Impressions of Arequipa
After spending the night in Lima, we caught an early morning flight to Arequipa, a Spanish colonial city at 5000 ft. Our plan was to spend one night in Arequipa to adjust to the altitude before heading to Puno, which is at over 12000 ft. Since we were gaining altitude quickly, we all decided to take Diomox to help ward off altitude sickness. While I appreciated not getting sick, Diomox made my feet, knees, and hands tingly and slightly numb at random times during the day and night--very annoying!
My parents hadn't given much thought to the Spanish conquest of the New World since they didn't grow up in this hemisphere. Their first impression of Arequipa was that it reminded them of Mexico. Yes! Conquered by the same people. Good observation. It reminded me of Merida in particular, with its narrow streets, abundant plazas, and colonial architecture.
We stayed at La Casa de Melgar, a fascinating hotel that was an old colonial home. The rooms had high vaulted ceilings, thick stone walls, and windows overlooking a beautiful garden. The grounds were so beautiful that we were very excited to just stay at the hotel instead of wandering around town. Part of the allure for me was that the gardens were an oasis from the clouds of dust and diesel exhaust emanating from cars careening down the narrow streets that trapped the air pollution.
Out of everything about our trip, my dad was most excited to indulge in ceviche. Thus, for our first lunch in Peru, we found a restaurant that my guidebook recommended. We ordered mixtos ceviche, meaning that it included lots of unidentified but very tasty seafood. Unfortunately, it turns out that Glen was allergic to something in the ceviche. He spent the rest of the day in bed, hoping that the Benadryl I happened to bring from home would help his eyelid swelling go down quickly. We stayed away from ceviche for the rest of the trip.
We also visited a museum that houses the mummy of a girl named Juanita sacrified by the Incas about 500 years ago. Apparently the Incas raised specially selected children who were sacrificed to appease the gods when volcanoes became active. The child would make the journey to a nearby volcano, be killed (by a blow to the head in this case), and then buried with offerings to the gods. The Incas didn't actually mummify the children, but this girl's body happened to be well-preserved. It was amazing to see!
In getting directions to the museum, I got to try out my terrible Spanish for the first time. I mumbled "El museo? Juanita?" with a confused look on my face before Glen took over to receive the directions with his fluent Spanish. By the end of our trip, I had graduated to speaking up to five word full sentences. Sometimes the person I was speaking to would have to stare at me for a long time waiting for me to compose my sentence, but I'd eventually get something intelligible out.
