Arequipa 2

Apart from trying the food, we did actually visit a couple of places. One of the days we spent 4 and a half hours in the convent of Santa Catalina, where we took about 150 photos, mainly because of the colours. There was a mix of mediterranean blues with bougainvillea, terracotta walls and various artefacts strategically placed by someone with an eye for design. However, we're only going to show a few of those photos as they're a bit repetitious. The place is still a convent but the nuns are restricted to a very small area. It is practically a town within a town and has streets and is a little maze-like.

"..what a picture! what a photograph!.."

I wonder what they are keeping you for..........?

The other place we visited was the museum of the Ice Maiden (not Margaret Thatcher - she's not technically dead yet! Still, there's time!) or Juanita. The story goes that the Incas used to sacrifice young women/girls at the top of volcanoes. These volcanoes were 6,000 metres high and a whole retinue of priests and royalty used to process up the mountain, along with the sacrificial girl. There she was drugged before having her head bashed in and allowed to die. Nothing was known of this in recent times until an eruption of a neighbouring volcano, Sabancaya, melted the snow and ice of the top of Nevado Ampato (6,310m). Archaeologists found evidence of the tomb but not the body. It seems that by rolling stones down the hill from the tomb they were able to locate the body. The body had been preserved in the ice and showed no sign of mummification. The museum told this story along with artefacts from the tomb ans evidence and items from other sacrifices in the area. As we were not allowed to take photographs inside the museum, we downloaded one from a website

Maybe it is Thatcher!

We had originally planned to go on to Puno for Lake Titicaca after Arequipa but it was nearly Christmas and so we changed our plans. This meant travelling overnight on the 23rd December to arrive on Christmas eve in Cusco. we were approaching one of our expected highlights of the trip - but what about Christmas dinner????