Arequipa: ...really... Juanita?

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Uno mas por esta noche!

After dining on a cup of coffee at my 10:00 dinner tonight, I have found myself incapable of containing my blogging. Damn that stuff is strong down here. It´s good, because my blog needs catching up.

We got on our bus from Copacabana with only 4 people. It was only 75 bs! (less than 10$). We met a nice couple. The guy was from brazil a week or so earlier, and had his bag stolen from some elaborate scheme involving a fat man blocking his view from the overhead storage dept on the bus. This included his passport, YEESH! After about 10 min on the bus, it was time to cross the border back into Peru. It was quick and easy as we deboarded, got our passports stamped, and walked across the border (you cant ride buses over the border, you must walk) and reboarded the bus. We got into puno after dark, and got onto our next direct (or so we were told) bus with only 8 others. After a mere hour of frequent stops and getting no where, the bus had filled. I guess that is what happens when you go with the cheapest bus. We were one again, the only gringos. Liz decided to buy roasted chicken with fries coated in mayonaise for dinner from a random girl selling at one of the stops (at every stop, a mess of vendors swarm the bus aisles and try to sell snacks and whatnot... the chicken girl was one of them). I had zero soles leftover from our previous visit to peru, so I didn´t eat. Needless to say, liz felt a little under the weather the next day!

Unfortunately, all of the stops set us back to get in at 10:30 pm, into the second biggest city in Peru. Without a hostel booked at that hour in such a big city, we were nervous. Luckily, we met the most amazing peruvian on the bus... we forgot her name, but we have since refered to her as Pamela. She was so nice, and chatted with us the entire way, enduring our scattered spanish and our constant bombardments of ´si´s, especially when we didn´t understand her. She told us to be careful in the city cabs, and gave us all sorts of helpful hints. She also fed us Waffle cookies, and lent us her very cozy wool blanket after she saw us shivering on the treck through the altiplano (the buses are stingy with their heat). Once we got off the bus, she went on to escort us to one of the good cabs, and told him where to take us. We were beyond thankful, and unfortunately our limited spanish vocab inhibited us from straying far from a multitude of Muchas gracias!

The driver took us to hostel tourista, and we were thankful to immediately find a room with 2 beds. We got into bed at about 11:30. The next day, we woke and immediately began our day long exploration of the city after buying bus tickets back to Cusco for that night at 8:30 in first class! That means we would be in an isolated cab with about only 16 other people, which reclined to 180 degrees! Very fancy for bus travel. We started off with a nice relaxing breakfast on the plaza de armas, Arequipa. The cathedral was beautiful, inside and out. Behind it, it was framed by rugged snow capped mountains, and a lone volcano. I later found out that these were all volcanos.

We had 3 items on our agenda... 1) incan mummy, 2) monestary, 3) shopping. We started with the 500 year old incan mummy that was unsurfaced on the mountain a few years ago. Her name was Juanita. A pretty boring name for such a spectacular find. She was the ´honored´ pick of a sacrifice to the Gods of the mountains. They made her walk several hundred miles through the andes from Cusco, and up this huge mountain, then bashed her on the head. Apparently that sort of stuff was an honor back in the day because it would allow one to
live amongst the gods in the afterlife... She is now kept frozen in a small glass case. It was creepy to see her, she looked like she had just died. I was waiting for her to come back to life and look at me. Apparently several of these mummy children sacrifices have been found high up on the rugged and frozen peaks/volcanos of the andes.

From there we went to the Santa Catalina Monestary. It was like an entire village inside an giant fotress. Much like the monastery of Santa Domingo in Cusco, it is actually a nunery. Apparently many still live there, from the ages of 15-90. It was cool to see all the rooms, kitchens, as well as the views of the volcano from the roof. Got some good pictures there as well.

We capped off our evening with a sunset feast at a restaraunt high up on the plaza. We were litterally staring directly at the towers of the church from our vantage point. We enjoyed a few beers, as we knew it would be a long night ahead of us on the 11 hour overnight bus back to Cuscu. Fortunately, we still had Machu Picchu to look forward to on the other side of the long trip!

Anyways. I will post the pictures when I get to a computer that is capable of adding them. I will also update you on our train trip up to Machu Picchu. I am currently in Lima, getting ready to head to Iquitos tomorrow day, where I will be introduced to the amazon jungle! Iquitos is the largest city in the world not accessible by land. As you can imagine, I plan on taking on Amazonian rivers the classic way, buying a hammock and hopping aboard a cargo ship.

Hasta luego!

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