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MAY THE 4TH BE WITH YOU.
We arrived in Arequipa completely exhausted, but it was our friend Mo's birthday and so we had a rendition of 'Happy Birthday' at the bus station. We dumped our bags in a storage room at the hotel because our rooms weren't ready yet, and headed out for an orientation walk around the city.
We went to a market place like nothing I have ever seen before, it was split into sections, the meat section was gross because people were carving chickens out in the open, and there were bull testicles on display (almost enough to make me veggie, but not quite), there were clothes aisles but the coolest one by far was the fruit aisle. It had hundreds of different fruits; the normal ones like Apples, Bananas, oranges, but also exotic ones like star fruit, dragon fruit, prickly pears, giant passion fruits, and so many more that I don't even know the names of.
Next we headed to the Plaza San Fransisco to meet up with the Free Walking Tour, which I'm increasingly coming to believe is the best way to see a city (not for you though mother, you need to be able to walk :P)
Arequipa is known as the 'White City' for two reasons, firstly because it's in the shadow of 8 volcanoes, meaning that a lot of the buildings are made from white volcanic ash, and secondly because it was a popular place for Spaniards to live when they first conquered Peru, meaning the population was largely white people.
Although Arequipa is over 3000mts hight, and so the Spanish suffered (as I did) the effects of altitude sickness; we went to a Plaza called San Lazaro because an important Spanish official had collapsed there due to altitude, and then risen a few minutes later, just like Lazarus did (ok not quite but it's a cute story)
I learnt that the red on the Peruvian flag represents bloodshed, and the white peace, although there's a legend that San Martin saw a red&white flamingo after revolting against the Spanish and that's why it's red&white. The Peruvian crest in the middle has a Bacunya, which is like a wild alpaca, to represent all the wildlife of Peru, a cactus to represent all the plants and a golden horn, to represent all the minerals.
Then we went to ALPACA WORLD, where we saw some alpacas on a farm and learnt how the jumpers and scarves are made; they're shaved every June when it's hottest, and 'baby alpaca' wool is the name given to the wool of the first shave. You can also get Bacunya wool garments, but these are ridiculously expensive because they can't be domesticated and therefore it's much harder to get their wool (some kill them, and some just tranquilize them, but I think Bacunya wool is unethical)
The main square in Arequipa is called Plaza Del Armas (weapons square) as are all the main squares in Peru, because when San Martin led the revolution for independence against the Spanish, everyone was encouraged to go to their main squares to get weapons and fight from there
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