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