Days 218 to 221 - Tuesday 25th to Friday 28th April 2006

After waking up late we made our way directly to the bus station without passing go. We hopped on a bus to Arequipa, a nine hour jaunt, meaning we would hopefully arrive sometime around 9pm. Things didn’t start to well as we we found out - more by luck than judgement - that we had to change buses in the middle of the journey.

The 6 hours on the first bus were decent enough, we even got some nice ladies coming on board and serving up some deer meat or something accompanied by boiled new potatoes, certainly one of the best meals I have had on any bus. The second bus didn’t live up to its predecessor however. Cramped, packed, loud and slow it took us another 6 hours to reach Arequipa, made all the worse by the drivers insistence on playing Bolivian folk music at full volume.

for those of you not in the know, bolivian folk music sounds like ten cats being drowned at one. Lacking any rhythm, it sounds as though these cats scream at varying intervals and occasionally over the top of one another, creating a sound like no other. Add to that some pan pipes music and you are in Bolivian folk heaven.

By the time we got off bus I was pretty much shaking and quivering from the torture of it. I managed to regain my senses long enough to check my ears for any sign of bleeding before taking a taxi to our chosen hostel - The Point. Luckily there we were able to get a beer to relax and let the ringing in our ears go away.

Arequipa is known in Peru as the White City. This is due to sillar, the material used in construction of the majority of the buildings in the old town. Not suprisingly this material is white, hence the buildings are white, hence the White City. Not difficult really.

Aside from being white, the town has one of the nicest main plazas of any town I have seen so far. Which says a fair bit because every town in Latin America has a main plaza.

Also within Arequipa is a town within the town. This is the Santa Catalina monastery, and inside its high sillar walls (which cover about 4 square blocks in the centre of town) the most important religious building in Peru. Built in the 16th Century, the monastery once housed 200 nuns and 300 servants. That was until 1970 when it opened to the public for the first time. Still today there are nuns living at the monastery but only 30 or so. These are restricted to parts of the town that are not open to visitors.

The narrow streets and variety of colours in the walled city are reminicent of the narrow streets of the markets in Tunisia I visited a few years ago. Aside from appearance the way in which the thick walls reflected the heat and make the insides of the buildings a lot cooler than the outside was also similar to the Arab markets in Tunisia.

Some of the reproductions of the nuns ‘cells‘ certainly gave no illusion as to the starkness of life as a nun. With nothing but a thin matress, a bedpan, a table and a bible these nuns lived their lives.

Aside form the monastery, Arequipa has an impressive cathedral and other churches. I felt it would have been rude not to appreciate the Plaza de Armas and hence spent an afternoon sitting, reading, drinking coffee and watching the suprisingly good looking women wandering by.

Having spent the last 6 months or more in Latin America I really should have realised by now that no-one goes out during the week. Why then did I find myself in town on a Wednesday night? No idea. I was right though, no-one was out! Except Aaron, Jon & I. No matter.

Thursday turned out to be more of the same, wandering the city, looking at the buildings and the girls. One main difference with the end result was Thursday Ladies night. Which meant the chicas drank for free. Which meant were all out, drinking. Therefore it goes without saying the boys were out trying to pull those girls who were drinking for free.

The end result was a hugely packed nightclub where everyone is drunk (turns out the boys drank for virtually free too - 1 Sole a beer - about 20 pence). Add to this some Western boys and you have a decent recipe. Being blue eyed and blonde (ish!) in this part of the world is a blessing.

Friday wasn’t eventful. DVd’s became the order of the day. Walk the Line (quality), Capote (OK) and Cuidad de Dios (Brazilian film, City of God - buy it!). Friday night was a smaller one, I had to be up at 6am to go on a tour of the Colca Canyon, so I only stayed out until 4am.