Arequipa

Dad and I spent 2 and half very leisurely days in the colonial Andean city of Arequipa. The city was so beautiful and easy-going, that it made the all night bus ride completely worth it. Arequipa is called the white city because the buildings are all constructed of white volcanic stone and also, a tour guide told us that in the colonial days it was full of very white Spaniards. We took a tour of a cloister monastery, went to a folk music performance, toured the museum of Juanita (an Inkan mummy), checked out some antique shops, and took a tour of one of the old mansions that has a collection of maps charting Latin American development. We also spent a lot of time sitting in restaurants and in the garden of our hotel. Arequipa is always sunny and the perfect temperature, making it very difficult to get up once seated in one of the million beautiful gardens throughout the city.

The Monasterio de Santa Catalina, or as dad likes to call it "Monastery Discoteca" was where the wealthiest Spaniards sent their second-born daughters at the age of 12 or 13 to live a cloistered life of prayer. It was laid out like a city within Arequipa. There were plazas, chapels, and each nun had her own house. It really was beautiful. While I don't think I would've responded well if I had been sent away to the convent instead of Camp Storer when I was 12, it would be a beautiful place to live. So why does dad call it the "Monastery Discoteca"? Well, the nuns who lived here didn't exactly keep their vow of poverty as they each had big, beautiful, private homes, and they would also invite musicians in for parties. The pope put a stop to this after a couple hundred years and the Spanish families were no longer aloud to pay a dowry for their daughter to enter and they had to live in a communal setting while their houses were transformed into other uses. 14 nuns live there now. Our guide told us that the nuns here would live to be about 80 years old, which is much older than the average lifespan of the time. She credited this to little contact with the outside world and the diseases that live there, high quality food, and the lack of a husband and children to take care of and stress over.

Seeing Juanita, the Ice Maiden, was an experience that is difficult to discuss. She was sacrificed by the Inka about 500 years ago at the age of 12 and was perfectly preserved in an icy grave high in the Andes. Now, human sacrifices were not something that was commonplace in Inkan time; it was done only at times of crisis, and was viewed as necessary and honorable. Upon being her death, Juanita was to live with the gods and become one her self. After watching a video about her discovery, preservation, and the interpretation of the artifacts and ritual surrounding her death, we were led through galleries showing all the artifacts that were left with her. Gold figurines, ceramics, fine tapestries, among others. The final stage of the tour was being able to see Juanita. She is in a glass case -20 Celsius and still in the fetal position she was buried in. Her face, clothes, and hair are all perfectly preserved. It was humbling to realize that we were looking at the face of an Inkan goddess. For more information, visit the museum's website: http://www.ucsm.edu.pe/santury/ and for non-Spanish speakers, click "enlaces interesantes" for sites in English.

The highlight of Casa de Moral was easily the colonial map collection, but apart from that, the house was gorgeous. A fire station was built next to and thus using up what used to be enormous garden space... Dad and I spent a while on a bench imagining how beautiful it must have been.

Lunch today was interesting, to say the least. We both just wanted something light and ended up in the kitchen with this very new age-y chef assisting with the cooking of "Pre-Inkan cuisine". Hmm. It was fun for a while, but we were more than ready to split when he got too philosophical, though the food was delicious.