The White City!

Katie in Arequipa! 

This past weekend (Dec. 10 - 12), I went to Arequipa with a group of friends.  We were 7 in total - 3 Aussies, 1 Brit, 2 Peruvians, and me.  Arequipa is the second largest city in Peru - though significantly smaller than the first!  It has a population of around 1 million people - Lima has around 11 million!  Arequipa is located in the Andes of southern Peru at around 7000ft above sea level.  (That was nothing for the Katies, though!!)  Arequipa is known as the White City because the majority of the buildings in the city center are made of white volcanic rock.  The city is beautiful - especially at night.  This was my second visit to Arequipa!

What we did:

We arrived to Arequipa on Friday night.  We stayed at this hostel right off the main square.  It was fine for the most part...besides the rock pillows and the noise on Saturday night.  Evidently, its neighbor is a horrible discoteca with a special cover band.  Ughhh...  We found the hotel once we got there. We then went to get our dinner!  We went to a meat restaurant on the main square.  I had chicken and sangria.  It was decent, but a bit pricey.  After dinner, we headed out to a few bars before ending up in a discoteca. Going out in Arequipa is much cheaper than going out in Lima, btw!

On Saturday, we went to the Museo Santuarios Andinos - which was recommended by a friend.  The museum was having a special... up to 5 Peruvians for the price of one... we had 2 Peruvians and 3 residents!  So, us 5 went in for 15 soles...and the other two had to pay 15 soles each.  It really pays off to be a Peruvian resident, doesn't it??? ;)  jaja.

 So, we paid the entrance fee, had to leave our cameras, and then... we learned about Juanita... who became quite the conversation topic for the rest of our trip.  Juanita was a girl around 12 years old that was sacrificed 550 years ago.  About 15 years ago, a group of anthropologists and archaeologists  found her at the top of Ampato - a volcano in Arequipa.  She was frozen - and due to that, she was in near perfect condition.  She is considered to be one of the top 10 recent archaeologic finds in the world!

We watched a movie about her, and then wandered around with a guide who explained the different findings to us.  Then we saw the actual body.  CREEPY.  You could see her head (with her actual hair AND teeth) and her arm.  The rest of her was covered in clothes.  There was a close up picture of her hand that just gave me the heeby jeebies!  Evidently, this little girl walked 160 miles from Cuzco to Arequipa to get a blow to the head.  Lucky ducky.  You would have thought they AT LEAST would have given her a donkey or something!  

After the museum, we went for a walk to find the house of the dude that won the Noble prize for literature.  It was indeed a house.  I'm guessing he's from a rich family.  Then we went to a restaurant called Sol de Mayo.  We were quite disappointed.  The food was expensive for Peru, the serving sizes were small, and P found an olive pit in his rice - which probably means that they "recycle" the rice.  S-I-C-K!  Our bill was about 120 soles ($40) for 2 sodas, 1 ceviche, and a small garlic shrimp dish.  Not impressed.  From there, we headed to the lookout point - which was under construction.  We did get to see where Santa lives, though!  Lucky!

Once back in the main square, we took a nap-a-roonie... but not before going to the chocolate store!  Yum I love chocolate!  Then, we went to dinner at Chicha - a Gaston restaurant.  It was pretty good. I had ravioli.  Earlier, we had booked a tour to go to Colca Canyon on Sunday.  The bus was supposed to pick us up between 2:30 and 3am... and it did!  (Gasp!  Punctuality!) So we had to go to sleep after dinner.

Colca Canyon

So... Colca Canyon.  The land of the condors.  The world's deepest canyon.  Supposedly it is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon.  Let me tell you, Colca Canyon, while it may be twice as deep, is no where near as impressive as the Grand Canyon!  You cannot even remotely compare the two.  And also, let me tell you, condors are fugly.  Holy smokes.  We saw three - the one pictured above came extremely close and I saw its creepy face.  Ugh.  But they are quite large.  It was interesting to see.  Was visiting CC worth it?  Well, our tour was 55 soles a piece... and the park entrance is 35 soles for tourists, 18 for nationals.  Time wise... it took all flipping day!  I would have liked to have wandered around a bit.

On the way back from the canyon, we went through the national llama, alpaca, and vicuña reserves.  That was pretty exciting!  I love those little buddies.  Vicuñas (pictured below) are actually quite pretty.  We also saw a random flamingo!  How did it get up to the top of the mountain, you ask?  Probably the same way Juanita did.  At least the flamingo didn't get sacrificed... or at least Juanita did... ummm... you decide.

Once getting home, we were starving... so we went to ZigZag... which may just be my new favorite restaurant! We had FONDUE!!!! YUM!

The weekend went really fast.  Overall, we had a great time.  Arequipa is a lovely city - a great weekend get-away.  I don't know how much better you can get... great friends... great food... great chocolate...and great big fugly birds!  ;)