We had zero agenda again in Arequipa, and that was just fine with the group. We set off mid morning heading in the general direction of Mondo Alpaca, or Alpaca World! The Plaza was busy early, with some military parade just ending and a girl and Boy Scout looking group doing some kind of celebrations. Tons of locals were in varying states of relaxation and the atmosphere was very chill. We still haven’t seen a cloud in the sky, so the temperatures in the shadows are generally nice, and the sunny areas get pretty hot pretty quickly.
Alpaca world was pretty small, but we saw a little demo of weaving (with no touts or sales people hanging around.... weird) and the animals themselves in a relatively small pen. The kids (Alex + 4) fed them some grass and we tried to strike up a conversation with a group of young men that seemed to be in exile from Venezuela and had made their way on foot to here.
We walked for another hour or two, going through some quiet neighbourhoods and eventually through a large paid entry public park that was a bid of a dilapidated amusement park with no rides.
Lunch, it was agreed, would be Turkish cuisine so we headed back towards the Plaza area and landed on El Turk. The food was great and the ambiance in the back courtyard was perfect for two games of euchre.
The kids headed back to the hotel after lunch, while the four of us took a meandering walk through the city, passing through the market as Kim and Alex hadn’t been there yet. The streets were fairly active and it was nice just kind of wondering for quite a while.
We found the kids singing and playing cards on the rooftop deck, and soon Kim and Beth were adding to the fun...
We struck out at Il Fornallini for dinner as it was closed so we ended up a place called Dimas for relatively mediocre, by Arequipa’s standards, fare. We did manage to fill ourselves up with crepes after dinner - Abby had spotted a place called Crepissimo a few days ago and had locked it away in her crepe memory bank.
It was a nice way to end the day... a littler earlier than most. We have a very early start tomorrow!
The Versly arrived before we got up this morning, so we let them sleep. We did let the girls sleep in a bit, but it has been tough getting them out of bed.... many knocks at the door!
After breakfast I took the gang on a walk to a lookout area higher above the town called Yanahuara where we implored Robin to do a VLOG.
Why, she asked, did she have to do a video. After all, no one I know likes the sound of their own voice much less their own selves on a video... but last night Beth and I watched some vlogs of the girls from the Big Trip and were feeling quite nostalgic... and old!
Arequipa is surrounded by 3 massive volcanoes - Chachani, Misti and Pichu Pichu (all dormant, I think, Nana). Of the three, the one in the middle, Misti, is almost as perfectly formed as Mount Fuji. Almost anywhere you walk in town you can see a snow capped peak framed in the background. Yanahuara was a great little spot to see the volcanos with a bit more of an unobstructed view (and a good excuse for a nice walk!).
We sat down for a delicious Jugo (ie juice, which always gets us started on a Russell Peters bit) and played some cards while soaking in the scenery. Close to noon, we heard from the Versly and made plans to meet at a lunch place called Chelawasi Public House.
This restaurant was another we’d found on the eclectic list of recommended restaurants. It was run by a really nice guy from Portland and his wife who hailed from Lima (who wasn’t there... more on that later). Ten minutes after we arrived, the Versly strolled in and we were reunited at last. The kids soon formed a table for four and caught up, and the adults did the same.
The restaurant offered craft beer and comfort food with a Peruvian twist, all in an eclectic, artsy place full of beer paraphernalia and wall art. The owner filled us in on some of challenges of starting a business in a place with a slightly corrupt local government. They’d gotten raided a dozen times in the first 8 months, all at the behest and paid for by their local competitors. They had to go so far as to sue the local municipality to make the back off. Crazy that even with a local part owner, they could get away with that.
A couple of the meals were slightly off, and the owner was very apologetic giving us a couple of extra beers (his own brewed Black Jesus Dark, which was a surprisingly hoppy supper dark ale) and eventually Alex a second meal on the house when the chef ended up mistakenly making his proper meal late! Anyway, we walked away happy and the owner laughingly did own the error saying that’s what usually happens when his wife was away.
On the way back to the plaza, I led us up to the entrance of Santa Catalina Monastery suggesting my kids had a choice of whether to take an hour walk inside this very old, 5 acre ticketed site, or to head back the hotel. The four kids practically bolted before I’d finished.
Alex, Kim, Beth and I toured the monastery grounds for a while. It was peaceful and a nice spot for some excellent photos, but the religious significance of the place was a little lost on us. Perhaps it was all the cheesy looking statues, carvings and painted renditions of Jesus et al. The nuns who lived here, however, sure had a peaceful place to live with excellent views of snow capped Misti and Chachani.
After Santa Catalina, we hit some nearby trekking type stores, where I noticed everyone was glued to the Peru vs Uruguay soccer match. Those supporters last night weren’t getting ready for a local match, they were getting psyched for today’s Cupa America match where Peru was playing in the quarter final as sever underdog to Uruguay.
We made it down to Plaza de Armas just as the game ended tied nil nil (lol) in regulation and I watched a series of second floor sports bars packed with locals as they roared every time their side scored during the penalty shootout at the end of the game. They ended up winning 5-4 in penalties, but beyond a one time cheer, there was no massive celebration. Maybe on Wednesday when they take on Chile in the semis.
We chilled for an hour then went for an earlier dinner at Hatunpa, another recommendation and this time for a typical Andean meal, which was basically many types of sliced boiled potatoes covered by your choice of toppings - a kind of Peruvian poutine, if you will. The meals mostly disappeared pretty quickly, but we all agreed it wouldn’t be our first choice to repeat.
It was time for the concert! We made our way down to Calle Mercaderes, which reminded me of a mini İstiklal Caddesi #triprefitis to get in line for our Queen (tribute) concert. We had gotten the cheap seats so went to the back of the line to wait for the second floor mezzanine seats to be let in.
The theatre was like an old style, two storey movie house. We got decent, semi comfy seats in the upper deck and waited for the opening band.... the Beatles. After the first 30 seconds of a pudgy, Latino Paul McCartney reading lyrics off his phone and singing way off tune, I concluded that the main feature Queen band would potentially be awesome.... how else could they justify selling tickets to this crap? We even had a heckler next to us, an old man who was surly yelling “get off the stage you bums!”. They finally closed their performance after about five songs. I think I even heard “Paul” say “lo siento” which I’d learned earlier today means sorry. Lo Siento Paulito, no amount of dry ice could shroud you from such an awful performance.
Queen, however, was awesome.
The Freddy stand in had an amazing voice, great energy and didn’t have to refer to his phone at all!
The whole audience was singing and moving in unison. He got everyone involved and did great renditions of all the classics, while providing some comic relief between some songs (which we didn’t understand). Even the old heckler man didn’t heckle, though he wasn’t cheering (maybe he thought it was the real band performing tonight?).
We all left the concert with that certain energy you get when you’ve witnessed something special. Calle Mercaderes was hopping, with street vendors and crowds of people of all ages all over the place. We stopped briefly to watch a little group of twenty something guys take turns doing cool dance moves one by one.
Plaza de Armas was packed too, though it was more of a “gathering” of people than a Saturday night party vibe.
What a great first day with our traveling companions. The kids have settled in nicely with each other and it’s nice to be with Kim and Alex on another adventure.
Beth and I were up early (8:00) and walked around in search of a coffee for Beth. There wasn’t too much open, so sadly (gleefully?) she got an Americano and I got a Chai from Starbucks...lol.
The kids had agreed to wake up at 9, but it was a number of loud knocks until we got someone to come to their door - they were in a deep sleep and looked like they were in a complete daze. Breakfast, overlooking the beautiful Plaza, woke them up. The weather here is amazing - zero humidity and about 18 to 20 in the shade, and hot in the sun. Evenings so far have dropped down a few degrees, I’m sure getting cool over night.
After breakfast we walked to the central market.... a different take than the dozens of central markets we’d visited in Europe and Asia. The arrangements of fruit rising up perhaps twenty feet high at and angle, the huge variety of potatoes and the seafood section were the highlights. The lowlights for the three girls were definitely the meat sections, but I couldn’t bypass those.
There was plenty of people watching both in the market and outside. There are vendors on the street everywhere you go, selling all kids of products, often in neat, orderly, portable arrangements. There are women selling cups of cut up fruits often from a converted baby stroller. There are all kinds of ice cream vendors from tiny little fridges sporting umbrellas.
At one point, we saw a car blaring Queen with two banners mounted on top advertising a Queen cover band concert. Quickly WhatsApping with the Versly confirmed that we should get tickets for tomorrow night. It should be either awful, hilarious or better still, awfully hilarious. We stopped by the theatre and discovered that not only was there a Queen tribute band, but that a Beatles tribute band would be opening for them (at least, that’s what our very limited ability in Spanish has led us to believe!).
We walked quite a bit, eventually reaching a parting of the ways when Beth and Robin headed back to the hotel for a short rest and Abby and I continued to check out some neighbourhoods that were farther out.
Abby and I got back to the hotel an hour later, and gathered the other two to head to El Buda Profano - a vegan sushi place that sounded quite cool.
The streets were far busier today - with the majority of cars from what we saw to be taxis... probably 90%! There were way more people on the roads, but I was surprised at the high ratio of locals to tourists, despite us being in the heart of the tourist quarter.
The sushi place was amazing... another 5 table nook in the wall restaurant where we watched the two local chefs prepare our vegan sushi rolls, vegan vegetable Raman and vegan sushi bowls for the kids. Yum.
The afternoon was all about chillaxing.... Abby with her sun and book, Beth with a massage and poolside nap, me with blogs, books and podcasts by the pool and Robin restlessly disappearing to her room after getting shot down to play another round of Presidents.
For dinner we went to another on Abby’s list and it was a hit. The place was called Zig Zag, slightly bigger than others as it had a few tables on the second floor, reached by a beautiful winding staircase that had a plaque next to them stating that they were designed by Gustave Eiffel. The ceiling was arched block construction with a light stucco finish just like the rest of the places we’d been eating at, and it kind of reminded me cave hotels in Cappadocia (I can’t help it, I have travelreferatism). The food was amazing - three of us had meat served on lave stones with four tiny dips and robin had pesto gnocchi. Beth did well to avoid the garlic but the girls and I could not resist... so good.
On our way back through the square, we noticed a small commotion of maybe 100 people singing and dancing to the beat of a drum. A quick google search of the logo on some of their shirts revealed that these were some kind of futbol team support club. Fun!
When that broke up, another bigger group formed at the other end of Plaza de Armas with a small band and a group of dancers, mostly children with some adult teachers/leaders. It was a great vibe. The whole square, maybe 500 meters square with a large park with lots of trees and benches and cantered on a huge fountain was really a place for locals. This almost seemed strange to us, because so often when you go to a city and they have a huge square surrounded by hotels and tourist outfitters, locals would avoid it like the plaque. Not Plaza de Armas - it was a respite from the sun during the day, and a place to gather with friends in the evening, and I think this is one of the main reasons that Arequipa has the charm that it does.
The girls were hyper when we got to our rooms - I’m sure they were looking forward to the Versly and the arrival of other teenagers tomorrow morning.
Our first foray into South America! Wait... no jet lag?? Long on our bucket list has been the Incan wonder of Machu Picchu, and because it’s an odd year, we will he joined by the Versly! Alex, Kim, Geoffrey and Matt met us in Borneo in 2015 and we co-tripped (?) again in 2017 on our African Adventure, so it only seemed fitting to team up again in 2019 to get our first taste of South America together.
After lots of research by Alex and I, we decided to keep the jumping around to a minimum... Peru, like the other giants of South America, is quite big. With just over two weeks, and a required week or so doing Machu Picchu and related activities, we didn’t want to bite off more than we could chew.
So... Wednesday afternoon, the Tyndall’s were off, via Montreal for a late and brief stopover in Lima (well, at the airport Holiday Inn). We landed at around 12:30am and efficiently got through customs and grabbed our bags. We could see our hotel from the front Taxi area of the hotel, but it wasn’t totally obvious how to get there. We were getting bombarded by taxis, touts and guys that said they were airport security.... but who knows? We finally made our way group the parking lot and across a quiet, large boulevard, led by a couple of guys that seemed quasi trustworthy.
Our flight to the second biggest city in Peru, Arequipa, was to depart at 8:50am so the lan was to have a couple of nice clean beds to get some decent sleep in. It turned out to be a good move as we all had a solid 5 hours of sleep and were quickly back out front of the hotel waiting for the shuttle to the airport. I guess we could have walked, but there were now zillions of honking cars filling up the roads all around us.
The domestic Latam flight was uneventful and smooth. The last half of the 90 minute flight had great views of the Andes mountains out the left side of the plane.
Before we knew it, we’d hopped in a cab to the hotel, taking in all of the sights of the suburbs of Arequipa on the way. It’s always strange, having travelled so much, to see a landscape or cityscape that is really so alien to anything you’ve experience live before. Our natural tendencies are to try and compare it to something else we’d seen... the kids said it kind of felt like a cross between Jaisalmer and what they pictured of Mexico... not a bad comparison.
Arequipa sits at around 2400 meters above sea level. One of the reasons we deceived to start here, beyond it being a great destination in its own right, was to use it as a stepping stone to acclimate to the higher elevations we will be seeing next week. Altitude sickness is a real concern (have you met my wife??) when hiking the Inca trail, and getting a solid five days in Arequipa should help a lot.
Our little taxi driver was professionally dressed a sported a wide brimmed white hat. He didn’t speak any English but got instructions from the airport clerk we’d spoken too. When we got out of the cab at Casa Andina Standard, our hotel, it seemed a little unfamiliar to me as I knew it was supposed to have views of the main square in town, Plaza des Armas. True enough, we were unable to check in because we had reservations at Casa Andina SELECT! A short, additional cab ride quickly rectified that situation.... we were soon strolling through the beautiful Plaza and checking in to the correct hotel.
We got our rooms and soon hit the surrounding roads to find a quick bite to eat. Our initial impression was that Arequipa was a very chill, relaxing place to stroll that had tons of little boutique restaurants and coffee shops, and lots of people watching opportunities.
After lunch, we all had a really good nap. Beth and I could feel the elevation, particularly when you sat up quickly or walked up hill or up stairs. You couldn’t feel the thin air just when breathing at a stand still, but something was a little different. We agreed to take it easy, walk slowly and stay very hydrated.
Abby and I did some research on some restaurants we wanted to try, so in the early evening we walked twenty minutes to Il Fornellino, a small, four table restaurant run by a half Italian half Peruvian man. The food was fantastic, but even more fun was watching the chef/owner/Co-waiter make the pasta and pizza dough from little premade balls of pasta and dough from his fridge. I had a nice white artisanal beer - Arequipa is known for fantastic food and delicious local beers. What a great way to start our Arequipa food experience!
We tried to do movie night in our room when we got back, which sent pangs of longing for our Big Trip, but it didn’t last long as we were all pretty tired. Tomorrow we will likely take it slow again, but so far, I’m pumped to be in Arequipa and can’t wait to see the Versly who arrive on Saturday morning.
