Arequipa, Peru

Mark and I took a bus from Copacabana Bolivia to the white city of Arequipa, Peru. The company that sold us the ticket was a little deceptive, and the ride was a little bumpier and longer than we expected. We arrived around 10 p.m., found a hostel, and a great Italian restaurant. The following day, while I was looking for information on the Colca Canyon, we ran into a couple of guys who had been robbed at gun point. Hardly a comforting story, but I ran into these guys later on my trip to the Colca Canyon, and let's just say one of them was screaming "tourist". While presumbably he had at least some book smarts given that he was in graduate school, his vocabulary didn't consist of much more than, "awesome dude", and "man, that´s sooo cool".

Mark and I visited the Santa Catalina Monastery, which began in 1579, forty years after the city was founded. The monastery was covers a good sized city block and is literally a city within a city. At one time over 400 nuns resided within the community, closed off from the city by high walls. As with most of Arequipa, the monastery is built with sillar, which is a white volcanic rock.

We also visited Juanita the Ice Princess at the Museo Santuariou Andinos. Juanita was discovered in the 1990´s by anthropologist Dr. Johan Reinhard on a climbing expedition and is the best preserved pre-Colombian mummy in S.A. Dr. Reinhard found Juanita only because the ice on Mt. Ampato briefly melted due to the eruption of the adjacent Sabancaya volcano. She was 14 years old when she was sacrificed and was essentially frozen by the frigid conditions on the summit. The Incas worshipped mountain gods and believed it was necessary to make human sacrifices to appease the gods. Now over 20 mummies have been discovered in South America. During the Inca era you were best off being ugly or disfigured as they typically sacrificed only perfect, beautiful children.

Mark left that evening to meet his girlfriend in Brazil, and I left the following day for the Colca Canyon.