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Published: November 7th 2018
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Another relaxed start to the day, we didn’t go out until 11:00. First stop was the Iglesias de la Compania which is right next to Place de Armas. Fantastic stone carving like many buildings here.
Then down the road a bit to the other University-run museum, Museo Arquelogico Jose Maria Morante. This is also a small museum of just 5 rooms but they had amazing mummified bodies all in a sitting foetal position. One was also placed in a reproduced burial chamber so you see how they found them with ceremonial articles. At the third room we asked the lady in the room if she spoke English and she did. We thought she might have been a security person but wasn't wearing a uniform so Daisy asked her a question and she turned out to be a fountain of information. Turned out she works for the University. We ended up having a personal guide for the last three rooms as she was more than happy to walk with us and explain all the exhibits to us. I would highly recommend this museum for the mummies alone.
We then went home and had a snack for lunch as we planned
to go to another nice restaurant later for dinner. We remembered a café that had a picture of a proper looking coffee at the front so we went out and found it for a nice cup of coffee, it was called Punku Punku. Then walked to the Salamanto Restaurant to book our dinner for 19:00. We read about a bohemian area called San Lazaro with bars and restaurants so thought we’d check it out, but it was a huge disappointment as it was very quiet with no-one around. Maybe it comes alive at night but it is dead during the day. We did however find a market area along the way and we bought a couple of things and we also looked at the Museo Municipal which is a local history museum. It was in an interesting building and would have been more informative for us if they had some English but alas it was all in Spanish.
After San Lazaro we walked over to one of the main attractions in Arequipa which is the Santa Catalina Monastery which is a misnomer because it is actually a convent for nuns. It is 400 years old and 450 nuns lived
here with lay servants cut off from the rest of the city by high walls. It was built just 40 years after Arequipa was founded out of the white volcanic sillar stone that is very common throughout Arequioa. The problem is this stone is very porous and is very hard to maintain. In 1970 the city insisted that they install electricity, so the community of nuns retreated into a small corner of the complex and opened the majority of it to the public to raise money for the works. It is quite amazing as it is like a city within a city and it took us a good 2 hours to walk through it. We had timed our visit so that we would be there after sunset because on Tuesday and Thursday nights they light candles throughout the complex and you really get a feel for what it was like to live there. You see a lot of the “cells” that the nuns stayed in and you see the bedrooms and kitchens which are furnished the way they would have been.
We did have to rush the last bit because we had a 19:00 dinner booking. We opted for
the “Tasting Menu” which had 10 courses and even though Daisy said she wouldn’t eat guinea pig again, one of the courses was exactly that but cooked very differently so that it tasted more like crispy bacon. We wouldn’t rave about it but it was certainly another new dining experience.
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