Andes House Inn is the hostel where we stayed. Helpful basic place a few minutes walk from the main plaza. We only had 1 day here so headed out to firstly book our 2 day Colca Canyon hike for the next day and see some of the town.
The hostel was linked to a tour company, but Mands already had recommendations we wanted to check out. We followed the hostel map to get to the main square and then asked for directions to a specific tour company. We were sent back in the direction of the hostel, but one road parallel to the directions we'd been given. This new road was lined with tour companies - the hostel map purposely took us around the tour companies and popular street so there was more chance we'd book with them. Anyway, found what we were looking for and booked.
Arequipa is close to a massive volcano, Misty. Misty is 2km higher then Arequipa at about 6000 meters! You can do a 2 day hike up with much of the second day in snow and with little oxygen, but we decided we'd happily skip it this time. Unfortunately it was a really cloudy day so we only got to see a vague outline of Misty.
The main attraction in the Arequipa is the Monastery of Santa Catalina. It's called the city within a city, due to the size of it. What sets this apart is it's extravagance in monastery terms. It was an honour for girls to become nuns, all wealthy families would try to get their 2nd daughter accepted. The first daughter would be married off and their second, into the monastery. There was only however a novice intake of 7 and they would remain novices for 4 years, so acceptance was very tough.
The area is known for earth quakes and tremors. One such earthquake destroyed large sections of the monastery. The rich families came to it's aid, but instead of continuing with communal living, each nun was built a separate small house. Nuns were furthermore allowed fine presents from their family. These included fine silver wear and china.
The pope found out about this and returned everyone years later to basic communal living. The houses and presents are still on display. The monastery with nuns is still active, but only uses a restricted 10 percent of the grounds. The monastery buildings, alleyways, quads and paintings are very impressive. Bright orange, whites and blues explode around every corner.
We took a personal guided tour and then did the whole monastery again ourselves with the camera. Big camera beautiful.
For lunch we found a street off the main plaza with a string of restaurants. We'd gone for one with 2 traditional Peru dishes we'd been told about. Rocoto Relleno ( The Arequipan dish of stuffed Rocoto peppers with a kick as they're hot/spicy, filled with meat, onions, egg whites, olives) and Papa a la Huancaina (Sliced boiled potatoes covered in a cheesy, slightly spicy yellow sauce (which contains Turmeric) served on top of lettuce and olives).
My compact digital great panoramic shots camera is no longer. Could have left it somewhere or it's been lifted. After some contemplating, I bit the bullet buying the se replacement at double the price of the original in London. It will be better a new camera than me trying to sketch pictures to share.
Tomorrow is a 3 am pick up for Colca Canyon.
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