Lottie lucks out!

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Awaking the next morning after our long, long journey and collapsing into bed, we were amazed to see how wonderful the hotel in Ariquipa was. We were staying in a converted Bishop´s House with little court yards, beautifully tended gardens, rooms with antique furnishings and all sorts of intriguing artifacts decorating the hotel. It very much reminded me of the Heritage Hotels I´d stayed in when I was travelling in India. A picture paints a thousand words so you´ll have to wait until I get a chance to upload some photos.

We set off with Max into Ariquipa, first to have a look around a local indoor market. Normally I would have found this fascinating, but in my rather fragile state the sight and smell of minging, raw animal parts covered in flies wasn´t exactly appealing!

Finally we left the market and arrived at a museum of Andean Sanctuaries where the ice mummy, found on a nearby mountain, was kept. The meer mention of a half hour video followed by a tour guide was enough for me to politely decline and I headed off on my own instead just to sit quietly in the square and watch the world go by. I got much more than that as it turned out as about ten minutes after I arrived a full blown carnival procession made its way around the square. Colourful costumes, dancing, bands, music, chinese dragons, carnival queens (think she might actually have been a ´queen´ - looked pretty lady boy to me lol) the lot. Fantastic. What a good move missing the boring museum.

Joining my group again we climbed many flights of stairs to a lovely roof top terrace restaurant overlooking the main square where we had our lunch. The mists and clouds had rolled down in the distance, covering the three volcanos that surround Ariquipa, Chachani, Pichu Pichu and the aptly named El Misti!

Another ´museum´trip beckoned, only this one seemed to promise a more interesting experience than the previous one as far as I was concerned. The city within a city, the convent of Santa Catolina, provided an insite into life as a convent nun from about 500 years ago until the present day. The novices were chosen from the second daughters of local families who sent them to the convent at the tender age of 12 years where she would spend the next one to four years (depending on her aptitude for learning!) isolated from both the outside world and the other nuns. The only ones she was allowed to spend time with were her fellow novices and her teacher. After passing her initial year (or four if she was particularly thick!)m she was moved into her own rooms within the main convent provided by her family. And best of all she was allowed to receive presents and have visits via the ´talking grid´. Rather reminiscent of prisons! Amazingly she could also have servants to cook and clean for her! Seeing the displays of opulant belongings it was clear that the nuns were hardly living a simple life. It must therefore have been a huge shock to the nuns in 1871 when the pope decreed that all this was to cease and the nuns should get back to basics and live more frugily, humbly and piously. Their grandly furnished and decorated rooms had to be closed and the nuns moved into communal sleeping, cooking and dining areas. They had to eat in silence while one nun fasted and read the bible to them as they ate. Nowadays there are still about 20 nuns living within Santa Catolina but they are not confined there ALL the time, occasionally going out in pairs to see a doctor for example. What a weird life style. Certainly not for me, as the inappropriate glamour girl photo on the fountain inside the convent shows (when I upload it!).

After all this pious godliness, me Kate and Nisha deemed it necessary to pig out on cake and research some of the more posh nosh restaurants of Ariquipa ready for that night´s meal. As it was my name that got put on the booking of the one we finally chose Zingari (if I remember it correctly) I was pleased when everyone gave it a thumbs up. Two people even tried Cuy which is the Peruvian guinea pig that comes flattened on the plate complete with head, eyes, teeth, claws etc looking like some pissed off minging road kill. Apparently it tastes of chicken! Apart from this choice it was an evening of scrummy food, good company and a bizarre collection of tunes played on the piano ´you must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss´, ´Titanic's - near, far, wherever you are' etc.

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