We’ve really settled into our new home in Arequipa. Instead of renting an apartment here, we decided after very little arm-twisting to stay in a sweet little hostel with 6 spacious rooms. We wake up early in Arequipa as the natural sunlight starts filtering into our room at 6AM. Every morning, we enjoy coffee, bread, and fresh juice served on the upstairs terrace with views of the nearby neighborhood rooftops and the far away volcanoes. This morning, we spied on the lady across the street watering her plants and a man 4 rooftops away laying bricks to build up a new wall on his roof.
We follow breakfast by working for a few hours before heading out to one of the 7 nearby hole-in-the-wall restaurants within one block of the hostel for a set lunch menu. If we want something a little more interesting, we walk a little further afield to a cevicheria or one of the veggie restaurants (which serves seitan and tofu) or the mercado for food-court style dining.
By 3-4pm we finish with work and head out to enjoy our new city. Like everyone else, we inevitably spend some time sitting on a bench in the main plaza watching kids chase pigeons and admiring the grand architecture that flanks this central meeting place. We’ve also been knocking off the museums, colonial mansions, churches, and viewpoints one at a time. Our favorite afternoon jaunt so far was the museum devoted to displaying the well-preserved remains of the frozen Inca sacrificial children and artifacts found in the nearby mountaintops.
At twice the population of Pittsburgh, Arequipa doesn’t have quite as many big city amenities, but so far we have enjoyed numerous happy hours, shopping, wandering, and a night of absurd Spanish theater. Our google calendar is filling up with events found on Arequipa’s cultural website, siete esquinas. Needless to say, our Spanish is improving. We also have plans to catch up on movies we missed this year from the hostels extensive collection of questionable DVDs, but so far we haven’t been willing to devote the requisite 2 hours at night.
Dinner is a fairly late affair here and we often have an afternoon empanada and coffee to hold us over till dinnertime. In addition to classic Peruvian cuisine, the restaurants in Arequipa are varied ranging from hotdog shops to pizzerias and pollerias (chickenerias) to Chifas (Chinese restaurants.) In a month, we won’t need to eat at the same restaurant for dinner twice. Of course, the most fun is when we stock up on ingredients at the market and make a dinner in the hostel kitchen. The potato selection here is to die for, and we were pleasantly surprised to find a wide variety of cheeses, olives, pastas, and fresh fruits and vegetables. We’re working up the courage to buy fresh alpaca meat at the market. Maybe we’ll start with alpaca-style soy product.
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