arequipa...land of the taxi

we left lima to head south to the city of arequipa. flying into arequipa was sorta surreal. from the air, the outskirts of town almost looked like what i would imagine what parts of the middle east looks like from above. no landscape or vegetation, basically a big brown dust bowl...this is due to a volcano eruption (el misti) some years ago. as for the city itself, it has rebuilt in the midst of this dust bowl and is quite the bustling place.

caught a taxi and headed for our place, casa de melgar. what a charming little hotel! the archetecture of the place was common for arequipa. arched doorways, spanish tile, bright painted plaster walls, peruvian artisan pieces and a lot of plants and gardens.

home sweet home

after a quick nap (landed at 8 a.m.) we explored the city saw more churches of course and made our way to the main plaza. most of the buildings in arequipa are white plaster (more and more are being painted as time goes on) and i finally got to catch a glimpse of  the little traditional peruvian women i have read about (as of now, i think jimmy is going to throw the camera away if i try to secretly take anymore pics of these ladies!).

cool rock carvings

i love these ladies!

selling special juice in the plaza

plaza de armas



grabbed lunch at a rooftop spot overlooking the plaza which also had amazing views of the city itself and the famed volcano 'el misti'. so the one bizarre thing about arequipa...the taxis! wow. there has to be at least 10 taxis for every one person here! there is no other cars on the road so i am assuming this is why, but it is still so weird to see the streets clogged with them. also, we never found the need to take a taxi as the town was entirely walkable from one end to another. i think we were offered a taxi by way of honk and shout every few minutes or so walking around town.

taxis galore

visited this massive monastery, monastario de santa catalina and were in total awe of this place. wandered the grounds for a couple of hours as it took up an entire city block. the monastery housed these rich spanish nuns who liked to throw lavish parties back in the day. inside was a city unto itself with numerous bedrooms, kitchen areas, places of worship, courtyards and anything else a nun would need to have a great time. some party pooper nun found out about the lifestyle here and was sent over to break the party up. lame.

nun bedroom

monastery halls

confessing our sins

we like the monastery

ended the day by visiting the market. i just love foreign markets. anything and everything is for sale there. they are bustling sensory explosions. bizarre fruits and veggies, butchers chopping up morsels of meat you would never think of eating, seafood you have never seen in your life, you name it, the markets sell it. jimmy nearly vomited when i directed his attention to the lady eating raw tripe. i literally saw her cut a strip of stomach lining from an old raw cow carcass on the counter and stuff it in her mouth!!! some other notables at this market: potatoes! apparently peru is home to hundreds of types of potatoes. i counted at least 50 types in some stalls alone. purple corn! this corn is also used to make that yummy drink we love, chicha. llama fetuses! what!? these poor little dried up suckers are hanging in stalls and purchased as offerings to the land by the locals. i guess you bury them in your garden and the llama god sends his good vibes back to the buried dead baby llama and grants the landowner a bountiful crop. ok.

you say potato?

the biggest aloe i ever saw

these little guys are offerings

hungry for cow snouts?

in peru there are a lot of regions at high altitude so the locals chew coca leaves or drink coca tea to combat altitude sickness and aid in stomach issues. they also give you a boost in energy and stamina (but not like the effects of cocaine like most tourists think). in these higher altitudes you can get pretty sick with numbing headaches, insomnia and nausea. i have major struggles with altitude and had to do a bit of altitude training  just to prepare for this trip and specifically our inca trail hike which i believe tops out at 13,000 ft. or so. we also have chosen our path between each city (each of our stops go higher and higher in altitude) as a way of acclimating properly.

upon exiting the market, we stumbled on a kid selling coca leaves. so i made jimmy go buy some off the kid so we can see what they really do. we brought them home and layed them out on our bedsheet and sorta picked out the dead ones and tore the stems away and made them into a wad, added the chunk of activator (lye) and popped them in our cheeks. our mouths got super numb and we felt a bit of a feeling like we drank a bunch of caffeine. we then decided to start swallowing the juices...it was so disgusting!!! total amateurs! haha.  i might as well of chewed on a bag of lawn clippings! that is how i would describe the taste. wet, old lawn clippings. we both ended up with stomach aches and leaves stuck all over our teeth so that may be the end of our coca leaves exploration.

our loot

not how the locals prepare coca



next up: extreme mountain biking and my first real injury of the trip.