The 2018 Blog / July 20, 2018
We are pretty far behind, so I’m not too sure how well this blog is going to go because honestly i am not too sure how much i remember but I guess we are about to find out! Anyways, here is our story of our visit to the second most populated city and often times whats called the most underrated city in Peru, Arequipa. Known for its white walls it has gotten the name The White City. It is surrounded by volcanoes on all sides and is the capital of the world for alpacas! Anyways, I guess I will jump right into it!
So from Huacachina, we had a couple stops on our way to Arequipa. First stop was the Pisco Vineyards! Sarah and I were most excited for this stop. About fifteen minutes outside of Huacachina we stopped in Ica for our tour of the Vineyards. The tour lasted for about half an hour where this nice Peruvian man showed us how this delicate Peruvian alcohol was created. They utilize barrels like the ones in the photos and make their Pisco very sweet.
After our tour we sat down and got to try some of the Pisco wines and the Pisco hard alcohols. I very much enjoyed the wines because of how sweet they were, I’m not too sure how Sarah felt about them lol. Anyways, afterwards we got a couple Pisco infused ice creams and headed on our way to our next stop. The Nazca Lines!
This was a very brief stop on our way to Arequipa only a couple hours outside. We stopped for food right before and then ten minutes after we stopped at the Nazca viewing tower to check out these mysterious Nazca Lines. We walked up the three story viewing tower and were able to see three of these mysterious figures. While it was a little underwhelming I think I enjoyed the sunset the most. Also, I apologize if my blogging game is not up to par as of now. I’m currently writing this in our AirBnB in Cusco and Sarah and I are attempting to make a chicken pasta and almost burnt the entire place down, so I’m a bit preoccupied as of now.
And just like that we arrived in Arequipa at our Hostel at 4:30am in the morning! Sarah passed out in the common area of the hostel while I stayed up finishing up the Amazon blog? I’m honestly not too sure what I was doing. Anyways! After we finally got our room in our hostel at around 9am. We had breakfast and headed out to explore the city!
Our first stop was the free Arequipa City Walking Tour! It started out at a chocolate factory where we (Sarah drank both of them) had a couple chocolate teas? I was not the biggest fan. Oh also minor update. I am a tea drinker now. And by tea drinker I mean some coco leaves with about twelve tablespoons of sugar. I only started drinking tea because I think it was my only way of surviving these treks as the only form of water they provide is with tea.
ANYWAYS.... guess who we saw on our walking tour?!?!? Little did you know our teacher friends from San Fran were there as well! So we got to hang out with them for a couple hours or so on the tour! Our tour went a little like this.
· Went to the alpaca del Mundo museum to learn about alpacas and what they use them for. I mean this is the alpaca capital of the world?!?!?! We learned about the super fancy alpaca llama thing called a vacuna (thats probably spelled wrong but thats okay) and we saw how they make the alpaca fur. Here’s some pics of how its made! As well as some up close and personal pictures of some new friends we made on the tour!
· Then we walked around some alleys and learned more about the past culture of the city.
· Found the worlds greatest fruit bars. Bought one and it was so good! (Bought five more later in Cusco)
· Walked to the main plaza and some churches. Got some nice view on the balcony of one of the main buildings in the plaza as seen here:
· And with that, our tour was over and we said goodbye to our teacher friends. (Or so we thought. Spoiler alert!).
· Walked around the city and I bought a Peruvian national team soccer jersey because I’m such a big soccer fan.
· We went to go visit Juanita!
· You might be thinking who the hell is Juanita?
· Well let me tell you....
· Juanita is this fourteen year old frozen mummy that was sacrificed on top of a 21,000 ft mountain next to Arequipa. Apparently pretty famous.
· Well yours truly saw her with her own eyes. That frozen fourteen year old fetus was not looking too hot, but I guess pretty good for a few thousand years old. I’d show you a picture but they strictly banned phones and cameras from entering the museum so i guess you’ll just have to trust me on this one!
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· Got a gourmet meal at maccas.
· Hung out and then headed up to this rooftop bar on the main plaza for drinks. We hung out to watch all of sunset and even into the night. The view wasn’t bad at all!
The next day we decided to check out the Witch markets. I was pretty stoked to go out and buy some potions that a few people on the internet were talking about. We walked over to the market and snuck a few pictures in before getting yelled at. While we were a bit disappointed, we were able to see some interesting things like an alpaca fetus, some pig heads and some other crazy stuff like that.
We ended up grabbing an incredible smoothie from one of these great smoothie woman. About like 30 of them all screaming for you to buy a smoothie as you walked by. You could say it was pretty interesting. In the pictures you can see the woman dressed in their full makeup chopping up every kind of meat imaginable. Pretty wild.
Anyways, we hung out and relaxed the rest of the day for our 3:00am wake up call for our Colca Canyon Trek! The second deepest canyon in the world! Twice as deep as the Grand Canyon! But thats a story for the next blog post. So I will see you soon Halfie fam! Have a good one!
Originally published July 20, 2018 / See the Arequipa gallery
