Peru trip - Arequipa

Our day started early at 4 am by our various alarms set the night before and a phone call from the hotel reception, letting us know that our missing luggage had been returned to us.

We were quite relieved, went down to the lobby, had a cup of coffee and chatted with César Melendez, the front desk employee, who told us he had learned English over 4 seasons working at Deer Valley Resort; small world indeed!

The Condor Travel crew picked us up on time and drove us to the airport at 5 am, the city was filled with traffic as the disco and bars were just closing after a busy night... Our flight to Arequipa, south of Lima, was on LAN, an airline we had never taken before.

The town of Arequipa, founded in 1540 is about 1 million strong, stands smack in the middle of the Atacama Desert the largest in the continent and driest non-polar desert in the world and is just below three volcanoes that are about 18,000 feet tall.

There, we visited the Ciudad Blanca (the city center) The historic downtown is almost totally built out of sillar, a white volcanic stone, that gives the city its name. We took a tour of the Main Square and its colonial buildings, the Church of the Society of Jesus with its mix of baroque art and Spanish churrigueresque baroque from the XVII century, along with some colorful fresco paintings at the San Ignacio Dome, known as America’s Sistine Chapel.

We also toured the Santa Catalina Convent, that is more a XVI century citadel than a cloistered convent. We had a wonderful dinner at Zig-Zag, a local restaurant, ran by a Swiss fellow from Neuchâtel. The place and the food were divine.

We stayed in a picturesque but very noisy hotel, the San Agustin Posada del Monasterio, near the local night clubs on a busy Saturday night. I could sleep, but my wife couldn't. I wish we were still 20 and could get all worked out at the nearby disco! melendezces01.87@gmail.com