I feel lucky to be securely parked this week not expected to drive anywhere as celebrations fill the city outside the walls of our campground in Arequipa.
PlazaVea the local supermarket is proud to be celebrating the “White City’s” 485th birthday August 15th, next Friday. Arequipa is known as the white city owing to a tradition that no longer really applies of whitewashing the buildings. We are parked behind the wall below, at the Las Mercedes campground and comfortably secure it is too, even though it is right in the middle of the city and convenient to walk to the Plaza de Armas. This week walking is an especially good thing as the streets are clogged and noisy.
We do get traffic noise of course, and lots of it in this Peruvian city. Drivers have no patience courtesy or self control so if traffic is held up, say owing to a slow passenger mounting a bus, all hell breaks loose on the horns. A blaring horn is the equivalent of a medieval lance piercing everything that stands in its way. Inside the compound wall those excruciating sounds carry, exquisitely.
We took off for a walk to get some lunch after we settled Rusty comfortably aboard GANNET2 on his bed on our bed with windows open and doors ajar. We are planning to leave Arequipa a week from Sunday and drive for Puerto Maldonado across the Andes, a river port close to the border with Brazil. We expect the drive to take four easy days passing through some spectacular scenery above 14,000 feet.
Meanwhile we are trying to cope with a city in the throes of the equivalent to Fantasy Fest when everyone from everywhere descends on Arequipa for its birthday. It is very peopley and I’d be fine taking off tomorrow but I’m outvoted by Layne and Rusty. Below, we passed a lost dog notice “my family is crying for me” so I will keep an eye out.
A sample of the chaos below on Cruz Verde (green cross) Street which is always busy with buses but this week they are outdoing themselves slowing cars and drivers don’t like it. The horn symphony is heard in full force.
No one was unloading this truck. It was just sitting there unoccupied hoping buses could get by; so far so good. I wish I had the balls to park like this.
Check out the continuous flow of buses. I read the Trump administration is rescinding all those pesky clean air rules so pretty soon you can enjoy the sweet smell of third world diesel exhaust as we do.
Lunch was thirty bucks including a hefty North American tip. We had the complementary fish broth to start, with seaweed and onion and it’s quite refreshing especially with a squeeze of lime.
We decided to have mussels for a starter…
…I had Chinese style fried rice (arroz chaufa they call it in Peru) with fish…
…while Layne had trout which looks salmon pink in the Andes, all washed down with a jug of lemonade under a warm winter sun in about 74 comfortable degrees.
You can see why dawdling in Arequipa appeals. So even though I boldly state I’m ready to move on I can readily admit I’m not suffering by dawdling. The holiday traffic is not something I’m keen to dive into in a 21 foot 9400 pound Promaster.
I grew up driving in Italy so I know how to be aggressive but I’d much rather sneak out of town at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning as the locals nurse their hangovers.
I caught a glimpse of some wildlife resting on my leathered skin in the afternoon sun.
I sat outside the supermarket while Layne shopped and I saw a nostalgic sight, an orange VW identical to my late friend Giovanni’s first car which got us into all kinds of trouble in Italy in the 70s. He sold it because he thought it was a gas guzzler which says something about how different cultures guzzle gas.
A slow plod home with a few fruits and vegetables to replace those hijacked at the border and we only had laundry left to drop off.
7 kilos (15 pounds) for twelve dollars ready for pickup the next afternoon.
Arequipa is the easy life. Hot showers reliable electricity and lots of grass for Rusty to roll in. Why leave?
And on a slightly different note my blogging app has died. I used Blog Touch for years and was happy to pay a modest sum for the advertising free pro version. Then a few days ago it stopped working so I sent the developer in Eastern Europe somewhere a note and he told me it has died a developers death as Blogger made it impossible to continue. 
I was panicked but I have discovered Blogger’s editing page has got a lot better over the past decade from the first days I tried to use it, when I found the Blog Touch app was so much better. So I am adapting to a new writing format which for a rigid Aspergers type like me is a bit of a trial. I hope the pictures and words look pretty much as always but I am doing a little experimenting as I go.
I was panicked but I have discovered Blogger’s editing page has got a lot better over the past decade from the first days I tried to use it, when I found the Blog Touch app was so much better. So I am adapting to a new writing format which for a rigid Aspergers type like me is a bit of a trial. I hope the pictures and words look pretty much as always but I am doing a little experimenting as I go.
I don’t think there are many people still blogging so I don’t know how much longer technology will accommodate us few hold out eccentrics especially people like me who despise AI, and I am also not a fan of the doltish combativeness of most social media which I want none of on my page. I am happy I don’t need money from this page so I write for myself, advertisement free, not to please anyone, except you fellow eccentrics who take the time to read words and look at still pictures. Long may it last.
Thank you for reading.
