Back to Arequipa

So Mother and I made it out of the Colca Valley, but only barely.  I was feeling awesome last night and all was well only to have another crazy headache hit in the middle of the night.  BOO.  Then hazily checked clock at 7:30am only to realize alarm had not gone off and we were supposed to be meeting Zuley at 8am.  Jump out of bed cram stuff in suitcases shove bread in mouth and out the door.  Mom was feeling pretty good about the three hours of sleep she got, so we were off to a solid start.  Stopped at a few places along the road back to Arequipa, including a "wishing spot" with thousands of stone piles made by tourists, where there were 360 degree views of volcanos.  I thought about making a wishing stone pile myself, but we were at 16,108ft and I had trouble breathing while walking, nevermind gathering stones and carefully piling them together.  Saw some vizcachas, an interesting rodent that looks like a cross between a ground squirrel and a rabbit.  On the way into Arequipa got pulled over a couple times by the local policia... apparently they are totally corrupt and spend their days at these check points checking to see if people have both a driver's license and car insurance.  If they do not they don't get a ticket, they just have to pay off/bribe the officers.  The policia do nothing along the lines of traffic control, speeding tickets, etc. - their primary presence is at these outposts of corruption.

The coolest thing we did in Arequipa was go to the Monasterio de Santa Catalina - a convent which is a "city within a city".  Oh, as an aside Arequipa is called the "white city" due to the sillar volcanic ash used in construction of the building.  On that note, the convent buildings used to be this white ash color but in the 1980s it was deemed too bright and the walls were painted in very strong reds and blues.  Walked about Arequipa some more, checked out a few other cathedrals and churches, and then to the Museum of Andean Sanctuaries to see "Juanita".  As it turned out Juanita was not in residence so we were left with Saracita - one of fourteen other naturally preserved children found in Peru.  Note: they are not mummies!  These children were used in ritual sacrifice to appease the mountain gods.

Back to our hotel at 6pm, looking forward to a solid headache-free six-hour night sleep, gotta be up and running bright and early tomorrow (even too early for breakfast!) for our flight to Cuzco.

woot woot