Arequipa

Arequipa is a 6 hour bus ride from Puno. It has a lovely Spanish plaza with a huge cathedral and two-story Spanish colonnades lit up with white fairly lights at night. When we arrived we had hoped to visit Colca Canyon for the day, but soon discovered this meant leaving at 2 in the morning and taking a four hour bus ride each way. After brief consideration, we opted to relax in Arequipa instead. One of the highlight is seeing the Andean condors at the crack of dawn. Stephen and I were fortunate to have a huge Andean condor fly over our heads during the bird show at the San Diego Wild Animal Park so I didn´t feel like I was missing out too much.

Instead we visited the Santa Catalina convent. It is the size of a small village and the nuns lived in more luxury than we expected (a few had harpsichords and small sitting rooms). I think their family had to give a large donation (like a dowry to the church) for nuns to be admitted in the past.

We also saw 'Juanita', the frozen mummy of a young girl sacrificed by the Incas to appease the mountain gods. She was buried in a cave on Mt. Ampato (over 20,000 ft). She was chosen at a young age to make the epic journey from Cusco to Mt. Ampato. She was then given chicha (a really strong alcoholic beverage) and then clunked over the head with a large stone. It was believed that she herself would become a deity so it was quite an honour for her to walk uphill on steep stone steps for days on end to the high altitudes of Mt. Ampato eating only maize and coca leaves along the way....She is so well preserved because she fell deep into an icy cavern during one of the many Peruvian earthquakes.