Advertisement
Published: July 28th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Masa and Jen in Arequipa
here we are. I swear we didn´t fake this photo, though it does look superimposed. Arequipa and the vicinity were good to us for nearly three weeks, especially coming back from Puno, all that good oxygen in the air and a sun that actually seemed to warm things up... but it was time to be off. We needed to make it back to Lima before the Independence Holiday of the 28th of July. We´re told that during the days around the holiday prices double or triple on transportation and accomodation. Papou, who seems to be our guardian angel in Lima, has once again offered her home to us for the weekend. We arrived in Lima this morning after a 14 hour bus ride north. I can´t tell you how good it is to have a familiar, safe place to wash and relax after that.
During our last days in Arequipa we stayed at a place called Posada del Viajero, which I would highly, highly recommend if any of you is planning to make it to Arequipa any time in the next year or so... (rachel). It amounted to about 10 dollars US a night and for that we had a large room with a queen and a twin and a private bathroom with hot water.
bus we took back from puno
the ride back down from puno was not as bad as the one back from colca (think barf) but still a bit rough. I won the game of bingo though! YAY... unfortunately all I won was a trip back to puno. thanks but no thanks. I asked the attendant to give it to someone else. The people who run the place were so nice to us and there is a nice little patio out back to hang out, meet people, read or write. Also you can do laundry there, but I don´t know if they charge or what because we didn´t realize that bit until we´d already made use of the (quick) lavandaria next door.
We also spent some time taking photographs of the city of Arequipa, which we hadn´t really done before for some reason. Some of the good ones are included here.
Best of all, we visited the Monastario Santa Catalina, which is a 400 plus year old convent. it´s kind of expensive to go to, about 8 dollars US per person, but totally worth it. we spent two and a half hours there just wandering around the huge complex. Stupid, paranoid me had taken out the chip from the camera the night before, while having a moment of irrational fear that the cab driver (with whom we´d just argued down the price of our ride) was going to take us out to the desert and rob us. He didn´t. But I did forget to but the chip back in the
a woman in traditional dress outside the puno bus station
yep, people dress like this. all over the place. it´s cool. and the way she´s carrying things on her back is teh way they carry their kids around. it´s pretty awesome and I wonder that more kids don´t fall out. camera so the only photos we have are on the camera phone that masa carries. naturally we don´t have a cord to get those photos onto the computer so... I guess you´ll just have to google it.
The night photos are from a meal we had on the balcony of the plaza de armas. WE had the city´s specialty of Chupas De Camarones which is a really awesome soup made with these gigantic freshwater shrimp and about anything else there is handy in the kitchen. there was an egg in there, some corn on the cob, rice, vegetables, potato, possibly chicken as well with a tomato cream base broth. The restaurants in the touristy areas here are hilarious, that is if you don´t get utterly furstrated first. The waiters and waitresses seem to have to find their own patrons for their tables so you can´t walk past a row of restaurants without being completely accosted by offers of free this and discount that and having menus shoved under your nose. In this case we got free, albeit weak, pisco sours. a drink with the peruvian grape liquor, lime and egg whites. yummm. tastes like a frothy margarita to me.
campaign signs
this is a left over campaign sign for ollanta, a candidate that did not win (alan garcia did). Ollanta was linked with Venezuela´s Chavez either because he actually is in with Chavez or because propaganda made him out to be (we still havent determined for certain which it was). either way that is apparently what brought him down. Finally, as I write this masa and I are both suffering sore muscles from the first bit of excercise that didn´t involve some kind of walking that we´ve had in what feels like months. in Arequipa masa managed to find a climbing gym and we did indoor rock climbing. It was the first time I´d ever done it and I liked it a lot. The people at the gym were pretty cool even though with most of them our communication was pretty limited. A couple seemed to run the place and the woman was really nice and super helpful as was the man, who spoke very good english. I guess we are going to be traveling to some of the worlds big rock climbing locales... and since masa use to be pretty into rock climbing he would like to visit some of the sites... guess I better get up to speed. yikes. but it sounds like fun. I mean, how much can you actually stand around looking at stuff for six months. even if it´s really cool stuff...
so after those action packed three final days in Arequipa we made the bus journey northward and are in Lima
town in the middle of nowhere
there were quite a few of these. until probably Monday waiting out the fiestas. Then it´s on to Trujillo for (hopefully) some surf and (please, God) sun.
till then, try not to fry, and think welcoming back thoughts to elmer dessens. I hear he´s taking over for the big whiner, perez. (if the preceding means nothing to you, ignore.)
lots of love,
jennie (and masa... really, he´s sitting right here.)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.116s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 12; qc: 69; dbt: 0.0788s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Chris
non-member comment
wicked jealous
...wicked jealous. That's all. Thanks for the pics and post, it sounds amazing. Trujillo looks pretty cool from the pictures when I googled it. The water looks a little chilly though! Have fun. Chris