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I´ve got loads more photos to upload but apparently there´s maintenace work going on that won´t let me do it, I´m so disappointed! Watch this space
It was lovely to have all your messages after the last entry, thank you!
I´ve been taking it relatively easy here after all the travelling, and getting used to the altitude (currently 2000m, but moving up to 4000m tomorrow.) The weather is cloudless, hot sunshine during the day, chilly by 6 p.m., when it gets dark, and it can drop to freezing during the night.
Arequipa is a rich city, and there are lots of very smartly dressed people around, and private schools, but there is also a lot of poverty. Beggars, some of them severely disabled, sit outside all the big churches and a lot of people scrape a living shining shoes or as street vendors; some of these have very young children with them. They sell fruit, often prickly pears, sweets and knitted dolls. One woman I saw showed plenty of initiative - she had a few flowers to sell, and a set of bathroom scales for people to weigh themselves!
Peruvians are apparently noted for their frequent protest marches, and I´ve seen 2 in 4 days. One was about wages, the other was a "save our planet" demonstration by children from various schools. They were accompanied by a number of police carrying batons and riot shields, but it was a very cheerful affair. There is a big police presence in general, with the National Guard, traffic police (mostly young women) and tourist police. I also saw a couple of armed guards outside the "Special Services" building and there are security guards outside all the banks etc. I´m told that there was no crime in Arequipa until the 2007 earthquake, when Pisco prison collapsed and the prisoners all came up here!
The city is very clean and well looked after, with no litter and not a trace of chewing gum! The many municipal gardens are tended by teams of gardeners, constantly weeding, watering and sweeping leaves. Treetrunks are all painted white for the bottom 2 or 3 feet. I´ve been excited to see vultures wheeling over the city centre several times. The thing I don´t like is the traffic. The petrol fumes are terrible and I´m terrified of crossing the road (much as I am in London!). I usually wait until a local appears and scuttle across with them!
I spent a long time yesterday at the market, which is huge. There´s a whole aisle of fruit (many of which I´d never seen before, and others were much bigger than we see in England), another of vegetables, and one dedicated to potatoes, of which there are 3000 kinds! Some of them look very odd, and some are dried. Peru is where potatoes originated, and they are used in a lot of traditional dishes, many of which involve milk and cheese, so I can´t tell you how good they are! There´s an aisle of stalls selling fresh juice, and there are also numerous "natural food" stall, which of course I examined closely! They all sell fresh medicinal herbs, which look very pretty displayed in big bunches at the front of the stalls, but they also offer a lot of dubious-looking proprietory potions and remedies. I took loads of photos, which I´ll upload as soon as possible, but I couldn´t bring myself to photograph the meat area (too many heads lying around - though I was interested to see dried lamb meat), or the box of guinea pigs (alive and supplied with tasty greens to keep them that way until they are bought for food), or the box of puppies piled up asleep, that looked too young to be taken from their mothers, or the tanks of frogs that will be made into juice (sometimes with added maca root), which is apparently good for the brain. I asked stallholders lots of questions - what is this and how is it cooked? etc., and they seemed pleased to explain things. It was good practice for my Spanish and restored my confidence a bit - I´ve had to buy a new mobile phone as the one I came with turned out to be useless, and I really struggled with that in Spanish (although it has to be said that I really struggle with mobile phones in English!)
I´ve also enjoyed shopping in a couple of supermarkets (sorry!). The fruit and veg are incredibly cheap and the quality is good- I´ve had a big, perfect avocado for about 20p, for example. The meat counters are open and customers help themselves to what they want with a big fork. I´ve been buying bits and pieces (not from the meat counter, obviously) and eating cheaply in my room a lot of the time, but I´ve also discovered a really nice Middle Eastern restaurant that serves a wonderful vegetable soup (chorba), and I´ve eaten that a couple of times. Peruvian food is very meaty and lacking in vegetables. I did try a locals´cafe for lunch yesterday, but I chose the wrong one and the food was awful.
Today is my last day in Arequipa, so I´ve done a bit more with it. I walked away from the city centre to the oldest part, and wandered up a "no through road" that turned into a track past fields of potatoes, broad beans and maize (the other Peruvian staple). On the way I was barked and yapped at by an assortment of dogs on roof terraces, and - my big excitement for today! - saw a hummingbird fly away from a flowering cactus to sit on a telegraph cable for a while before disappearing over a house, and I caught a glimpse of another one a bit later. I also visited a big park, where I met another hairless Peruvian dog, practising sprinting with its people. These dogs seem to come in all shapes and sizes, the only common trait is a lack of hair. Then I thought it was time for a bit of culture, and went to 2 small museums. One contained objects made by the pre-Inca Chiribaya people (800-1350 AD), which I was happily photographing until I was told it was not allowed. They were good farmers, fishermen, hunters and craftspeople and there are tools and beautiful ceramics and metalwork in the museum, but the textiles (which I wasn´t able to photograph) are especially impressive - incredibly finely woven, with intricate animal and geometric designs. The other museum tells the story of child sacrifices by the Incas to appease their mountain gods in about 1350. The children were chosen when they were very young, taken from their families and educated before they were taken to a mountain and killed. A number of bodies have been found, preserved in ice, and the example here, named Juanita for the archaeologist who found her, is the best preserved, so a lot of research has been possible. The museum has a lot of grave goods that were buried with her and with the 3 other Peruvian children, including a cloth that contained her umbilical cord (proved by DNA testing). At that time, and apparently still in some cultures, mothers would keep the child´s umbilical cord and cut a small piece off to give the child every time it was ill - a primitive form of stem cell treatment!
Tomorrow I´m off on a bus to Puno, beside Lake Titicaca, and staying there for just 2 nights before moving on to Cusco, which is where the next instalment will come from.
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