Sunday 8th December 2013
After spending so long at altitude I was looking forward to Arequipa. Although still in the mountains, at 2335m, Arequipa is over 1000m lower than Cusco which means that it is significantly warmer at night and the air has more oxygen. At the hostel we happened to bump into a guy who was heading in the same direction and we shared a cab to the station. When we arrived, it transpired that coincidentally he had the seat on the bus behind us. John was good company and we had long and interesting conversations on the bus about the Incas and earlier civilisations in the Americas, his experiences travelling in Bolivia (where we would be heading soon) among other things.
Bolivia sounded like the wild wild west on on the South American scale and this wasn’t the first time we had heard stories to this effect. John had been robbed by two (supposed) police officers on arrival in the country and then got food poisioning which took him two weeks to recover from. Another friend Matt, who had been recently, said he saw two police officers trying to tazer each other for kicks. We had heard lots of food poisoning stories from Bolivia; it seemed everyone got ill there. I guess we would soon find out for ourselves.
We took the overnight bus from Cusco at 8.30pm and arrived in Arequipa at around 7am, too early to check into our room. We brushed our teeth and put our bags in the storage room and headed out to explore the city with John. John had been recommended the Santa Catalina Convent as a nice place to spend the afternoon and, after a long breakfast at a place we found on the main square, we headed there.
The convent was founded in 1579, 39 years after the Spanish arrived in Arequipa. It is described as a city within a city and when you see the size and use the map to traverse it you understand why. Like much of Arequipa, nicknamed the White City (Ciudad Blanca), the convent is constructed from white volcanic sillar stone quarried locally. It has been restored repeatedly over the years after being destroyed by earthquakes.
Santa Catalina contained many peaceful cloisters with walls painted beautiful colours, burnt oranges and deep blues. We wandered around and had a tasty lunch there before heading back to our hostels for a late siesta. While at the monastary we bumped into Zoe, one of the people we did the Inca Trail with. Later the four of us met for dinner and I wore make-up for the first time since arriving in South America!
It turned out that the hostel we had booked for one night had no availability for future nights. This turned out to be a mini god send. We found a place at the oddly named Flying Dog in town. We had a lovely room off the open courtyard in the middle. The next four days were spent wandering around the city, relaxing, adding to the blog, learning more spanish and eating well, charging our batteries for the two day Colca Canyon trek. I even managed to iron some clothes!
Ramblers Rumblings 