Arequipa - Tuesday, Oct. 17

We woke up at 9:30 to get our taste of the breakfast that ended at 10. We ordered our eggs, but the larger operation meant that the bread wasn't warm and the juice, while frothy, came out of the pitchers much thinner. Still, it was a big breakfast, and late as well. 

We got our day started with a look at the Plaza de Armas, which was half a block out our doorstep. As we entered the square from one corner, a chanting, marching group of school children entered on the same side, other corner. Mark has made me cautious of marching groups, but the fact that most of them weren't five feet tall reassured me. I looked up what "salud mental" meant - mental health! - and we paused to enjoy the children's signs and banners. At the back of the pack was a car with a brain on top. 

We sat on a bench to take in the church that covered one side of the plaza, and inadvertently watched the kids line up against the church steps for photos and chants. Oma was enjoying the sun and I was remembering that I hadn't put on sunscreen, so tried to stand in the mottled shade. Oma gave the once over to every tree in the well-manicured square, finding names (or making them up, I don't know) for a few of them. She is such a flower person - even when all we saw were cacti, she could find the ones with the yellow buds. 

Oma realized that the time to get into the church would be before the children moved on and blocked the entrance, so we walked up the steps ourselves (except off to the left) to get to the ticket area. A guide told us it was 10 soles to get in, then another 10 soles to the guide afterward as a "required tip." $6 was fine, so in we went. 

First we oohed and ahhed at the room of treasures. The Cathedral of Arequipa had burnt down after a tremor caused all the candles to fall over in 1844. The really rich bishop took care of it and expanded it to the full city block it is today. During the rebuilding, they found gold crowns for the Virgin Mary, goblets, jewelry, and these giant statues that we for processionals in hidden nooks. The guide told us that those that were out in the open had much of their beauty and treasure snatched away by needy hands. The hidden ones were fully intact. 

Natives had been using gold for a millennia or two before the Spanish arrived, so the prettiest were the pure gold pieces. Apparently, the gold is so soft you can't even polish it. 

The room ended with a crown with something like two thousand small diamonds in it that looked much too heavy for a statue of Mary to wear, but it was gorgeous. 

We climbed a double set of stairs to get up to the balcony overlooking the organ. A room of old books showed the difference between paper and cotton when it comes to aging (cotton wins) and showed the damage that the 2001 earthquake caused the front of the organ - pipes were dinged when one of the towers collapsed and the other fell over. 

A room of priestly garb with pure gold thread in some, and we were headed up to the roof. Neither of us realized stairs would be in the tour, and Arequipa isn't exactly at sea level. We made it up fine, taking in the views after the first set. 

A walkway ran around the pretty bland rooftop, with uneven concrete and stone, to the bells that are only rung yearly. We tapped them and heard their soft chime, then turned around to look at Misti, the still-active volcano. She erupted in the mid-1400s, so she's not scheduled for a bit. She does cause 20 or so tremors a day (that we couldn't feel) - if she were on the verge, it'd be more like 200. Nearly perfectly conical, it was nice, but the weirdness of the roof ruined the view for me. 

We walked down the flights, then entered through a giant side door into the sanctuary. Getting midway to the altar, Oma could smell the lilies covering it. Weekly, they get a shipment in from Colombia, though during the week before Easter, it changes nearly every day. 

We tipped our guide on the way out, and found ourselves back in the square to sit for a bit. Mid-70s and sunny, it was a good day to take it slow and not get too hot. 

Santa Catalina Monastery was two blocks more, so we got there, bought our tickets, and picked up another guide. 

The monastery has housed nuns since before 1500, not long after the Spanish arrived in Peru. A second daughter was given, with a large dowry gift, to the nunnery to become an apprentice at age 14, then be added to the order around age 18. Since many of the nuns came from privilege, individual houses were built for them inside the walls of the city within a city, with a room for their non-nun servant. Some nuns took in female pupils, with the students living with the most days, sort of like a finishing school so they could go on to be good wives. 

An earthquake damaged the property, and they left one section with the stones still slightly askew to show how the keystone above all the doorways kept them from collapsing. On top of that, all of the beds were built into the wall with an arch overhead - the strongest structure against a quake. 

The colors and gardens of the monastery reminded me so much of Spain, with the internal street names of Sevilla and Córdoba harkening back to those old town. The cloisters had orange trees, adobe red and bright blue paint, and great places to sit as Oma and I finished the tour and relaxed, looking at a tree that Oma managed to find the few flowers it was sprouting. 

I left her for a bit to climb to the roof of a building by the church, but the view was of mostly ugly rooftops, though Misti still looked out over it all. 

While we sat, a child fell into the cactus surrounding a bed of flowers. Her pain-filled cries definitely woke us out of the calming stupor of a cloister, and we headed toward a craft market. 

The market was hidden inside walls that made it look dead. It was dead - we were the only shoppers there - but it was open. A dozen stalls along the sides of a courtyard selling a lot of alpaca wool stuffs, woven trinkets, and keychains. I bought a coin purse, but we mostly browsed. 

Next stop was lunch. We had had a filling and late breakfast, so 3:30 seemed fine for food. A "nouveau Peruvian" place had caught my eye in the guidebook, so we stopped by. The alpaca ribs were slightly disappointing - fine enough meat, not too gamey, but paired with an incredibly sweet BBQ sauce that overpowered it. And the quinoa was just kinda bland. Oma had a giant Caesar salad with "bacon" (which was ham). We could have done better with our orders, or maybe our restaurant choice from a 2-year-old guidebook. 

The guidebook also mentioned a free art museum inside a bank building that used to be a bishop's mansion. We found the building and wandered as much as we dared with guards watching us, but I couldn't find the museum. Even looking up the address, it was right where we were, right where we looked, and right where it wasn't. 

Ah well, just another reason to cross the Plaza de Armes again and go back to the bed and breakfast/hostel. 

I had given Oma the guidebook to see if there were any other sights she wanted to see in Arequipa, but it was bordering on 4, and most museums closed at 5, so we were essentially in for the night. She nodded off, and I did some blogging. 

Back to internet, I get an email from the third party that we booked our Machu Picchu tickets through - Sunday, Oct. 22 is Peruvian census day. There is a curfew from 8am to 5pm, including foreigners, to be counted and fill out a questionnaire. The trains and buses probably won't be running. Hope you are getting to Aguas Caliente the day before and ready to walk the hour and a half uphill to Machu Picchu from the village!

Forums were saying to "always expect the unexpected" and "that's why you leave yourself extra time." The UK's website on travel to Peru said hotels and tourist spots would be operating normally. 

First, I tried to reconfigure our schedule. We could fly to Cuzco a day earlier ($$$), switch trains (no $ but ticket change), add a night in Aguas Caliente (switch, so no $), then buy a new ticket for Machu Picchu ($$).

After Skype failed me, I emailed the train company. They would be running the train we bought a ticket for. Ok, so it's just the bus up to the Sun Gate from Aguas Caliente. The tourist operation that we bought the ticket through said no. Oma said she'd just have me do the hike if they weren't. 

I happened to get an email confirming details with our hostel in Aguas Caliente about that time, and, emailing with her, she said the buses would definitely be running. 

That was about two hours of making Plans B-F before getting that final email confirming the buses, and, with all of the options except the original costing money, we just decided to stick with Plan A. 

(Corinne from the future - the next morning I got a final email from the tour agency saying that, never mind, they got confirmation that the buses were running. I just about threw my phone across the room. They started the panic, and now, twelve hours later, they say just kidding.)

Oma, the pinnacle of health, had finally come down with one of the two colds I've had in rapid succession. Coughing, she couldn't deny it anymore - and she hadn't gotten a cold in five years!

We kept it chill, and I challenged Oma to look through the map for a restaurant that looked good. Of course, the one she found after a 15-minute struggle was closed permanently when I checked on Google. The plaza had places overlooking the square, so at 8pm we headed out to see the lights of the cathedral, get a pre-dinner drink, and find some food. 

The cathedral was magnificent at night - slightly eerie how the bell towers were lit up with white lights on the inside, and yellow lights on the exterior. Face- or skull-like. 

At 8pm, nearly as many people wandered the square as at 10am. It was a mild night, just at mid-60s and sweater weather.

Some of those people in the square were trying to drum up business for their restaurants on the patios above the colonnades. One offered us a free drink, but we turned him down to complete our strolling circuit of the plaza. Beautiful colonial architecture, with music rolling out of the balconies above us, and I did a lot of people and street dog watching. A child's scooter, making its way rider-free down the path; a pair of teens taking a selfie with the church; a couple leaning against a tree in the shadows. 

Returning to the side with the restaurants, it was time for a sit-down. I had checked a few of the places out for reviews before going out, so we avoided the low rated one, but let another guy chat us up as I tried to find their restaurant on Google Maps to check it out. 

They didn't exist on the map, and, after Oma asked if we could have a free drink, and he asked if pisco sours would do, we were sold. 

A pipe-and-guitar band played in one corner, so we sat in the other. Our miniature pisco sours arrived - shockingly complete with three drops of bitters on top!

The meal went slowly. I was talked out of a full grilled guinea pig (mostly because Oma said she couldn't eat next to me with it on my plate, and it didn't actually look appetizing to me either). We found some starters - yucca, so Oma would finally know what it looked like and stop calling every random starch or vegetable yucca, and tequeños, because why not have a fried tube of cheese with avocado to dip it in?

I decided on the avocado stuffed with a potato and shrimp salad, since I'd seen it on a few menus, and Oma had the cream of mushroom soup to try to fend off her cold. And another order of pisco sours, since wine was only by the bottle. 

As we were finishing up (with the third pipe or guitar band making its rounds), we heard some hellos - and we found the California couple we had chatted with (and partied with) at Huacachina two nights earlier! It was a quick chat - me telling them about the craziness of Peruvian census day, and them telling us that they were getting up at 3am to take a tour to Colca Canyon (after just getting in that morning at 5!). We said our goodbyes and headed back for as much sleep as we wanted before figuring out our way to Chivay, Yanque, and ultimately our hotel in the canyon, in the morning.