Our next stop was Arequipa, another beautiful colonial town, we were glad it lived up the the reputation after the horrible night bus we had to get there! We decided to book the cheapest one, every night bus we’d had so far had been great, lots of leg room, reclining seats, free meal and blankets and super comfy. So we figured the cheaper one would maybe not include a meal and blankets but really apart from that what could be wrong? It turns out a lot. We were crammed into bolt upright chairs that didn’t recline at all and were all of 5cm away from the chair in front, which would be fine if you didn’t have any legs. Honestly I’m sure caged hens get more room and the cages probably smell better too! Eventually we got used to sitting bolt upright crushed into a bus that smelt like a urinal and drifted off to sleep, but you can see why it was a relief to wake up in beautiful Arequipa!
The first day we had a walk around the city, it’s surrounded by 3 volcanos and was built by the spanish out of beautiful white volcanic stone. Arequipa is known as the white city and people assume it’s because of these white stone buildings but originally the buildings where all painted colonial colours, it was actually called the white city because there was no town in Arequipa before the Spanish decided to settle there so it was predominantly a city of white people, after independence the colonial colours were left to fade off of buildings and a more politically correct back story for the white city was spread.
Arequipa also had ammaazzinnggg food and as if that wasn’t great already it was also super cheap! We visited a huge food market and treated ourselves to some super tasty mangos! We also spoilt ourselves and dined in a few nice restaurants while here but our favourite was a burger restaurant that made everything from scratch, the food was great and a huge burger chips and a drink came to S/.15 (£3.45) you can’t argue with that! They also had an amazing selection of home made sauces which were delicious, including a purée black olive sauce, which sounds disgusting and was bright purple but was actually really tasty!
On our second day in Arequipa we went for a walking tour, it was interesting to hear the history of the city and the guide pointed out lots of parts of architecture that mixed Spanish and native symbols to try and integrate the city, especially in the churches where native religious symbols were carved into entrances to ease the transition of the local populations into Christianity. We also got to see the monestry and learnt about the tradition for children of the town. For each family the first son was sent into the army and the last to become a preist, the first daughter was to be married, the second sent to become a nun in the monestry, hence why the monestry here is so huge! Outside of the monestry we got to meet Peru’s most friendly police officer, again this was not just our opinion but he had been voted such for the last 3 years! Me and Grace seem to attract all of Peru’s celebrities!
We also visited an alpaca farm and got to see a few, we learnt the difference between lamas, alpacas and a smaller version called Guanacos. All lamas and alpacas in Peru are domestic after hundereds of years of agricultural use in Peru, Guanacos however were to fast to ever be caught and domesticated. We were shown all of the natural alpaca wool colours and then how these were dyed. There were also local women hand weaving alpaca wool products, which range in price but can be up to £3000 for a single jumper or scalf! Our budget doest quite stretch that far so we had to make do with just feeling how soft the products were.
We had heard about a rooftop bar which supposedly had a beautiful view of the sunset so in the evening we went to find it and after much walking around in circles, checking our phone maps and gawping about at the skyline like idiots we mannaged to root it out and enter just in time to see the sun go down, it was definitely worth the game of blues clues to find it!
After a lovely evening we headed on a night bus (this time the most expensive one! And boy was it nice!) to Cusco. I’ll let you know what we get up to there!
Lots of love,
Alice x