The view from Mirador de Carmen Alto.
A close up of the facade of the Cathedral in the Cayma.
Jon as St Juan.
The Founder´s Mansion´s church (most large houses hada chapel of some sort).
Jon impersinating his lunch - deep fried guinea pig... yum!
Cactus flower.
Passionfruit flower. This morning we set off on a city and country tour (well by country it meant surrounding suburbs). It was definately a good way to get an overall picture of Arequipa.
We embarked on our bus drive from Plaza de Armas (every town seems to have a Plaza de Armas – must be historically important) where all the building blocks of stone have been numbered. This is to ensure the plaza can be rebuilt in the event of an earthquake.
First stop was Mirador de Carmen Alto – a lookout with great views of El Misti (means Mr) and Chachani. These two volcanos are said to be married for some illogical reason. We could also gaze at Pichu Pichu which is another extinct volano and not part of the couple (no threesomes happening there).
We then headed over to Distrito de Cayma and the church of San Miguel Arcángel which was built in 1730 and really was not that exciting. The carved facade was quite pretty though. After a very quick peek at the church (Jon insisting on posing in front of Saint John - don't ask me why), we drove to the Yanahuara lookout and ate some traditional ¨cheese¨ icecream. Thankfully it did not taste remotely like cheddar or any other type of cheese (although part of me was interested in the concept of cheese in a cone). It was more like frozen condensed milk – quite nice and didn't give us food poisioning even though it came from a street cart.
Next we were dragged to the obligatory alpaca factory outlet where I refused to part with my money. This was made easier by the fact that the items for sale were rather hideous and would have probably appealed to rich, fifty year old Italian and Greek women. I learnt that a 100% baby vicuña scarf costs in the vicinity of $850US – outrageous! I think I will stick with wool.
I don't remember anything interesting about the other suburbs we drove through after this but we ended up at the Mansioń del Fundador. The Founder's Mansion was where Garci Manuel de Carbajal, the founder of Arequipa once lived, or his son did, or something like that. I was disappointed to find out the house was not built on the edge of a cliff (at least as far as I could tell it wasn't and I am sure it isn't that hard to work that one out) as I was led to believe. We had to pay to get in and were only given 15 minutes to sprint around the property which was a pity although, nothing in the place, including the actual house, was original. Everything has been destroyed and rebuilt after various earthquakes.
After this place we refused to pay and enter the Sabadia Mill (circa 1785) which was built in the area that was once housed rich Peruvians country retreats (their weekenders were built ten minutes down the road). We just couldn't be bothered seeing anything else by this stage and were looking forward to the end of the tour. Finally we were dropped off at a restaurant that served typical Arequipian food. It was surprisingly good value (I had my doubts when it was recommended by the tour company) and my stuffed pepper was rather tasty. Jon was not so keen on his deep fried guinea pig – hardly surprising. I just looked at its little crispy ears, tiny teeth and horrible claws and was repulsed!
We then went back to town and walked around some more and poked our head into the main cathedral – again, not terribly exciting.
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