Before we boarded the bus though, Maritza took us to a restaurant in the main street for dinner and for a lesson in making Pisco Sours (a plan that was no doubt was formulated to help lessen the pain of the night bus).
How to make a Pisco Sour... Combine, in a cocktail shaker… at least 2 shots of Pisco, the white of an egg, some lemon syrup, the juice of a lime, a dash of bitters and a few cubes of ice. Shake vigorously until the egg white foams, strain into a glass and sip (or gulp)! Mmmmmmmm.
Peru naturally celebrates their national drink on Pisco Sour Day, which falls on the first Saturday of February. The tradition holds that when the Peruvian National Anthem is played all Pisco Sours must be finished as a mark of respect. Stories abound about the origin of the Pisco Sour, I personally like the one that contends the drink was thought up by Peruvians when all wine was banned by the king in the 16th century.
The night bus wasn’t really as bad as I expected with lay-back seats and calf rests. We even had a flight attendant (drive attendant?) who passed out mini blankets and pillows, and then in the morning a cup of anise tea and a small box of unusual and unidentifiable snacks before we arrived at Arequipa.
All night the bus wound up through the Andes, climbing higher and higher, along narrow cuttings with a surprising amount of traffic, given the hour. All the curtains in the bus were mercifully closed, with most passengers oblivious as the bus teetered close to the edge of cliffs on tight bends and as it continually overtook slow moving vehicles on blind corners as a matter of course. I stopped peeking out the window after a while as it caused me too much stress to see what was really going on.
We arrived into Arequipa in the mid morning and a minibus picked up our weary group to take us to the hotel. Just we arrived into the old city, the streets became awash with protesters and our bus was enmeshed in a mêlée of gridlocked vehicles that were interspersed with people holding placards and yelling slogans. The protest was against a crooked politician who had ripped off people in a land development deal, Maritza explained. Apparently though, Arequipans are a bolshie lot and protests are a common way to register annoyance with the powers that be. We jumped out of the bus just short of our destination and walked to the hotel where our rooms awaited. After a delicious shower we met to eat breakfast in the courtyard of a small café in the jumbled back streets of Arequipa.
Once the self proclaimed capital of Peru, Arequipa is a beautiful city, with many of the buildings constructed from a pearly white volcanic rock called silla. It is guarded by three classic looking, cone shaped volcanoes on the horizon in the middle distance, and has a river running through the centre cloaked by a lush agricultural valley. As the second largest city, almost a million Peruvians call Arequipa home.
After breakfast we visited an alpaca woollen mill where we learnt the differences between all the South American camelids; alpacas, llamas, vicuna, and guanaco, and saw how the wool is graded, sorted, spun, dyed and woven. Vicuna wool is the finest, but vicunas are not domesticated and only a few are allowed to be caught and shorn each year, leaving baby alpaca as the next finest wool that is expensive to buy, but so very soft and cuddly! The woven woollen fabrics are just spectacular, all gaily multi-coloured and eye catching!
After the woollen mill we all jumped in a suite of tiny taxis that cost about $3 for the trip up to a vantage point above the city for a closer look at the volcanos. El Misti, the biggest, was framed between the two smaller ones Chachani, and Picchu Picchu and together all overlook the fertile terraced river market gardens, shaded with generous smattering of eucalypts.
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| El Misti |
Eucalyptus trees and Peru are now synonymous. The Peruvians couldn’t easily live without this versatile tree, introduced over a century ago, that grows quickly and provides fuel, timber for construction, and erosion control. It is so very lucky that it hasn’t become an invasive weed, running wild and making a nuisance of itself, like so many other transplanted species across the globe. The main downside of the eucalypt is that it has increased the fire danger in Peru, by introducing a fast growing fuel that was never there before.
It was lunch time after our trip to the top of Arequipa and after briefly visiting a sparkling white church, we walked to a restaurant in the rich end of town to try the local delicacy of cuy – or as it is more widely known, guinea pig.
Kai and Manja ordered one each, so did Jaime and me. Tedy and Hayley chickened out, and I’m not sure why Maritza didn’t order one as she said she really liked it. The four of us laughed nervously and looked at other people’s meals in the busy restaurant while we awaited our pigs to arrive. Eventually they came out on a plate, flattened with their sweet little faces still intact, even the eyes and teeth were there, if not a little misshapen in their tiny broken jaws, all deep fried and crispy. We took photos much to the amusement of the other restaurant patrons and then we tried them. There was not much meat to speak of on the back, and it was brown and stringy so I moved onto the shoulders where the meat was more like a tiny chicken wing and the back legs like tiny chicken drumsticks. The meat tasted like chicken too. I couldn’t come at eating the crispy skin, I was too worried I’d find a tuft of guinea pig hair that would turn my stomach. Come to think of it, my stomach was already turning as Maritza told me to eat the head. I just couldn’t do it, although the other three made a meal of their cuy – eating the whole things. I passed a piece of meat to Tedy and I think he just touched it to his lips! He reckons he ate some but I have my doubts! Maritza couldn’t help herself, she said the best part was the head, as she finished off my little creature for me.
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| Kai & Manja |
After the cultural dining experience, we all went our separate ways with Tedy and I opting to go souvenir shopping. I think we went in every shop along the tourist strip, him searching for the perfect warm Peruvian hat and me looking for a baby alpaca scarf for my daughter in London. Finally we wandered into a posh shop and both found what we looking for, a price that we were happy with after Tedy's skilled bargaining. After an ice cream we found a supermecardo and bought all the ingredients for pisco sours, including a cocktail shaker and little blue plastic cups for all of us. Something to look forward to!
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| Tedy |
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