Our time in Arequipa

Our 14-hour bus ride to Arequipa was _a lot_ more manageable than the 21-hour ride to Cusco. Plus, our 2nd-story front-seat view of the road ahead made it feel like we were flying (very very slowly) over the mountain roads.

Arequipa is know as “la ciudad blanca” (the white city) because so many of the buildings are made from a white volcanic stone that comes from the active volcano that overlooks the city. You can see the white stone in this representative shot of a street a few blocks from the Plaza de Armas.

Here is a shot of the active "El Misti" volcano we took on one of our walks. The large vase sculpture in the lower left is one we've seen in many places all over the city.


There are actually three mountains overlooking the city (I seem to remember our cab driver mentioning they were all volcanoes, but only El Misti is active). This is a shot of Jen reading two steps from the door of our room ($9 a night!) with a shot of one of the other mountains.

Of all the cities we've been in so far, Arequipa is our favorite. In our 45 minute walk out and around the city center, we passed through several beautiful parks and plazas.

The Plaza de Armas is almost as touristic as its counterpart in Cusco (though with far fewer and less aggressive hawkers), but outside its very limited area we got the feeling of being in a vibrant, colorful city with an active life of its own. Here's a shot of the Plaza de Armas, followed by a shot of another, smaller plaza about a 25 minute walk away.

We only spent a day and a half in Arequipa before going hiking in the Colca Canyon (more about this in the next post), but now we're back and have been spending a very relaxing 3 days here before our return to Lima. There's a wide variety of delicious and cheap restaurants and many short and beautiful walks to take from our hostel. It's been a great place to recover from the hike!

A side note about photography (sort-of)

Here's a brief excerpt from one of my favorite short stories by Italo Calvino: The Adventure of a Photographer...

"…Because once you’ve begun," he would preach, "there is no reason why you should stop. The line between the reality that is photographed because it seems beautiful to us and the reality that seems beautiful because it has been photographed is very narrow. If you take a picture of Pierluca because he’s building a sand castle, there is no reason not to take his picture while he’s crying because the castle has collapsed, and then while the nurse consoles him by helping him find a sea shell in the sand. The minute you start saying something, ‘Ah, how beautiful! We must photograph it!’ you are already close to the view of the person who thinks that everything that is not photographed is lost, as if it had never existed, and that therefore, in order really to live, you must photograph as much as you can, and to photograph as much as you can you must either live in the most photographable way possible, or else consider photographable every moment of your life. The first course leads to stupidity; the second to madness."

"You’re the one who’s mad and stupid," his friends would say to him, "and a pain in the ass, into the bargain."

It's a fantastic story which you can read in full here. I like it for the sheer variety and creativity of different ways of understanding photography it explores. I also like it for its over-the-top main character whose commitment to a misguided ideal of philosophical purity is a funny and sad example of "the examined life" run amok.

In any case, I hope you enjoy it!

Zombie manaquins of Cusco

We have noticed many differences during our time here in Cusco.

Whenever you order ice cream, you get a spoon shaped like a small snow shovel. Cars don't yield to pedestrians when turning right; or really, at any other time when they can avoid it. There doesn't seem to be much stigma attached to openly peeing in the street. It's common for strangers to wish you "provecho!" (bon-appetite!) whenever they see you eating. A picture of a woman in a bikini could really be an advertisement for *anything*.

One of the more unsettling differences is the wide variety of stricken manaquins that lear silently from the many small shops south of the Plaza de Armas. Here is a short, but, we feel representative, photo gallery.

Cookout

A few days ago we met up with our friend Jenny's friend Manuel who lives in Cusco. I thought we were just going to have some coffee and chat, but Manuel was saying something about his friend and a party and cooking potatoes in the ground. We said, "Sounds good!" and we were off hiking accross the city to Oswaldo's house.

There were only a few people there when we arrived at what appeared to be a house still under construction with a beautiful vista across the city. We made ourselves comfortable in a narrow fenced-in yard space where there was a small oven-shaped earth construction with a roaring fire in it.

We talked happily for awhile as more people arrived and the earthen stones in the oven turned black. Eventually, Oswaldo collapsed the top of the oven with a stick, and started throwing in potatoes, plantanes, and chicken with fresh rosemary wrapped in foil.

Oswaldo shoveled more earth on top to seal in the heat as much as possible, while others started making fresh guacamole and salsas.

After about 15 or 20 minutes, we unearthed our dinner, and everyone dug in! There were several varieites of potato (including a somewhat sweet one I'm unfamiliar with), and everything was delicious!

Last Day in Cusco

Here is where we've been living for the last 2 weeks:

The two major up-sides to the room were its price and location. Right outside our door is a large, infrequently trafficked street with a lovely median that kids would use for all kinds of interesting activities. Every night on the way home we'd see dancers, skateboarders, or jugglers practicing. Here's a shot of some of some bikers right across the street from our house.

Last night, as we headed out for dinner, we found the street closed-off entirely with a small parade of elementary-school-aged kids with homemade lanterns.

The major down-side of the room was the maximum of 2-3 minutes of hot water a day. Perhaps we were showering at the wrong times, but that was all we could ever get.

So, for our last night in Cusco we decided to treat ourselves to a night in a more upscale hotel. The best way to describe their shower is the feeling of standing under a waterfall. The new room is a wonderful, large place, with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of hot water. After 30 minutes under the steaming falls, we feel thoroughly rejuvinated and ready for another 3 weeks of camping conditions (which is more or less what we're going to be doing in the Colca Canyon and the north of Peru).

Next time we write, we should be in Arequipa! Cheers everyone!

"Now I really feel complete"

Remember the piazza and hamburguesas van from a few posts ago? We had never seen it move from its spot next to our favorite cafe, until last night when we found it awake and operating two blocks down the street! (Selling, from what we could tell, only chicken)

As Jen said, "now I really feel complete; we can leave Cusco"

Our hike out of the city

Greetings all!

Today we took a long hike out of the city. We're feeling pretty aclimatized by now, and the views were spectacular. Here are some photos.



Here is Jen about to set out from the Christo Blanco (which it's already a bit of a hike to get to). (This was the sweet photo to counterbalance the "tough" photo we had just taken (not pictured here)).



This is a shot (from the side) of the Sacsayhuamán ruins above the city. We had already read about these ruins in the book "The Last Days of the Incas", because one of the Incan emperors fled here to hide out from the Spanish. They were able to throw rocks to keep the Spanish away, but eventually they ran out of rocks and water and were captured.



On the edge of a small town above Cusco we saw this billboard. In case you can't read it, it appears to be advertising a public restoration project for this apparently barren field from 2004 that was scheduled to be completed in 90 days. Regardless of whether this was what they were aiming for, we thought it was nice.



As we continued out into the countryside, we walked through a small town rimming several large fields. To the left of the photo, there were people actively scorching some wheat fields, and behind us there was a large number of workers harvesting what looked like potatoes. Many of the workers stopped to wave and ask how we were doing, and a few tried to interest us in a horseback ride through the country. We're considering it.


Several more switch-backs up the road was this beautiful home, with this beautiful pig tied up across the street.





In addition to the pig, we also witnessed a sheep crossing further up.



The countryside surrounding the city is a patchwork of farmland and occasional houses. If you look at the large version of this next photo, you can see some of the terraces on the hillside.



We left the paved road and started walking along dirt roads and trails somewhere around here...









Here I am hiking through an anonymous field to get back to the road we spotted from the crest of a hill.



And Jen on the trail.

It was a great hike! Afterwards we enjoyed our favorite hole-in-the-wall vegetarian lunch, and had a recuperative coffee at Cafe Punchay. On the advice of our friend Manuel we also went to see the pre-Columbian art museum, but more on that another time.