Arequipa

We went by bus from Puno to Arequipa, a very pleasent town in Southern Peru. Its a very civilised place where we spent a considerable amount of time doing nothing in particular.

In its centre is the convent of Santa Catherina, which was an enclosed convent for over 400 years. By enclosed I mean that the towns had no physical contact with the outside world apart from conversations with family and friends through double grilles set into one wall. Despite this the girls do not appear to have been demure, docile creatures and imformation plagues relate how they were willing to defy and stand up to bishops who wanted to distate to them as to how they should live.

The nuns are gone now but their building remain, arranged into streets. They are very colourful and would make a perfect settings for a commercial for a paint company.

Our time in Arequipa was very peaceful but we did have some excitment on leaving it. We had met a French/English couple who had mentioned to us that they had heard something about a general strike on 9th July 2008. We looked this up on the internet but could find nothing about a strike. Of course, we were looking at Emglish language sites, not Spanish.

We had also passed a travel agent which was advertising flights to Arica in Chile, our next stop. We popped in to them. and yes they had seats available for 9th of July, our preferred date. We asked about the strike, at which the nice girl behind the conuter said, what strike?. We booked our seats.

On 8th of July we go back to our hotel and their are signs pinned up telling us that the hotel would be hosting a big barbecue the next day. Why. Because of the nationwide strike. They advised people to stay away from the city centre and advised that it would be safest to stay in the hotel for the day.

Oh, dear. We were not sure if the airport would even be open. Fair dues to the hotel however. We told them our situation and that our flight left at three in the afternoon. They undertook to see if they could find out the situation for us but thought that we might have to go the the airport the previous night. Thankfully, they came back and advised going to the airport early in the morning, rather than the night before.

They organised a taxi to collect is at 9 the next morning which arrived on the dot. We started our journey and everything seemed normal. We were making good time and we started to wonder what all the fuss was about. Then the taxi arrived at the main road out of town, a two lane carriageway. Except that this carriageway was coved with rocks and stones, hundreds of them. Our taxi driver started driving on the hard shoulder, and when that was not possible through garage forecourts, across patches of wasteland, etc. I am not sure if he know exactly what he was doing but whatever it was it worked. He got us to the airport by 10, meaning we only had 5 hours to wait for our flight. Luckily, Arequipa airport has a cafe with a few open air tables overlooking the runway. We were able to snag one of these and settled in with our books.

Unfortunately, there was also a family nearby on the terrace wa¡ting for the incoming place. They appeared to be American fundamentalist christians, and I base this on the fact that they started singing hymns etc to their 2 children. Nothing wrong per say in this but they sung at the top of their voices. For hours. This made the long wait for the plane seem even longer but what could we do. At lest they were not getting on the plane.

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