Arequipa

(Peru, Jan 2009 continued)

After four days in Lima we flew to Arequipa, Peru’s second largest city, population one million or so. Overland, via bus through Ica and Nazca on “the Gringo Trail,” it’s 16 to 18 hours, so the one-hour, 450 mile (700+ km), $125 round trip (Lima to Arequipa and back to Lima from Cuzco) was not a difficulty decision.





(click on photos to expand)

Arequipa, to our taste, was vastly more pleasant than Lima. In spite of it’s size and population, the old colonial city center is compact and clean. Lima was neither, and muggy to boot, 75-80 F(23-25 C) with high humidity and haze. Arequipa is at an altitude of 7,700 feet (2350 m) and is very dry. While January is in the rainy season, the monthly average is only one inch (actually 28 mm) and while it was often cloudy we had dry weather with highs in the low 70s (low 20s C).

The heart of colonial Arequipa is the Plaza de Armas, surrounded by the cathedral and municipal buildings.

Our hostel, the Casa de Melgar, (found courtesy of Lonely Planet Peru) was in a great old colonial house, previously the home of the Bishop, with a succession of patios stretching back 50 meters or so from the entrance.

This patio was almost directly below our room.

Breakfast in the glassed in dining room included muesli of quinoa* and puffed corn, scrambled eggs with ham, bread, jams, coffee or tea, and coca leaf tea (!?). *Quinoa is a native Peruvian small grain, tasty and high in protein. It can be popped, as in muesli, or cooked like rice. Whole Foods has it; it’s very good.

Coca leaf tea, or mate de coca is served everywhere in the Peruvian highlands. Taken either as tea or chewed, it is effective against altitude sickness. A gets migraines, and was concerned that the high altitudes we were going to experience, up to around 14,750 feet (4,500 m), would give her soroche, altitude sickness. She had been taking a pharmaceutical, but started having side effects, so she stopped it and we relied on mate de coca with breakfast and chewed coca during the day if we felt any symptoms. Neither produced any noticeable high, but coca evidently works: neither of us was sick, though we certainly noticed the altitude climbing the steep streets in Cusco.

The major tourist site in Arequipa is the Santa Catalina Monastery, a city-block sized complex of buildings begun in 1580 and only opened to the public in 1970. The nuns, who had to be “Spanish” (not mestizo) came from wealthy families who could pay the substantial dowry required for entry.

The convent is a maize of buildings, courtyards, gardens and narrow alleys....

When I noticed that the kitchens had indigenous flat grinding stones rather than European style querns I first began to suspect that the nuns were not doing the chores.

The laundry.

The nuns brought their household furnishings and personal women servants, who evidently were thus interred for life, and lived a life of luxury; though museum displays of barbed wire underwear and other items for bodily mortification suggest that all not was not fun and games.

In the 1870s the monastery was reformed, servants and slaves were eliminated or reduced in number, and its wealth was transferred to the Vatican. Twenty to 40 nuns (depending on what you read) still occupy the monastery.

Neither Alejandra, who is a practicing Catholic, nor I was uplifted by this 450 year history of exploitation, luxury, slavery and piety, though the monastery itself is beautiful.

But on a more positive note, the adjoining Trattoria de Monasterio has great food! We started with pisco sours and a very interesting complementary tidbit of three inch flour tortillas with a picadillo of minced vegetables to put on top. Then we shared this ceviche de verduras, (right) followed by osso buco with a ricotto relleno.

(to be continued; Peruvian food is next....)