Off to the White City: Arequipa!

Saturday 23 Feb, 2008

We woke up today around 7:30 or 8:00 am and had breakfast at El Tambo. I finally had some huevos! YUM! Our taxi arrived at 8:30am but we were running behind and didn't leave until about 8:40. We were a bit rushed. I thought they were going to have plastic bags for our strappy backpacks, but they didn't! (They did have machines that you could pay to put plastic wrap all over the bag!) Everything worked out fine. Our flight was supposed to leave at 10:25am but didn't depart until 10:55. The flight was very short and we arrived in Arequipa about noon.
The nice thing about the hostel we're staying at here is they pick you up at the airport! The Arequipa airport was incredibly small. (probably only 1 plane at a time!) We got all our bags and eventually arrived at Queen's Villa. We checked in and changed clothes cause it's a bit colder here. I then called my other TravBuddy Rafael, but gave the phone to Chris almost immediately (to converse in Spanish). It was about 2:00pm and we were going to meet Rafael at the Plaza de Armas at 3:00. We headed out and slowly made our way... lots of stopping for photos and we also got some empanadas from a little food place. Mine was the “mixtas” which is carne y pollo together. It took us a long while to make our way along the blocks full of construction. We got to Plaza de Armas right at 3, so we stood in front of the church hoping Rafael would notice us because his photos from TravBuddy were far away so I really had no idea what he looked like. He eventually came over to us and we asked “what should we do?!” He said the market is nice and Gloria also wanted to see some of the colonial mansions.
We started walking, yet we stopped constantly to take photos or wait for Chris. It got kind of frustrating when we didn't make much progress. Many people came up to Chris and I to say to put away our camera because they will be stolen. I'm not sure if crime is big here, but we did not have any problems. After at least an hour we arrived at the market which was very colorful, big, and full of scents! After all this wandering, Gloria and I were hungry for dinner. Chris wasn't hungry because he had two empanadas, a potato thing, and had devoured a large mango at the Plaza! We wanted traditional food, so Rafael took us to a place called Antojitos de Arequipa. Gloria really wanted something with rice (arroz) but was having some trouble with the menu. We both ended up getting chicken dishes. Mine was Pollo a la plancha (I didn't know what I ordered! it was chicken and fries.) Gloria got Arroz Chaufa de Pollo. While we ate, Chris went outside to take some more photos. Rafael was very nice even though his English wasn't great (not as good as Claudia).
After eating we decided to go back to the hostel, but before that I wanted to buy a mango! I got two and then we hailed a cab and gave him the hostel address. We started driving along and the driver seemed confused. Both Chris and Rafael were trying to help and we even gave the driver a MAP of the hostel and surrounding roads. The driver eventually stopped and got out to ask someone else for directions! What kind of cab driver doesn't know the city?! :-} HA! I was laughing hysterically! The driver came back and we went down a few more roads and eventually got to the Back side of Queen's Villa! What?!  We told him it was close enough and got out. At this point, Chris wanted to go back out for some night photos, while Gloria and I wanted to stay at the hostel to relax and write. So that's basically where we're at now. We've been writing and chatting for a while and talked a bit about religion/church. At the moment we are still attempting to get a flight to Cusco and it's still not working well.

I forgot to mention earlier when we were at the Plaza de Armas �" Chris wanted one of his mangos and I offered my pocket knife. He's a bit of a clean-freak/germophob so he had to wash the mango with bottled water and clean the knife, etc. Then he began eating like a cave man, dripping juices all over!! :) When he was done we went to a pretty church on the corner nearby. After a few quick photos we wanted to go to the market and kept getting distracted and eventually wandered into a pretty courtyard area called Claustro de La Compañía de Jesus. A group was practicing dancing right when we walked in!.. very fun! The walls were elaborately carved with beautiful designs. This place was used to train priests in the past. Now the place has some businesses and I bought some post cards here! We might not get to Cusco... we keep running into WALLS!

1:18am,  24/02/08