More City Walks and a Competition

At the Kayak Race

I keep strolling through town regularly if I do not have to work. Each of this walks offers me more insights into city life and I get to know  the surroundings better each time. As I realized meanwhile Arequipa is full of churches and monasteries. Finding them in almost any block of the old town makes the city appear like an South American Salzburg. Nowhere else I have seen such a concentration of religious buildings so far. Once I entered a quarter where these churches and monasteries interestingly alternated with dubious bars and drinking holes and so called restaurants with blackened shop windows towards the street. I do not really want to know what is going on behind them. Quite a frequent sight on the pavements over there where nuns and prostitutes. While it was quite obvious who are the nuns it took me a while to realize who are the prostitutes. They are just standing around amongst the public crowd adressing possible clients passing by with half whispered invitations to go with them. It was quite interesting to see this weird mixture but I also know that I will avoid this neighbourhood during nighttime and drink my beers somewhere else.

In sharp contrast to that just around the corner I found a maternity clinic with uncountable centres of prenatal diagnosis as well as  shops of baby clothes and nappies opposite the road. Here the crowd on the street were mainly pregnant women, happily smiling new grandparents with bouquets in their arms and young jubilant couples with new born babies on their arms. Almost all of the babies for any reason had pink woollen hats on their heads. Maybe they were given to them by the clinic. Anyway this road may be Arequipas happiest place where indeed everybody walking around seems to be smiling, laughing and celebrating.

Behind that quarter I discovered a big commercial district spanning over a couple of city blocks. Most of them entirely have been markets with small shops along even smaller hallways selling everything from computers over shoes to toys. As I realized each block or part of it had its own purpose. Half a block you could only find shoe shops, then a couple of hallways had only aquarium and fish to sell while in the rest of the block you just found sexy underwear. The next block was full with computer shops, followed by a part where just costumes and baby clothes had been sold and so on. It was quite strange to walk through this corridors where a continuous stimulus satiation prevailed that just was changing all few meters. Out on the streets sweets and different fast food was sold by uncountable stalls leaving the air with an incredible mixture of smells. I have seen quite some markets in various countries but can´t remeber any being so extensive like this one here.

Yesterday finally a Kayak competiton took place on Chili River. Arequipa is one of the few places in the world where such an event can take place on a natural river right in the centre of a town of this size which makes it predestined to hold it here. The race was organized by the company I am working for. I surely did not participate because I do not kayak but nevertheless helped in the organisation, made safety for the sportsmen and took pictures. The event was quite a success, all participants enjoyed it and about 500 spectators watched the activity from the shores and the two bridges the kayak slalom took place in between. At the end all were happy and we celebrated the success first with a BBQ in the deposit and then with a night out in town. This was a good fun and took until early morning. So today I am happy but quite tired and for sure will go to bed soon to rejuvenate for the work of the next days.

Exploring Town

The Towers of the church of Cayma

Meanwhile I am guiding on my own. The first time was by chance because Christian, another guide, was struck by diarrhoea this day and so I had to replace him. Actually I would have wanted to practice once or twice more but so I just had to jump in at the deep end. Finally the only ones who jumped, or rightly fell into the water were two of the passengers in a rapid. So far it was the first and only time that had happened to me and with every trip now I am getting to know the river and its personality better and better. And everytime I like it more than the last.

For there's enough time for doing other things still, when we are not going to the river, we constructed an earthen stove topped with a small volcano which off two kayakers are paddling down. The last days we prepared things for the kayak race which is going to take place tomorrow on Chili River.

Being used to the place already I also use spare time to explore the town more precisely. These days I went back from our base to the city by foot passing the Cayma and Yanahuara boroughs of Arequipa. Those are very nice middle class quarters which managed to preserve their original colonial village character. So you see old colonial houses and alleys mixed with mansions and modern high-end blocks of flats. There´s a nice mixture of beautiful garden restaurants and simple family run plain fare places. At the corners there are everywhere these typical small mom-and-pop grocery stores which are so common in most places but in Europe died out almost completely already. The center of these neighbourhoods always is a square with palms growing, a church, a fountain and one or more statues of national or local heroes. The side alleys of these squares are bordered with colonial buildings which become less and substituted by the typical simple brick houses with flat roofs of which the reinforcement steels are still jutting out or modern mansions the further you walk away from the square.

On Yanahuaras very nice main square there is a viewpoint which of you have amazing views of the Chilina Valley, Arequipa and the surrounding volcanoes where I spent quite some time to take pictures.

On another of these walks I discovered a huge market hall where they sell everything from furniture over meat to clothes. It was a loud, crowded place which smelt of hundreds of things at the same time: meals of the small restaurants, flowers, meet, seafood, fruits, spices, perfumes, petrol and many more. But what attracted my attention most was the row of fruit juice stalls. One entire lenght of the hall were lined of those one next to the other, all kind of fruits piled in front of them to a height that you just saw the faces of the woman who attended them behind. I chose the loveliest face and had a tremendous mango-maracuya-juice while chatting with the young lady.

For sure I also had to investigate Arequipa´s nightlife. I went to take a beer with some fellows in one of the numerous bars in the centre of Arequipa. Most of them are inside old colonial buildings whose lithic arches give them a very unique and cosy atmosphere. Some of them even have roof terraces where DJs perform the whole night and you can enjoy good views over the city as well as cheap beer and cocktails. Here is where you as well find all the lovely policewomen again you saw during the day on the streets besides many more beautiful women. But now they have changed their uniforms to high heels, stretch jeans and evening gowns. As you can imagine the first bar we had been to was not the last. In one of them that followed I lost my fellows which did not hold me back of keeping on to explore the local nightlife. Finally I came home at dawn when first citizens of the town already had been out on the streets again. "Noches arequipeñas" seem to be quite long and intense and I like them!

As they told me the next day the same thing happens to most of the people who come here for the first time, especially if they come from Pucón where you just have two bars to choose from. Nothing worse should happen to me.

What kind of funny, strange and beautiful things will this town still have to offer me?

News of Arequipa

Peruvian Breakfast

Arequipa is widespread over several ridges that decline from the surrounding volcanoes to the West towards the Pacific ocean. For the town and its suburbs give home to about one million people those ridges are numerous. In between there are small valleys and creeks with irrigated terraces where vegetables, corn and fruits are grown as well as cattle grazes. Each of the ridges has its own flair and it is really good fun exploring them. The biggest valley which divides the town in two parts and on which slopes the old city stands is the Chilina Valley which through the Chili River runs. Although we are actually rafting right at the skirt of the city the trip leads through green fields and formidable gorge landscapes.

My daily routine is going to the base of the agency by combi in the morning bying breakfast on the way: Vegetables, bread, cheese, liquid cereals, maybe eggs and always a fresh mango. Those are far the best fruits over here. In the base we eat together and then wait for a rafting trip. If there isn´t any we work in the base. Yesterday for example we had made an brick oven for bread, pizza, etc. For lunch we always go into a near very typical restaurant. It is a small room of maybe 26 sqm which of six sqm are kitchen. The rest is dining room and filled with seven tables from two to four chairs which are positioned in such a surprisingly way that when it is full at lunch time the waitress still can move in between. She is a friendly, small, chubby, caramel coloured barby doll always coqueting with me and Christian. The Peruvian kitchen is very good. Much more vegetables and less meat that I am used to from Chile. A lot of pulse, maize, pumpkin and espacially potatoes. In Peru more than 3000 varieties of potatoes are grown and almost every meal contains or is accompanied by them if not by rice. They also trade and eat them dehydrated and call it chuño then.

   After the last trip if there had been one or otherwise somewhen in the afternoon we drive back with the combi to the city. Meanwhile I got used to this uncomfortable rides and even can enjoy them watching the scenery outside or people inside. As I said traffic is very chaotic and noisy and so are the police(wo)men. There exist numerous kinds of police from the National one to the Tourist Police. For me they all look the same in their uniforms and the women especially attractive with their cute helmets or hats and their fitting, breeches style trousers. Which certainly is more a fact of the beauty of the Peruvian women than of the uniform. The only things what makes them all looking a little bit ridiculous is that they are permanently blowing their whistles. As permanently as drivers sound their horn. Nevertheless cars seem to win that sound duel mostly and police(wo)men seem to whistle just out of resignation sometimes. Once I saw a policeman blowing his whistle when their had not been a single car around.

Arriving at downtown we visit the office, go to the internet, have a rest, take a coffe or whatever. For dinner we have another favourite restaurant which represents the other side of Peruvian Cuisine. It is a so called chifa or Chinese restaurant although I have never ever seen a single Chinese in one of them so far. Anyway you get something there which is supposed to be Chinese food. There are plenty of these restaurants here, possibly because of many Chinese immigrants in Peru but I am not sure about this. This chifa is bigger than the other restaurant, the TV is always switched on (as in most of the restaurants) and the orange walls are sparely decorated with three Feng Shui fotos of a Chinese Version of the Austrian village of Hallstatt on which a couple of small wooden houses are built on a steep wooded slope right on the shore of an azure lake or river. They are still wrapped in their transparent packaging foil. The only other decoration is a heroic poster of a young Bruce Lee in front of the painting of a Chinese dragon.
But the highlight of Peruvian food as I mentioned is the mango. They are that soft, fresh, sweet and cheap here as I only know them from India. So daily I eat at least one.

Arequipa, Peru

Volcano Misti (5822m) 

Well, as I told you, I will make my way to Peru and so I did. I am here in Arequipa in the south Peruvian Andes highlands since almost a week. I left Pucón on the first of April with the bus to Santiago. There I spent two days enjoying the city and its cultural and culinary offer. Unfortunately Inés could not accompany me because she became ill but nevertheless I spent two nice days over there in pleasant anticipation of the journey to come. Finally I left Santiago by plane on the early morning of April 4th. The plane made stopovers   in Antofagasta as well as in Arica, two Chilean cities in the Atacama Desert. That gave me impressive overhead views of this dryest desert on earth which offers awesome but somehow depressing in its aridity landscapes. In Arica which is just 20 km off the Peruvian border we had to leave the plane for customs formalities before we took off again and entered Peruvian Airspace. Soon we landed on Arequipa airport. I took a taxi to the city centre and immediately realized the big difference to Chile. Traffic here is as crazy as you would expect it from any Southamerican country not as organized as in Chile. While individual traffic almost does not exist, streets are full of small yellow taxi cabs and an uncountable variety of minibuses. Apart from this you see motorised three-wheelers, small motorbikes, bicycles, donkeys and various other partly quiet weird vehicles. They all  follow what seems to be the only valid law on Peruvian roads: Might is right!

They permanently sound their horns. Either while standing in the all-time traffic jam where it means: "Whats going on here? Why don´t you move on?" or while horribly fast moving  towards a crossroads when it means: "I for sure WON´T slow down now!" Apart from this sounding the horn is used to greet friends on the other side of the road, to call your fellow passenger´s attention to a beatiful woman standing on the corner, contact the newspaper vendor at the traffic lights (which rarely exist) and many occasions more.

Well, the taxi brought me safely to the city centre where I could change my Chilean Pesos in Peruvian currency because on the airport they just changed US-dollars. Finally he dropped me off at the office of "Expediciones y Aventuras" the tourist agency for which I am going to work the next two months. I was heartly welcomed by Gustavo the owner. He told me that I can stay in his hostel sharing a room with Christian another rafting guide from Chile who is here for the season. So I went there with all my luggage to refresh myself and get rid of my rucksack. That was, when I realised another fact about Arequipa: the city is situated in the Andes on an altitude of more than 2300m above sea level although it is just 75 km off the coast. This means air is already thin and reaching at the hostel I had to catch my breath although it just is  a few blocks away from the agency. But again I was positively surprised by the pleasantness of the place. The hostel is an old colonial building (in which Gustavo himself grew up) made of sillar, the typical white volcanic rock which builduings here are built of. It has a nice courtyard with lawn, cactuses, small bushes and flowers in pots on the walls and a roof top terrace with a great view over the city and its surrounding volcanoes. It was here up on that rooftop when I realized for the first time the impressive massive volcanoes or rather volcanic massifs surrounding the town in their entire gorgeousness. The town is surrounded by the volcanic massifs of Chachani, Misti and Pichu Pichu the first of which reaches 6000 m of altitude and the other two only being a little lower. Although you are at more than 2300 m in the city already those volcanic giants still reach more than 3500m further up towards the permanent blue sky.

The last days I discovered the town and the river. Arequipa´s old town is a lovely ordered, clean colonial city with an awesome main square and full of hotels, hostels, restaurants, bars, tourist agencies and small shops. There´s a permanent traffic jam because the small roads are overloaded with vehicles but that is just part of the flair. Only when you leave the centre you realize that you are in an emerging nation. I am doing this daily going to the rafting base of the company. To get there I have to take a so called "Combi", small minibuses with about fifteen seats but an endless capacity for passengers. They drive around town on fixed routes with a conductor shouting out of the window the direction it goes and people just hop on and off where they have to. For me it is a little torture to take them because their height in the interior is about 1,6m only. Because you rarely get a seat in them I have to stay, not only my head totally ducked but also my knees slightly bent. If I am lucky I reach the grab handles with both hands but always ending up hitting the other passengers with my now totally bended ellbows right in their faces. Otherwise I have to jam my definitely much too tall body, my head pressing to the roof maintaining my feet somehow on the ground. Sometimes I get a seat but this is not that much better either. My legs just do not fit in between the rows of seats so I always have to sit diagonally using at least two seats. On this rides you see the real face of Arequipa. People begging on the streets, children working, herds of cattle being chased through the streets as well as men in suits calling busily on their cellphone, school children in uniforms, mobile vendors of almost everything and surprisingly few street dogs. Somehow so far I managed to survive this rides unharmed but always am quite happy when I can deboard the "combi".

From our base we have a lovely view over the river Chili which we raft at, the town and the volcanoes. There start all our rafting trips. From there we drive up the river with an amazing old huge Chevrolet Pickup for 6 km where we start the descent. The river Chili is great for rafting. It is quite small, narrow, steep and with lots of rocks forming very technical rapids of grade III to IV. Sometimes the only possible line goes in between two rocks only leaving 10 cm of space in between the boat and the rocks on either side. Right at the moment I am still practicing accompanying other guides on their trips but in a few days more I will be ready to guide myself. This is how my Peruvian adventure started. Could be much worse, so once more I can´t complain. I am happy and looking forward to everything the two next months here will bring.