Peru, Conquistadors Log Day 12

The final day. We slept in again. Sleep and food are what truly make Arequipa great. The breakfast this morning had the strangest addition yet: tiny hamburger patties. By themselves, nothing that they should go with. Again, for what it’s worth, delicious.

It was a bit of a mournful day. We left our backpacks at the hotel for our final hours in Peru. We saw Juanita the Ice Maiden, a 12 or 13 year old Incan girl who had been sacrificed at the peak of a nearby volcano and frozen in a glacier. She was rediscovered by archeologists more than 500 years later and is now on display in her frozen box for the public 8 months of the year. Honestly, the exhibit was fairly haunting, not just for the visuals, but also because it does a good job creating an atmosphere in which you can visualize the human sacrifice to the mountain gods on the bone-chilling peak. Even one of Juanita’s dolls, which was found next to her in her tomb, was shown right near the body. It actually left me reflecting not just on Juanitas story but on some of the archeological problems her remains represented and also how impressive the museum was for protecting and presenting so many unique, and high quality artifacts to a significant population. No photos- I'm sure you are very disappointed. Needless to say, we spent the rest of the day on more light-hearted activities.

After Juanita, we finished with our souvenir shopping, stopped back by Huayruro for sandwiches and another hibiscus iced tea, and settled down at the chocolate place from yesterday, seeing as they also served craft beer. I napped for a little while on the shady cushions and Stuart read and had a Chaski Porter (pun intended, I’m sure). As the shady deck began to cool, we said our fair-wells to Arequipa and went back to our hotel to gather our bags and catch a taxi to the airport.

We should be home in about twenty hours. I think the thing we’re looking forward to most is being able to brush our teeth with water from the sink. Wish us luck.

All Photos from Day 12

Peru, Conquistadors Log Day 11

We slept in again. It continues to be glorious. No chicken nuggets at breakfast today, but there were tiny cheese and mushroom empanadas. It was a fair trade. We started the day with Arequipa’s main attraction: the Santa Catalina Monastery. 

All done up in white stone, it’s a city within a city. It takes up a large city block, and was isolated from the public for more than 350 years. Also, earthquakes caused by the nearby volcanoes forced different parts of the monastery to be reconstructed over time. All of this together has molded a compound entirely unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. The convent feels in some cases like a village and in others like a dormitory. Each suite (not just a room, these nuns lived in style) had an alcove bed and sitting area as well as an outdoor (or semi-outdoor) wood-fire oven and kitchen area. Every single room also had a big grinding stone, presumably for corn and/or flour; nobody shirked when it came to food. There were also large courtyards, both for the novitiates and nuns, decked out in vibrant blues and reds and painted with rosary scenes all the way around. Again, Arequipa proved to be ridiculously picturesque.

Many spent their free time baking and I spent a large portion of my time cooing over (and being intensely jealous of) the perfect little courtyards and wood-fired ovens as a baking domain, although I would miss my kitchen aid intensely.

Interspersed throughout were stories of individual nuns who’d grown famous over the centuries. One was famous for her visions and prophecies of future events, 68 in total attributed to her. Another gained prestige for her humility before god; she was obsessed with the crucifixion, and she went quite far with her own self-flagellation, including such things as barbed-wire undergarments. Altogether, the convent took almost three hours for us to wind through, and we never strayed anywhere close to boredom. We went to the Empandadita for lunch, which was okay (our only culinary miss in Arequipa), but we grabbed Queso Helado and popsicles afterward, which well made up for it.

Queso Helado may initially sound a little strange, but is an Arequipa standard, served by locals from large vats that they churn each morning. It doesn’t taste or really have the texture of cheese, but rather has a more curd-like feel. It tastes like a frozen chai, and is even sprinkled with spices on top that I would swear are almost the same as our chai masala. To be honest, we aren't sure where the cheese part comes in. Stu was immediately enthralled and has promised me that we’ll be going back for more tomorrow. Personally, I am feeling very one with the people of Arequipa- good food, warm weather, and ice cream is a point of pride. Beyond queso helado, you can get soft serve in every grocery store, there are people selling it from little push carts on the street, every other store front sells ice cream, popsicles, or both, and all this ice cream hustle and bustle is perfectly acceptable for breakfast. Even the trash guys have been infected by the ice cream spirit!

Then the chocolate class. So it’s not just a how to make chocolate, but also a how to eat chocolate and how to appreciate chocolate class. as a 'bean to bar' class, we went through the whole process of sorting, roasting, and shelling cacao (by hand), all the while tasting and inhaling.

We also handled pure cocoa butter and cacao solids, and had a whole lecture on the different types of chocolate and how large corporations mess with the basic ingredients. It was all very interesting, and it’ll be difficult to eat Hersheys or Lindt for a couple of months.

We then went down to the kitchen and made our own chocolates which we’d get to keep. Stu proved to be shocking talented at chocolate making as well as chocolate consuming. He seemed to have an intuitive sense of how to add and mix toppings and also how to quickly (and cleanly) pour chocolate into the mold. I’ll let the pictures speak for the experience here, and simply add that it was so much fun to work with real chocolate and to get expert insight into tempering.

We made it out in time to stick to our tradition of a rooftop sunset with pisco sours (with mango this time!) for the best sunset we've had yet. We’ve slowly been accumulating people on the rooftop with us; there was only us the first night, two additions the second, and tonight, another five people up there with us. We can only hope that it’ll continue without us.

On the way to dinner, we stopped for another meat-stick from a street vendor because I have become an addict and the smell was undeniable. We figure if it makes us sick, well, we're heading home to tomorrow. The planned dinner was at the redundantly titled INDIA Indian Cuisine.

We went in expecting a decent meal and were utterly blown away. It was better Indian food than anything we’ve had in DC. Arequipa shows off again and I haven't been this full in a long time, although there is obviously always room for more queso helado.

We leave tomorrow afternoon, and we’re already beginning to mourn.

All photos for day 11

Peru, Conquistadors Log Day 10

We slept in. It was glorious. Breakfast at the hotel is served on the rooftop, and is the typical fare (though well done) with a couple of unexpected additions. They had chicken nuggets (?!). We snickered a little until we tasted them. Admittedly they were the best chicken nuggets that we can remember.

Today we started in on Arequipa proper, excited to be into the more relaxed part of our trip. First things first, we wanted to get a feel for the city we would be in for the next couple of days, so we headed across the bridge to the less touristy Yanahuara district to find a good overlook. There is a famous arched viewpoint near an old church, which did provide a nice view of the city and of the three volcanos that loom over its northern edge, but we weren’t too impressed with the view which was honestly comparable to our rooftop vista at the hotel. Instead, we found ourselves drawn into the district itself: narrow, winding streets with evenly spaced, geranium-filled flowerpots hung from the old, stone walls. The whole place was ridiculously picturesque, down to the sweetly labeled flour pots and perfectly preserved vintage VW bugs.

For our next stop, we ducked back into the edge of the central district to visit Mundo Alpaca. Stu was initially a bit disdainful of the place because it absolutely screamed tourist trap, but it was on our way and I convinced him to go. We were both glad that I did. Though it was originally set up by a clothing company as, yes, a tourist trap, Mundo Alpaca had evolved something much cooler. 

Beyond the mostly overpriced gift shop of fine alpaca wool wears, there is a camilid meet and greet (camelids are large, strictly herbivorous animals with slender necks and long legs as well as some other distinctive features. Included in this group are Alpacas, lamas, vicuñas, and guanacos as well as camels, of course. We finally got to learn a little bit more about the difference between these animals- both physically and in terms of how their wools fit into the textile world. We also got to get to know them a little and I made good friends with a shaggy alpaca who made me think of a beatnik poet out of the seventies with his perfect bangs (respect the bangs). 

From there, the site led us through a series of exhibits explaining wool quantity and color, and then traditional treatment, dying, and weaving methods including an older woman weaving on a traditional back strap loom while her grandson terrorized the alpacas and remaining within shouting distance. It felt extremely authentic and really made you appreciate the detail and precision of some of the designs we had seen. Out of respect to her, we did not take any photos of her weaving but we were unable to resist hovering closely to watch as she shuttled threads through her loom at speed, with casual grace and ridiculous dexterity. It also helped to put into perspective all the women we had seen (especially in Cusco) weaving on hand looms or having beleaguered menfolk hold as they weaved on street corners or fountain steps. 

Alpaca Mundo cleverly contrasts the traditional methods with an exhibit detailing the history of the mechanization of converting alpaca, lama, and vicuna wool into thread and then into textiles. Unfortunately, none of these machines were running but they were displayed in a way where you could walk up very close and look deep within the machine to try and understand what it was doing. As you can probably guess, Stu and I spent a great deal of time in here making educated guesses based on the processes we understood, the mechanics we could see, and the general description plaques provided.

The last piece of Mundo Alpaca was an art gallery of woven works from all over Peru. Evidently there is a nationwide completion annually of pieces woven traditionally on back strap looms using camelid wools and Alpaca Mundo features the winners (as well as several first and second place entries). Some were interesting, others were absolutely gorgeous. Stu was particularly taken with one that looked like a painting until close up, with beautiful work shading a larger image that felt less like a textile than a piece of art. I liked one that did a beautiful job telling the story of the Incas as we understood it from our time in Machu Piccu. 

Around the time we were wrapping up in the gallery, hunger started to set in, and we figured it would be frowned upon to snack with (or on)the livestock. We wandered over to Huayruro, a local coffee shop and hostaller haven. We had heard promising things about their sandwich game, and Stuart had to follow up on the reputation. We ordered coffee (Stu) and teriyaki chicken sandwiches (both of us), and I found my new favorite drink, hibiscus iced tea. I drank one there and then got one to go. At this point we were starting to realize that Arequipa is a foodie city up there with anything we would hope for in a european country. Everything we’d had so far had been delicious, and we were hoping it would continue (spoiler: it totally did). Bonus: we were able to pay for the entire meal in coins which amused our waiter and significantly lightened Stu's jangling pockets. 

After wandering around the central district for a while, window shopping and admiring the local architecture, we ambled back to the hotel to continue our tradition of watching the sunset from our rooftop. This time we made sure to bring a bottle of white wine with us (and I cut into a mango I had picked up during yesterdays jaunt to the market. 

After the reds and yellows in the sky faded into a deep purple, we left to go get dinner at Las Gringas Pizzeria (for obvious reasons). In proper foodie tradition, we got a pear pizza and balsamic focaccia (both delicious) and while enjoying the courtyard where we were sitting, noticed advertisements for and immediately signed ourselves up for a chocolate class at the chocolate boutique next door. We’re excited; more to come on that tomorrow.

All photos for Day 10

Peru, Conquistadors Log Day 9

Day 9:

Today Stuart and I got up at a leisurely pace, a nice change from the 4/5 am alarms that have epitomized our time in Peru thus far. Because we weren't out the door before 7, we got to enjoy our hotels complementary breakfast- a vast array of juices, omelettes, cereals, sausage, pastry, cheese, meats, and of course, potatoes.

Full, we launched back into Cusco's historical district to purchase the last few souvenirs we had had our eyes on before catching our 1 pm flight to Arequipa. Overall, Cusco was really good to us and we enjoyed our time there but are excited to spend the remainder of our trip in the lower, warmer city of Arequipa allowing our legs to recover. Arequipa is the second largest city in Peru, following the capital of Lima. It is nestled between three dramatic volcanos and its colonial style buildings are built almost entirely from a chalky white volcanic stone called sillar, making the city sparkle in the sunlight, surrounding one of the prettiest plazas we've ever seen.

Knowing that the first part of our trip was going to be active, Stu and I booked a beautiful room in the Palla boutique hotel for our time in the white city and the room didn't disappoint. Close to the main plaza (plaza de armas), our room features a king size bed and claw foot tub, while the hotel boasts a beautiful rooftop terrace overlooking the city.

Upon arrival, Stu and I unpacked, reveled in the room, and then made our way over to the San Camilo Market for a late afternoon snack to tide us over until dinner. The market is a sprawling circus of food and clothing vendors hustled into stalls organized by primary product. I particularly enjoyed wandering through the aisles designated for fruit, flowers, and cheese before settling into a juice stall for my first sample of the famous Peruvian "jugo". I ordered a mango-passionfruit blend mixed with orange juice and was amazed at the sweet tartness of the drink, especially as you drink from a glass handed down from on high from the woman in the stall, and when you finish your glass, you receive the remainder of the batch!

A few blocks from the market, on our way back to the main plaza, I saw a woman setting up a street cart grill. When researching for Peru, I had been warned away from street food as the safety standards are much lower and food can be sitting out for hours. However, seeing as she was just setting up, I knew I finally had an opportunity to get my hands on some safe Peruvian street food. I creepily waited and watched the vendor from the opposing corner for the 15 minutes it took for her to finish stoking the coals and have the first set of kabobs ready, complete with a small potato on top. Stu and I each had one, and they were well worth the wait.

Continuing on, I came across several ice cream vendors (it seems to be a city specialty) and finally gave in to a fudgcicle with fudge filling. It was the perfect treat to finish our walk to the plaza and people-watch from the steps of the massive Spanish basilica. Not long after we settled, we were approached by two young people asking if we spoke English and we're willing to be filmed for a 10 minute interview for an English class assignment. Stu was suspicious and opted out but I agreed and wound up in an interesting conversation with two young locals about why we had come to Peru, what we thought of Arequipa, and how I wanted to be remembered when I was gone. Yes, one of those questions is not like the others.

From there, we finally made it back to the hotel terrace to watch the sunset and enjoy some pisco sours and the view. Once the sun had set, we wandered down two blocks to a local burger joint called the AQP Burger Company, famous for their cheap eats and sauce selection. They did not disappoint and we enjoyed the table and some conversation with some french backpackers over our meal.

Cannot wait to spend some more time exploring this beautiful city tomorrow.

All photos from Day 9

Peru, Conquistadors Log Day 8

Day 8

Because we are gluttons for punishment and/or because we can't bear to miss out on some of the attractions Cusco has to offer besides Machu Picchu, Stu and I signed up for a day excursion out to a site called rainbow mountain before departing on our trek.

The only full day we had left in Cusco after the trek was the day after we reached Machu Picchu. Rainbow mountain is 3 hours from Cusco by car so we woke up at 4 am to meet our guide in the lobby of our hotel by 4:30. I can freely admit that both of us entertained the idea of pretending we had slept through the alarm when it rolled around, way too early after the late-night return from Machu Picchu. Luckily, we did manage to push ourselves out of bed and were able to sleep in the van. I actually think sleeping might be the best way to ride in a car in Peru as it keeps you blissfully unaware of all the hi jinx and precarious maneuvers your driver might be pulling to get you from A to B.

We woke up two hours into the drive for breakfast at a small cantina attached to the tour agency before continuing on the final hour to rainbow mountain. Better rested, we were able to stay awake for the final leg of our journey and enjoy the agrarian surroundings and continued beauty of the Andes.

At an astonishing 5100 meters above sea level (higher than our summit on the  way to Machu Picchu), Rainbow  Mountain (aka Vinicunca or Montaña de Siete Colores) is an interesting geological feature, formed by the unique mix of location on the border of two tectonic plates and the rare combined presence of several vibrant minerals exposed by erosion and the tilting of part of a tectonic plate. 

Yes- those are some skittles. I decided to taste the rainbow as well as see it. 

Rainbow mountain has been known by locals for years as a sacred site and is a popular part of a 6 day hike through the Ausungate mountains. More recently it became famous through stunning Instagram photos and a more direct option was created for people who couldn't commit to such a demanding endeavor. The increased tourism is hastening the erosion of the mountain, despite attempts to corral tourists to maintained trails.

The hike up to the mountain itself wasn't so bad, or, at the very least, felt easier for not requiring us to carry 12 additional kilos up the incline. The mountain lived up to it's name, and was quite beautiful and colorful, but it was the other vistas nearby that took our breath away (I mean, more than the altitude already had). There was one view in particular, with a perfectly white glacier behind a rust-red peak, that felt like it had been photoshopped into reality.

We, along with a couple other members of our tour group, opted to hike back a longer route through the aptly named Red Valley. Where the Rainbow Mountain had felt surreal, this place felt like another world entirely, possibly one engineered by George Lucas. The rocks seemed almost like half-sunken spaceships jutting from the red dunes, and the spongy green moss stood in stark contrasting streaks. We took a TON of pictures because we'd never seen anything quite like it.

The hike through the valley was relatively solitary, a nice change of pace after Machu Picchu (selfie capital of South America) and Rainbow Mountain (which takes honorable mention). The entirely hike was also downhill, again, a nice change of pace. We got to walk across a ridge line, sprint down towering sand dunes, wave to the last lonely baño, bounce across fields of spongy moss, and tromp through a herd of alpacas. We made it back to the bus just as hail and thunder began to strike.

We had an unmemorable lunch at the same cantina, and made it back to Cusco by 4pm. We had dinner at a place recommended by locals and fellow hikers alike, which served tapas that would've passed muster in any foodie city in the world. We tried one of just about everything, from duck prosciutto with arugula to alpaca carpaccio with goat cheese to scallops in mango chutney. It was a spectacular send-off to Cusco.

All photos of Day 8