Home Again Home Again

We made it back to Tacna safe and sound after our long weekend trip to Arequipa. We took the bus up on Thursday morning and returned on Tuesday night. We apologize for not posting sooner but we were busy trying to get our legs to recover from our three-day hike in the Colca Canyon, buy some food, and get over the coughs and colds we picked up in the last few weeks.

We hope to spend some more time on the details of our trip, but for now, here are some highlights:

This is the cathedral in Arequipa, built of the famous white stone, known locally as ´sillar,´ that is used in many of the old buildings and has inspired it´s nickname as the ¨white city.¨ The cathedral is beautiful and huge and runs the whole length of one side of the main square downtown.  It is big inside, but it is also oriented so that when you enter the church from the square you are entering the side, not the back.

 

We also visited the Monasteria Santa Catalina, which was founded by a rich Spanish woman early in Peru´s colonial days and was converted to a museum in 1970, although there is still an active order of Dominican Nuns who live in a part not open to the public. It is gigantic and we got to walk through the various rooms and learn more about the sisters.

A lot of the rooms were painted this pretty blue color, above, which I loved, and there were lots of open spaces and fountains and trees--it was very peaceful overall.

 

From the monastery, we also had great views of the incredible mountains surrounding the city. Somewhat like Phoenix, Arequipa is a city in a valley surrounded by mountains, but in this case the mountains can be up to 19,000 feet or more! As a result, even in spring time there are several that are still covered with snow at the top. 

We also had a good view of the mountains from the rooftop terrace of our hostel, shown above.  I am pretty sure that the mountain at the left of the picture above is Misti, which I think is the tallest of the mountains around the city. 

 

In addition to touring the city, we also did a three day hike in the Colca Canyon, northwest of Arequipa. This is the second-deepest canyon in the world (another canyon nearby, the Coatahuasi, is the deepest, with Arizona´s Grand Canyon coming in third).  The picture above is near the start of the hike, and you can see in the middle of the picture the greener part at the bottom of the canyon, where the River Colca runs. We actually hiked from the altitude in the picture down to the river on the first afternoon, an altitude change of over a thousand meters that left us feeling the burn in our legs. 

The next day we hiked up and across and down some more, and ended up at the bottom of the canyon again, in the midst of those trees and the green area in the middle of the picture. We stayed there the second night, then made it back to the top of the canyon the third morning.

In spite of sore legs and bug bites, it was an amazing way to see a beautiful canyon up close and have an adventure together. Going to Arequipa and the Canyon was a great way to see a different part of Peru and celebrate our anniversary!  More details on our trip and our hike to come!