Ode to the Showers in Arequipa

I’m sure most of you have been wondering where I have been for the last week and half to two weeks…well here is the story.

We finally left late afternoon last week Monday (March 2nd) on plane to Arequipa via Lima after our first few flight chances were cancelled due to the clouds hovering in the mountains. There was talk that we weren’t going to make it to Arequipa until the following day which would leave us with no time to wonder the streets before we moved on to Colca. More importantly it meant no time to shower in a potentially hot shower with water pressure….something I hadn’t done since I left Iowa. I was not ok with that. Somehow we managed to get on a flight and I took my first hot shower in a month and a few weeks…..heaven. I cannot tell you what that shower meant; it was almost like a little piece of home. My showers in Cusco are cold, lukewarm at best and usually just a trickle. Hot water is a luxury here, not many can afford it. Showers are my haven back home. Whenever I am upset or don’t feel well, I take a piping hot shower. It is one of my favorite activities and usually sparks my best thinking. But in Cusco, I dread showering and so I almost cried as I took my shower in Arequipa.

Arequipa is a much different place than Cusco. I was told by a taxi driver (they are a wealth of information) that Cusco architecture is Inca through Conquest while Arequipa is Conquest and on. It is a glorious city, very clean and cars actually obey traffic lines. It is called “La Ciudad Blanca” or the White City. All the stones are taken from the nearby volcano fields and are a brilliant white. The Plaza de Armas in the center of the city is breathtaking with a giant cathedral on one side and pristine arch work lining the other sides. In the center there is a large fountain surrounded by gardens displaying all types of flowers and trees in bright colors and various sizes. We ate dinner on a balcony the first night in Arequipa which gave us a chance to gaze at the beautiful cathedral illuminated by hundreds of lights while we dined. We were also serenaded by the Peruvian version of a Mariachi band which included no ordinary tambourine player….I never knew you could play the tambourine with so many different body parts in so many different positions.

We stayed in a very old hacienda type building that had been transformed into a hostel…supposedly haunted. We didn’t have any visitors; however, at least I don’t think so. The following morning we had just enough time to do a little sight seeing and have lunch. The majority of us went to the local convent, named Monasterio de Santa Catalina, which has been running for more than 400 years and was only opened to the public 30 yrs ago. The nuns that live there are not allowed to leave the convent although in modern day they do have access to TV and Internet. They are allowed to talk to their families on the outside but only through a cage like construct and are not allowed to touch them. Talk about dedication. The convent is like a mini-city complete with agriculture, everything they need is there. The convent was beautiful as you can imagine with geraniums adorning every walkway and magnificent paintings covered the ceilings in archways, fantastic.

We took the four hour bus ride to Colca Canyon later that afternoon. It shouldn’t have taken that long but the washed out roads and the time spent avoiding the mammoth sized potholes made it about twice as long. We climbed higher and higher into the mountains where we encountered snow covered planes littered with vicuñas and alpacas. They only really prosper in the high lands although they can be seen allover this country. I must say though that a baby vicuña is one of the cutest things in the world. For the record, an alpaca is a domesticated vicuña essentially since vicuñas are illegal to domesticate or to hunt. They are seriously poached however because they have the softest, finest wool of all.

We finally arrived in Chivy, the capital of the Colca Canyon region, to meet our new families for a nice dinner. I ended up getting stationed in one of the agricultural pueblos in the low lands instead of with alpaca farmers in the highlands. I was upset at first but after just a day with my host family, I knew there was a reason I was there. My family lived in the pueblo of Yanque which is just starting to introduce tourism as a means of income. They are right on the river and surrounded by chakras (Quechua for “crop lands”) in which they grew mainly quinoa, potatoes, beans, and corn. These fields had been used since the time of the Incas and before.

My family in Yanque is very young and I am their first student. My father, Abel is 38; his wife Lucia is originally from Bolivia and is 25 years old (3 yrs older than me) and they have two daughters, Evelina who is 8 and darling Marife who is 4. We all clicked right away and they made me feel as comfortable as they could in their humble home. Poverty is strong in the country towns of Colca and it showed. Abel works for one of the hotels in the area and so has a little bit more money than the some in the area. Their home is very modest and you are required to go outside to access any other room in the complex. They do have a flush toilet but it is in an outhouse. They use both a gas stove and a fire stove but usually the try to use the open flame stove since it is cheaper. My room was very nice although I froze most nights. I spent the majority of the week either boiling in the sun or wet and cold since it poured at least twice a day.

However, it was a fantastic week and I will never forget my family in Yanque. We did many things together including working in the chakra and net fishing in the Colca River. Since this blog is already so long, my experiences in Colca are in the next blog if you would like to read more about my adventures as a Peruvian country girl who didn’t shower for the whole week. This blog, however, will jump to our return to Arequipa.

After being sick for a few hours due to what we think was water poisoning, I was enjoying my last hot shower for a while at 4:30 am. We had stayed in the same Arequipa hostel and so I knew that a nice shower would be waiting for me and I was glad for it that morning. We said goodbye to Arequipa and got on a redeye flight back to Cusco. I hadn’t slept much the night before or much the whole week to be honest. Despite my upset stomach, I was able to sleep a bit on the plane. When I got back to Cusco, Elida my Cusco Mom was elated at my return. She immediately tried to feed me but all I wanted was to sleep. I choked down some bread and passed out in the bed that I had missed so much. And so ended my adventure in the country, and so ends my ode to the showers in Arequipa.

Tupananchiskama (Quechua for “see you when I see you”)

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