Arequipa, Peru.

Kara says:

Arequipa. Getting colder, getting higher (or else my breathing difficulties are due to the artery-clogging properties of our daily diet of roast chicken and chips - we may well have turned into chicken and chips when we get home). An old colonial city by a volcano and a couple of snow-covered mountains - a gorgeous setting. The city dates from 1540 (founded by Pizarro himself) and there's a church from about 1670 but alas the earthquakes have taken care of the older buildings and now the city mostly dates from the 18th and 19th century. Parents: don't worry about the earthquakes, see photo, there are safe zones in all the buildings! Another very impressive colonial plaza with a cathedral on one side. And a million tour companies and gringos wandering in packs herded by local tour guides.

Went to see an amazing convent/monastery - almost enough to tempt me into a habit. It was founded in about 1570 by the daughters of rich Spaniards and over the years has grown to be a whole town within the walls. They lived pretty cosily for the times too, although it's a closed order, and had to provide a hefty dowry and trousseau to enter in the first place. i think i could easily have slipped into that life. At one stage a Bishop decided to add a few extra rules to those the nuns themselves had including a new one forbidding any nun to have more than one servant. There are 30 nuns there today from age 18 to 90 and i suspect they're still doing pretty well from the nice little tourist business they've got going.

Also went to a museum with some frozen mummies from up in the mountains - remember all the curfuffle in the mid-ninties when a mummy of a young girl was found in really good condition? - fantastic artifacts. Incredibly well preserved clothes and little icons also dressed in wool clothing and even with perfectly preserved 500 year old feathers. So they were Inca sacrifices - when things weren't going so well for them they climbed up the mountains (where the gods lived, obviously), a pretty mean feat in itself, gave the poor girl some alcohol and whacked her over the head with the priests ceremonial truncheon. There were lots of little wool bags found with them containing food etc, stuff you'd need for a long journey but one of them had a bag with (supposedly) her fingernail clippings, hair clippings and umbilical cord - suggesting she had been chosen from birth to be sacrificed.

Other photos are of Gaucho Karl having breakfast (ending rumours that he eats only cow killed with his own hands) in the patio of our hospedaje, me as proof i'm still alive, and there are prizes for finding us in other photos.

And a photo of the happiest man in the world - the guy with the mobile stop sign - man! does he love his job. He stops traffic to let people cross the road but he's just constantly hoping someone will cross, he sees you coming from a mile off and starts raising his sign hopefully, moving into the road, and then you don't cross and i think he gets a little upset. But when you do cross - well then it's party time!