are slow bout it, it makes me think they are actually stopping for me, then I almost get T-boned when I try to cross.  I need to remember my Frogger skills while I was in Thailand.

Aside from traffic, another big difference about Arequipa is the architecture is modern compared to Cusco. Whereas Cusco is embracing their history with building designs, Arequipa has a Spanish/European influence:

The tourist industry is not as prevelent in Arequipa- the biggest attraction in the city is the Santa Catalina Monastery, a monestary for nuns. It was created by a rich widow who took in women from upper-class Spain to be nuns and allowed them to have servants and slaves. After a few centuries of this, the pope sent someone down to clean house and restore order to the convent. The servants and slaves were released, though some stayed to become nuns. About 50 years ago, the Peruvian government ordered them to open up to the public to become a tourist attraction to help pay for repairs and upgrades after a couple earthquakes in the 1960s.

Up until this point, I have not bothered with visiting any of the churches in Peru. It´s just not my thing... maybe it´s a Demian Thorn-in-church feeling. But there really isn´t much else that is for tourists except eat and drink and visit the Colca Canyon (more on this later). I will admit, though, that visiting the convent was a good move. The architectural design is really beautiful and I really like the use of colors. We were able to walk through almost all of the two-block long compound.

I really like the ceiling design

bacon flames?

Did they have elfs in this monestary?

in the garden, I saw an image of Jesus! 

The most interesting thing for me was to go through the living quarters and see the cooking areas.

el metate (one of many found here)

there is no hole in the bottom of the cone- condensation along the sides of the cone gather at the point and eventually drips... or maybe the water seems through the stone and drips at the point?

luxury: a two oven kitchen

notice the paddle-like instrument on the left.  I suspect that fish is placed inside and then sits atop the metal sheet with a hole in it that goes over the coals

two entry points for this oven

the nuns are raising ginea pigs

Food

We ate at Chicha another restaurant from chef Gaston Acurio (on teevee, I randomly caught a ceremony for the 50 best restaurants in the world and this chef´s restaurant in Lima, which I went to, was  #35). Good place, here are some photos:

this was a trio of ceviche- a red chili pepper sauce. a coconut curry sauce. and  a traditional lime juice with shallots and sweet potato

a stew with beef brisket, rice, potatoes (a little disappointing because I was not expecting comfort food)

Another place, called Mixtos, we had a chupe con mariscos - a seafood stew.  The broth tasted great- tomato based with a hint of smokiness and contained prawns, a whole trout, mussles, a couple crab claws and even octopus!  It was really good, but the crabmeat was difficult to get to because the restaurant provided only needle nose pliers to break the shell.  First of all, needle nose pliers cannot handle the job because of its shape, and secondly, the shell is very hard and very difficult to break. The only way I was able to get any meat was to make breaks at the joints and use a knife to scrape out the meat.

I was at another restaurant called a piquanteria a day later and got almost the same thing, chupe con camarones.  It was the same spicy red broth (though I requested to make it Peruvian-spicy, which was granted) but had giant shelled camarones (shrimp) and a medley of vegetables: corn, carrots, tomatoes, green chili peppers, avacado and of course potatoes.

Colca Canyon

We booked a day tour to visit the Colca Canyon, the world´s deepest canyon.  Unfortunately, we got the shaft by the tour company. The majority of tourists take the two-day tour which is only ten soles more than the one-day tour, but is basically the same tour with more time at each stop, a nite´s stay at a hostel plus a six-hour trek. My friend was short on time, so we only went for the one-day tour. What happened to us was that we got bounced between two tours, one that started their first day and the other that was finishing their tour. Upon eating lunch, we realized that the tour group was going to return back to Arequipa, thus shorting us of almost half the promised destinations.DO NOT USE ILLARY TOURS for any of your tourist needs.

We left Arequipa really early in the morning (or really late at night) to go to the canyon. As a result of this I was very sleepy and would tak naps along the drive to and from the canyon. What I did see while I was awake was desert landscapes with lotsa cactus trees and agricultural terraces.

The only highlight that we really got to see was the Cruz del Condor.  Many condors take flight around here to hunt and just get some practice with ariel formations.