Arequipa

Hi again!

Know these emails are coming fast and furious but its a whole lot easier writing small bits at a time rather than one long mail!! Internet is SOOOO cheap in this country..under R2 an hour can u believe it! Anyway, so we took an overnight bus from nazca to a town called Arequipa which is up in the andes again, but only about 100km from the coastline. The bus journey was 10 hours long (arrived at 5am in the morning)....and really uncomfortable..neither of us got any sleep..so we booked into a hostal and slept till midday! That afternoon we walked around town looking at the old buildings and cathedrals..arequipa is a world heritage city and u can see why cos it is really different to other cities we have seen here!!! It is overlooked by a snowcapped volcano called El misti which is REALLY pretty!! The hostal we booked into is next to a huge nunnery (santa catalina nunnery) (which is 100s of years old)...it has survived all the earthquakes that the city has experienced. It is surrounded by these HIGH walls made of these huge sillar blocks (sillar is a porous stone from volcanic lava..which has a white appearance which is why arequipa is called the white city cos most of the buildings are made of this!) which kept the nuns from mixing with the outside world. There are still a few nuns left there, but they have been confined to one corner of the walled city and the rest of the monastery has been opened to tourism to see the beautiful gardens and architecture. We decided to give it a skip and rather headed for the museo santuarios andinos..which contained the findings of an archeaological find on top of the ampato volcano..tombs where inca children had been sacrificed to the gods. The most famous find was of a 12 yr old inca girl which they call juanita..she was found right at the top in the volcanic crater at an altitude of 6300m (unlike the other kids who were found lower down). When they found her she was lying out in the open, she had rolled out of her tomb during an earthquake which accompanied the eruption of a nearby volcano. The volcanic eruption also gave off enough heat to melt the ice that was on top of ampato volcano, and thats how the body and the other tombs were exposed. We were given a 20 minute video to watch of the discovery before we went into the museum..we saw artifacts like pottery and clothes that were found in the tombs and then we were taken to see jaunita..she is so well preserved cos she has been buried under ice for over 600years..u can even see her skin!!!! All her internal organs are preserved too so she has provided valuable DNA infornation for studies on inca culture. They found out she died by a blow to the skull after a ritual was performed at the top of the volcano. It was really freaky to look at her..just sitting there in the ice chamber..here is a photo of her i just found on the net...

El Misti Volcano, Frozen Inca Mummy.

So that was really interesting..was really fascinating to look at a 600yr old person! The rest of the afternoon we just walked around looking at the curio shops and now we are waiting in the bus terminal to head off to the colca canyon (to a town called chivay to be exact) to see the andean conders too..cant wait!!!! hope u guys are all well, will email again soon. lots of love, us