Arequipa

South America Day 6

Arequipa

We arrived in Arequipa mid morning. We dropped our gear in the hotel and went out to explore the "White City". The call it the White city because of the volcanic material they use in the render giving the buildings the bright white appearance.

The main square "Plaza de Armas" is the cultural centre of the city. It was becoming apparent that every city in Peru had a Plaza de Armas and a San Francisco church.

Arequipa is a fairly wealthy city that's well looked after and quite clean. I never felt under threat like I did in Lima to the point that I was fairly relaxed. The only problem (as is the case for all Peruvian cities) is the incessant beeping of the taxis trying to get your business. It's very annoying.
Of all the cities we visited west of the continental divide, Arequipa is my favourite city.

Monasterio de Santa Catalina

We were a little tired from the bus trip but we figured we would go exploring anyway. Our trusty Lonely Planet guide had a number of suggestions. The one that sparked the most interest was the Monasterio de Santa Catalina.
It's an active convent with around 20 nuns still living there. Their area is closed off to the public but the rest is open. It's a very colourful place and very pleasant. It's like a city within the city of Arequipa. High walls protect it from the outside world making it a peaceful place (well it would be without all of us annoying tourists.

 

The Monasterio de Santa Catalina is made up of a number of features including many beautiful cloisters (or court yards). The one above is called the Orange Tree Cloister.

 

There is also Novices Cloister (above).

The Great Cloister (above).

This is the Silent Patio.

The convent even has streets & squares like those in the surrounding city. This one is called Zocodober Square. It has a nice little fountain with fish in it.

 

 

Here's one of the many streets in the convent. You can see one of the inactive volcanoes that surround the city of Arequipa. The volcano is called Chachani.

The convent wasn't all pretty coloured buildings, there were also some almost disturbing exhibits like this one of the last supper.

Throughout the convent there were rooms like this that are/were nun's living quarters. They're very basic accommodations and don't even electricity or gas.

The Nun's even today use these clay ovens to cook. Interesting egg shape.

 

The nuns have abandoned this now, but this old clay jar laundry was in use when there was no modern pressure water pipes. The centre channel feeds each of the individual tubs. I can't recall what fed the channel.

 

This orchard was out of bounds, I assume because it's still part of the active section. It's yet another peaceful corner. I can't tell you what the significance of the clay jars is. To me it's just a place for snakes & mosquitoes to hang out.

 

I can't even remember where in the convent we were, but the room was dark except for a skylight. Great opportunity to take a bit of a silly shot. Anyone recall the video for a Queen song? Boheimian Rapsity?

  

Kerri couldn't help but get up on her soap box.

 

Kerri was in the confession box for ages! Can't imagine why. We left the convent and headed back to the Plaza de Armas for lunch.

Plaza de Armas

 

We must have spent a good 2-3 hours in the convent & by the time we surfaced it was lunch o'clock. The Plaza de Armas has a few different functions. The centre square is a garden/park area with nice plants, fountains and park benches. Around the outside are a collection of shops and restaurants around 3 sides and a great Cathedral along the 4th.

The lower level of the shop buildings (above) range from dodgy little trinket shops selling everything from fridge magnets to t-shirts, to jewelry shops and high end clothing shops specializing in baby alpaca clothing.

 

The top level is reserved pretty much exclusively for restaurants. Each restaurant has an aggressive hustler at street level to entice you upstairs. Somehow we picked one and had a nice lunch. As you can see from this picture, the individual restaurants aren't segregated. There are no less than 6 different restaurants in shot and another 3 or 4 behind the camera. If it wasn't for the tourist dollar there's no doubt that they wouldn't exist. By the same token, they do try very hard to make sure that the tourists don't get sick and take care to wash fresh produce in filters water instead of the bacteria laden tap water in Peru.

We had a nice view of the Plaza de Armas from our lunch table. The gardens are very well laid out and well looked after. The centre of attention is the fountain in the middle. Such a pleasant place to just chill out.

So much focus of the South Americans is directed toward religion. Something like 80-90% of them are devout Catholics so every place we went seemed to have a Cathedral of some description. Arequipa's Cathedral is pretty impressive.

 

The city of Arequipa is shadowed by three volcanoes. This one is El Misti. It looks to be the most recently active one of the 3. They are all supposedly inactive, but there are daily tremors (apparently but not while we were there). There are a couple of active volcanoes near by so seismic activity isn't particularly surprising.

 

Not long after I took the previous shot from the balcony of our hotel I took an afternoon nap to partially make up for the lack of sleep on the night bus. The change in altitude was hard work and even walking up stairs ended in heavy gasping. I thought after living at 1200m for the previous 18 months we would have coped a little better, but it was quite noticeable.
After my hour nap, I looked out at El Misti again and this is what I saw! It was such a bizarre band of cloud. I'll let the photo talk now.

Ice Princess

 

During the afternoon we ticked off another mark on our "To Do in Arequipa" list. We visited the museum of the Ice Princess, Juanita. She was found only a few years ago in the crater of a near by inactive volcano, Ampato.
The story of the discovery goes along the lines of the neighboring active volcano (Sabancaya) blew it's top and showered Ampato with hot ash, melting it's ice bound top. Juanita was dislodged & rolled down into the crater. She was discovered a couple of days later still mostly frozen.
The story of the reason she was there, in short, is that she was a sacrifice to the angry gods to stop the volcanic activity. She was a daughter of the royalty of the time so it must have been serious. She was given heavy sedatives and clubbed on the side of the head killing her instantly. She would have been sacrificed willingly believing she would be moving on to a greater place.
She and three other mummies, found subsequently on Ampato, are kept in glass freezers, like Juanita in shot, to preserve them. Remember that they haven't been embalmed or prepared in any way, they've just been sitting buried in ice and snow for hundreds of years at the top of a mountain. They rotate the one on display so we were lucky to see the most important of the four.
The museum doesn't allow photography inside so I had to pinch these ones from the net. They had a stack of other cool artifacts in the museum other than the body of Juanita. There were some tiny silver vicuna statues that had holes in them. Apparently they were at the very top of the volcano and got zapped by lightning on more than one occasion.

 

Nasca

South America Day 5

Nazca Lines

After much contemplating and debate, about half the group decided to bite the bullet and sign up for the flight over the Nazca Lines. The half hour flight took us over the rocky plain we had driven along the edge of the night before. Above is the map of the area showing all the shapes carved out by the ancient inhabitants of the area.

They squeezed 5 of us into a light plane with the pilot. (I was hoping the whole time that the local aviation authority kept tabs on the tour operators.) Left to right :- the pilot, me, Kerri, Mike Nic & some random guy.

The above photo of the humming bird turned out the best of the many shapes out on the plain. These shapes are 100s of metres across & were created by the ancient Nazca people. They removed the brown rocks along the shape lines leaving just the pale yellow sand. It's unclear why they did it or how they managed to achieve it considering they had no aerial view. It's quite amazing considering the technology available to them.

There were also some others of significance.

Whale

Astronaut

This one's a bit odd. For a start, it's on the hillside rather than the plain & it's supposedly an astronaut. All the conspiracy theorists will be thinking, WOW, Aliens! I think it's just a bit of a botched attempt at a human. See it how you like.

Dog

Monkey

Condor

Spider

Parrot

This is the tower we had climbed the evening before. You'll also see the hands & tree (if you look close enough). By this time, most of the folks on the plane including myself were feeling a bit woozy. The way to see these shapes from the air is to dip the wing & circle around, then dip the other wing so the people on the other side of the plane can see too. needless to say, air sickness is a distinct possibility. We were all glad to have done the flight, but even more glad to get back on the ground.

Cemetery of Chauchilla

After a lunch in Nazca (somewhat reluctantly thanks to the flight) we were bundled into a local bus and taken out to an ancient Nazca burial ground, the Cemetery of Chauchilla (Cementerio de Chauchilla). I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd envisioned a more modern catholic type cemetery. Nope. It was an ancient Nazca burial ground on a desert plain. Interesting? Doesn't seem so does it? But wait, there's more.......

Just about everywhere we went on the trip was accompanied by a "Local Guide". The cemetery was no exception. Our guide was a bit strange to the point of us wondering whether she was chewing a few too many cocoa leaves. She did get the message across all the same.

Now. About the graves.
The ancients dug 6-8 foot pits & re-enforced them with rock walls to stop the sand collapsing inward. They even gave them timber roofs. Being that the climate in that part of South America is so dry, the locals simply packed up their dead relatives in some cloth & sat them in the brick pits. Apparently they regularly went back to visit them & offer gifts. All very weird let me tell you, but very interesting all the same.

As was the case with the crypt at the San Francisco, the archaeologists has excavated & then rearranged the remains. Not too sure why, but there had also been a lot of grave robbing over the years so some of it may well be a tidy up exercises.

There was one grave left as it was found. This one gave us a true indication of how the graves were left 100s of years ago. Oddly it didn't have a shelter built over it to protect it from further degradation.
As you can see, the pits have been totally filled up with sand. It's as a result of the Nazca stopping visiting the graves & the timber roofs finally giving way or being "recycled" by subsequent locals.

A few of the best preserved mummies have been removed & kept in controlled environments. Pictured is an adult. Short isn't he? The nutrition available for the locals in what is a harsh desert climate is minimal. Consequently human growth is severely stunted. You have to keep in mind that the mummification shrinks the bodies as well.

Remembering that modern medicine has meant that infant & child mortality is a rarity not the norm, it was sad seeing these small infant/child mummies. Again, they're well preserved & kept in glass climate controlled cases.

After the cemetery visit, we were given a chance to take a break. We stopped in the Nazca town, did some grocery/booze shopping, made some phone calls to various family members around the world & headed back to the hotel & more specifically the pool. After a busy & dusty couple of days, the pool was a welcome & relaxing change.
Later in the evening we piled into the local bus with the same local guide to go to a Pachamanca. It's a bit like a Hangi in NZ. They bury the food with hot coals & stones. We figured anything would be better than the dodgy food from the night before.
It was all a bit weird. The guide tried to explain it. Lucky she did because the pit & mound of earth looked more like a fresh grave. This occasion is more for a wedding (apparently, hence the strange look from me along with the drinking).

Eventually after much corny role playing, the chefs opened up the pit. A great cloud of steam greeted us along with the lovely smell of a roast banquet.

Wait for it!

Kerri clearly couldn't wait for it to be served up. Put it down! Naughty.....

Yummy! Just like a big Aussie roast. There were a few types of potatoes and more importantly 3 meats (at least). It was delicious! Add a few glasses of red & satisfaction.
We had some time to kill before an overnight bus to Arequipa so pretty much lazed around the bus station untill 11.30pm when the bus arrived. (More on the bus later).
Before we leave the lowland desert, click on this link to see some more of the photos from Huacachina & Nasca.
The next leg of the trip starts in Arequipa at 2335m above sea level.