Vacations

One of the Numerous Kitchens in Santa Catalina Monastery

Finally Inès came to Arequipa. I stopped working. (As I mentioned before there had never been that much work so it doesn't really matter.) Now we are enjoying more than two weeks of holidays. We never had so much time together without any responsibility or work to do, so we are really enjoying having just time for ourselves and nothing else to do. I picked her up at the airport and the last days we made tourist program in Arequipa. I showed her round town, we visited some churches and old colonial houses and the nice quarters of Cayma and Yanahuara. The highlights for sure were on the one hand the visit of the museum of "Juanita". She is something like the Peruvian version of "Oetzi", that corpse of a primeval hunter that was found on a glacier next to the Austrian-Italian border somewhen in the nineties of the last century. About the same time - in 1995 - archaeologists discovered the corpse of an Inca girl that was uncovered from the eternal ice of the glacier on top of Ampato Mountain in the Arequipa region due to the eruption of a nearby volcano. Conserved in the ice for about 500 years it is the best preserved precolombian corpse ever found. Because Incas did not mummify "Juanita" still has all her internal organs and bodily fluids as well as hair, nails and teeth. Just her face which seemed to having been outside of the ice is dehydrated. Nevertheless her discovery was an archeological sensation and the first years after it "Juanita" spent in various cientifical laboratories in Peru and the United States. There it was found out that she has been an about thirteen years old girl that was offered to the gods. In further expeditions to Ampato Mountain two more sacrified youngsters were found but none of them as well conserved as "Juanita". Finally she found her last resting place in her own museum in Arequipa together with burial objects found on the three burial sites. You can view her there laid out in an vitreous freezer of Japanese origin where she is conserved under the exactly same conditions that had maintained her in such a good shape for centuries under the ice of Ampato Mountain. It is a little scary experience seeing her there but as well it is amazing in which good state her body  still is and the guides of the museum recall the last months of her life and what is known and was found out about it in such a formidable way (even for children which of had been some in our tour) that you really feel sent back into this time and taking part of the whole holy precedure yourself. It really awaked my interest in this ancient fascinating culture of the Incas.

The other highlight was the monastery of Santa Catalina. It is a huge building complex right in the city centre covering a whole block of houses with an area of more than 20.000 sqm. What it makes it that interesting is the fact that for 391 years from its foundation until it`s opening to the public in 1970 it was totally concluded from the outside world. Nuns who entered it not even left after their death but where buried within the monastery`s walls on it`s private cemetery. So a city within the city came into being. There are squares, alleys which have their own names, various kitchens, baths, a laundry, kitchen gardens and the cemetary. So the monastery existed almost self-sustaining. The only contact the nuns had with the outer world was via so called "locutorios". That have been small rooms with wooden lattices in the windows through which one could talk to someone outside. Because the whole monastery is surrounded by a high wall you forget about the hectic city life outside when you are in not hearing any of the city`s sounds. We spent more than four hours exploring this fascinating place which in some parts reminds you of  the set of a historic movie. You really feel the spirit of the ancient life in a monastery strolling around through the small alleys and it is full of fantastic photo motives. I have never ever seen something comparable so far.

Apart from that Inès and I enjoyed Peruvian kitchen trying out all kind of food you would not get in other places like alpaca meat or so called pre-Inca-cuisine which are mainly stews of fish or alpaca with potatoes and maize quite strangely but tastily spiced. so our holidays are also a culinary delight.

Because we really got fascinated of the Inca culture by the visit of "Juanita" our next stop will bring us to Cusco, the old capital of the Inca empire and Machu Picchu the most famous of their archeological sites.