Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Arequipa, the "White City" named because of the white volcanic stone the city was built with, is said to be the second most important and beautiful city in Peru. The city is built on the slopes of the active El Misti Volcano. A fact I found astonishing is that the actual summit of this volcano, lies a mere 17k away from the town, and as the town's population continues to grow it moves closer to where there are now residences built into the base of the mountain.
The architecture is beautiful, the numerous white stone colonial monasteries are built on narrow cobblestone streets surrounding the heart of the city at the Plaza de Armas, where the locals sit on benches around a lovely fountain and feed the overwhelmingly large population of pigeons. Think Alfred Hitchcock movie numbers. The view from the plaza is 360 of balconies where the nicest restaurants have set up shop, offering vistas of the sillar Cathedral bordering one side of the park with El Misti towering behind it.
The town is filled with small, family run, no name restaurants offering traditional Arequipena food. You don't know they are there until you poke your head around a corner and see a man butchering a lamb in a room with a kitchen and a few tables. Dinner was Caldo de Gallina, a specialty of which the woman, who I assumed owned the place, was very proud. It was a yummy chicken soup with noodles and a hard boiled egg. A much safer looking option than the fully intact roasted guinea pig that watched me eat my dinner.
The next day I went for a nice jog up to the residential neighborhood of Yanahuara where I found the most perfect shady park, and did some yoga surrounded by grazing llamas. I met Roy, a science teacher who has lived in Arequipa his whole life, and we chatted for a bit on one of the park benches. He asked me about the library system in USA because there are no libraries in Peru, and I asked him all about Arequipa, for which his only complaint was that there is a lot of pidgeon poop. In bed early to be able to wake up at 2:30 for my trek to Colca Canyon!
- comments