Arequipa, Peru

We left Lima, Peru on May 16 and flew to Arequipa, Peru. Arequipa is up in the mountains, and from the flight we had amazing views:

Arequipa is a small city 2,300 metres above sea level. Our tour manager warned us that symptoms of altitude sickness may start in this city and as we continue traveling higher in the following few days. Arequipa is known as “The White City”, this is because it lies in the shadow of 3 volcanoes, and the volcanic rock from these volcanoes is white. Many of the buildings were built using this volcanic rock, and thus the name “The White City” was born.

In the photo below the 3 volcanoes can be seen. Only 1 of the volcanoes is still active.

We first visited the Iglesia y Claustros da la Compania, a beautiful church near the main square.

Beside the church was a nice courtyard with beautifully carved pillars

We then visited the Plaza de Armas, the main square in the center of the town, and also a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was beautiful, and surrounded by palm trees (although the hundreds of pigeons and their droppings were slightly distracting from the beauty of the square).

On one side of the square stands the Cathedral (which unfortunately was not open to the public).

Our next stop was the Monasterio De Santa Catalina (The Santa Catalina Convent), a convent founded in 1579 which has housed many women serving as cloistered nuns. These nuns, once they entered the convent and became nuns, were unable to leave the walls of the convent for the rest of their lives. Because of this, the convent is actually a city within a city, where there are streets and houses (80 houses in total), a cemetery, kitchens, a church and an art gallery. The convent was constructed from the white volcanic stone, and painted in different bright colours.

These are the outside walls of the convent:

Photos from inside the convent:

A kitchen:

Laundry bins:

For dinner I tried some traditional Peruvian food: alpaca meat. The alpaca is an animal that looks similar to a llama, and the meat is delicious. I ordered the meat trilogy, which came with pork, beef and alpaca, where each meat was labeled with a small flag of the animal. Before serving all the food they put a bib on everyone so we wouldn’t dirty our clothing. The alpaca meat was really good! It was really tender, and was not really like any other meat I had tasted. I really enjoyed it.

One thing that really surprised me in Arequipa was how cold it was! Since we are now in the mountains of Peru my tour manager warned us that it will continue to get cold (in some places the high will be 6 degrees Celsius). We may even see snow! I hadn’t brought too many warm clothes, so I stopped at a shop to pick up some warm accessories:

Overall I really enjoyed my day in Arequipa!