AREQUIPA! Our winding bus journey through the Peruvian highlands brought us down into a valley that sees 360 days of sunshine a year...Nicole was in her element! Arriving into the bus station we had to fight off the taxi drivers so we could figure out where we were going, and finally settled on this place in the center of town that had a rooftop terrace and HOT WATER 24 hours a day in the showers! We quickly discovered that this is one of the places that tourists visit when they come to Peru to visit Machu Picchu, because there were Americans (and Europeans) everywhere! There were dozens of beautiful restaurants, some on ¨restaurant street¨, and about 10 of them with balconies overlooking the Plaza de Armas (every city seems to have a Plaza de Armas). There were people and pigeons everywhere, and at least in this part of the city, it was CLEAN! And also, all the historical buildings are built out of a white pumice-like rock that looks like styrofoam! It´s called the white city (La ciudad blanca). We spent the first day just walking around, and hit up the supermarket so that we could make our first dinner in weeks! That evening, sitting in the terrace of the hostel, we felt a tremor! Apparently Arequipa is one of the most sizemically active places in South America, with tremors several times a week. Turns out there was an earthquake 100 miles south, but no one was hurt.
The next morning we set out for the most famous attraction in the city--El convento de Santa Catalina. Built in 1579, it´s doors were closed to the outside world until 1970. Inside is a maze of streets, a city within a city, everything in bright colors and the cool rock again. The nuns certainly lived well...each one had a minimum of 2 servants, and they drank tea from solid gold teasets. It was the home of a few saints, so it is a kind of pilgrimmage site. We ended up spending 3 hours there! We walked around all afternoon again. That night while we were making dinner, Stacen was attempting to cut a carrot with a ridiculously dull knife. One of the guys who worked at the hostel asked what was wrong, and then called the other guy over to show that indeed the knife literally was not cutting. The guy pretty much said, ¨yes it does¨, then walked away. Stacen then turned to Nicole and said, ¨this knife is stupid¨. The first hostel worker, still sitting nearby, suddenly sayd, what country are you from? We say the United States and he goes ¨ahhhhhh¨. With trepidation, we ask why the ahhhhhh, and he answers, ¨I like to know where people are from who think they are better than me¨. Well you can guess that we were pretty shocked at this, and turns out he thought he spoke english and that we were insulting the hostel owner. Needless to say, it put Stacen in a pretty bad mood. We are on this trip in part with the mission of giving Americans a good name. The fact that Stacen speaks spanish has pleasantly surprised most people. It is ridiculously frustrating to encounter people with pre-determined and ill-founded ideas. So anyway, we will just have to keep trying for our remaining, get this, six weeks in South America.
During the remaining 5 days we spent about half that time on the terrace of the hostel, playing cards (Nicole is on a 2 week winning streak), reading, eating, and talking. One night we went out for some traditional Peruvian food and got Pisco sours! Pisco is a peruvian brandy, and the drink is addictive. After 2 sips, Nicole had declared them better than margaritas and Stacen had declared them his favorite mixed drink ever. We were inspired and the next night went to the store, bought the ingredients, and then made WAY too much that night haha, and Nicole made some sick guacamole even though the peppers she put in were crazy latino spicy.
We tried to go see a mummy, an human sacrifice of a little girl from several thousand years ago found on top of a nearby volcano, but the woman inside refused to believe that we spoke spanish, which was so frustrating that we left. You can see the mummy on google anytime.
On our last day, we got some school stuff done for back home, then went out to eat some amazing ¨soy meat¨, which we can only hope was tofu. Quickly afterwards, Stacen´s stomach began to voice it´s disapproval, but that is a story that will be continued in the next entry. We went to Colca Canyon soon after, and were gone from Arequipa for 5 days. Upon return, we took a much-needed nap, and went to an AMAZING restaurant, where we stayed eating and drinking for almost 5 hours. It was so nice to finally have some GOOD food, we had both lost quite a lot of weight in the canyon. We made a quick trip to the grovery store, dropped it off at the hostel, and then went out for pizza! It was an amazing cute little restaurant with tons of ambiance, and they were playing all kinds of alt rock, which gave us plenty to talk about all evening. We went back to the hostel, slept, and the next morning caught our 11 hous bus to Cusco! The only thing we will say now is that we were sitting in the very front, with a HUGE window in front of us the entire time. We had a blast. We´re in Cusco now and won´t be writing until after we see Machu Picchu next week. Until then!
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