Wed 10th Dec: Arequipa

I have a sleep in this morning. I´m not going to do a whole lot today. I´ll visit Monaterio Santa Catalina which will take a while and is recommended not to be missed. I´m reading the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, regarded as childrens literature I know but Mark Twain is a fantastic writer. I visited Hannibal in Missouri in the summer. This was Twain´s childhood home and the inspiration and location for the adventures in these books. I promised I´d read them after being interviewed so I have the books now and I´m flying through them.

Late in the morning I take a taxi into the centre and head for the monastery. It was built around 1570. 30yrs after the spanish established control over the district and began to build their colonial settlement. Over the years the monastery gained high prestige . It housed approx 40 nuns, drawn to the religious life from the nobility of the surrounding district. While the nus forsook civilian life and shut themselves behind the walls of the monastery they didn´t live a spartan life by any means. The seemed to have kept themselves by the means to which they were accustomed. The monastery itself is a beautiful town within a town, with streets, plazas and sumptuous cells. All built from the volcanic rock of the district.

Afterwards I ate. I was going to eat in the same restaurant as yesterday but , at the last moment decided to go into a locals place in the same street. This turned out to be a bit of a ramshackle joint and the food was.... spartan. Indeed, I had to try and force some of it down.

Another of the features of the traffic in Arequipa are the local bus services. These are, for the most part, converted little Hiace vans. They zip around town in swarms. They each have conductors who lean out of the sliding side doors to shout out their destinations to prospective passengers. A s the bus swerves into the side of the street, seemingly at random, the conductor, hanging from the door jumps into the pavement, shouting to all and sundry. Its all fast, rapid. The passengers pile in, the conductor jumps in after them and the driver accelerates back into the traffic. They pass a rival minibus and the conductor shouts a pleasantry into the driver, laughing as they whizz past. Conduting for Dublin Bus was never this exciting!!

I got my ticket for tomorrows destination, Chivay. This town sits at the head of one of the world´s deepest canyons at over 3,000m deep. The bus to Chivay leaves at 3.30am so I have an early start.