Arequipa

It has been forever since I have posted to Peru-zo.  We got back to the states in early May and I immediately started my last set of summer school classes for my Master’s in Mental Health Counseling.  That, combined with seven weddings in a row, put sorting through Peru photos on the back burner.  BUT – summer school is over and I am making headway on the weddings – so finally, I have a chance to share some of our last weeks in Peru!

In mid-April, mom, dad and Ari (our family friend) came to visit Kenzo and me!  We met up in Arequipa, a large city that Kenzo and I had never visited and spent a few days exploring there before we brought them home to Cuzco with us.

Over the next several days, I am going to be posting photos of their trip to Peru (which also aligned with our final days there…when they headed back to the states on April 30th, we had a few more days to do one last hike before coming home on May 6th).

So – this post is the beginning of our time with Ari, mom and dad – spent in the lovely city of Arequipa.  We stayed in the Yanahuara neighborhood in a lovely bed and breakfast called Casa de Ana.

Dad really wanted to pet a llama, but they weren’t so inclined . . .

We visited the large cathedral on the main plaza:

Mom, who plays bells at church, got to ring the big bell (notice the mistake with the “p” in Arequipa being backwards on the bell.

We walked through the main plaza . . .

Tasted some interesting food before finding some real treasures in the city (ZigZag being one of our favorites):

I think one of our favorite parts was doing a tour of the Monastery of Santa Catalina by night.  We all were sad to hear the history of this place.  Girls would commit to become nuns (or their families would commit them) at age 12 and after that, would never leave the convent walls again.  This convent happened to be the place where richer families would send their daughters.  Their thought was that if one child went into religious life, they would spend time praying for, and thus saving, the souls of the rest of the family.

The convent was like a city within the larger city of Arequipa.  This is inside the walls of the convent on a row with several individual apartments for nuns.

Inside the kitchen of one of the apartments (if I remember correctly, apartments had one, two and three bedrooms). 

The following day in Arequipa we did a walking tour:

This is “Cheese Ice cream.”  It tasted a lot like natia for all you Gonzalez clan.

Hand-made goods!  We had a better visit to another site later in the week, so more photos to come.

We visited the large open market that had everything from slabs of meat to hats and decided to get some food to eat on our roof-top at Casa de Ana for dinner.

Okay – I wanted to show some of the various kinds of people we saw on the streets.  This guy was selling every color of shoelaces that you could have ever wanted:

This guy was begging for money with a “missing arm” . . . although there is a mysterious bump on the inside of his shirt (we did not see too many people go for it).

The view from our rooftop.

Mount Misti – an active volcano that can be seen in the distance overlooking Arequipa.

We saw a protest in the main plaza:

And enjoyed some drinks at sunset on a restaurant roof-top on the plaza:

And then we packed up and got ready to head to Cuzco via a night bus.

Check back tomorrow for our Cuzco times with mom, dad and Ari.

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4 Responses to Arequipa

  1. Jan Whiteside says:

    LOVE WHAT’S POSTED SO FAR!!!! THANK YOU!!!

  2. Ruia Gonzalez says:

    Beautiful!!! Thanks for posting!

  3. Susan Schneider says:

    These photos are amazing. Thanks for sharing!

  4. Nadine says:

    Awesome! Keep ’em coming!

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