San Camilo Market

Layne went off to explore Arequipa’s huge covered market called San Camilo. It’s not her first visit but apparently she decided to go deep and check all four corners. She brought back a few dozen photos. I stayed home with Rusty ( of course) and here is a little of what she enjoyed. 

We are going to get a couple of fuel jugs in Brazil to make sure we don’t run out in the jungle. 

 

Monday

Sunday ended up being a do nothing day however I hesitate not to post something lest it appear the blog is silenced. Layne didn’t go to the market yesterday as it closed early, but she went today, Monday. I went to pick up our laundry yesterday, Rusty spent the day moving between sunshine and shade alternating his nap locations. I think forgetful set this post to publish early in the morning. Silly me, apologies. 

We have planned our departure and want to leave before the city’s holiday reaches a crescendo, we don’t need the chaos. The plan now is to leave on Thursday morning and take to the mountains. There is a Quechua women’s weaving collective outside Cusco Layne wants to check out. It’s in a town that goes by the lovely name of Pisac (“pee-sack”) pretty much directly on our way to Brazil. She’s seen all she wants of Cusco through my photos so we will be pressing on to get past the Andes, our last high pass for a while, to descend to the rain forest on the other side, marked below in green: 

Until then we enjoy perfect winter weather with patience. 

Sunday In Arequipa

I expected to get a wheelbarrow load of pictures from Layne yesterday as she had planned to go to the San Camilo market in town. It’s a very photogenic covered city block filled with booths. Maybe tomorrow…The reason she didn’t get there was purely due to the city being in holiday turmoil. She couldn’t get an Uber; as simple as that.

There is so much traffic in the city it was hard to move. I wanted Indian food for dinner and we hadn’t managed to get any delivered our first night so yesterday I ordered early and they got our lamb and biryani out to us. We order on WhatsApp in English and we really like their food.

There’s not much going on around here to be honest. I’m enjoying doing little chores and sitting out in the sun with my Kindle. This does not make for an exciting travelogue.

We met these guys in a parking lot in La Serena in Chile around May. They had two dogs and we chatted briefly but we made a connection. Bjorn is another young German tired of Germany and its regulations now enjoying the wide open spaces of South America. 

Alessandra is from northern Italy near Milan. Her father is one year younger than me but Italian speakers are rare on the road so she was happy to chat with me, the old man, in her native tongue. She said she wishes her father would get off the couch and get out and see the world the way we do.

Their Volkswagen breaks down all the time and Bjorn has learned to be a mechanic. It was the vehicle they had when they wanted to come to South America so they stuffed it in a container in September 2023.  One of their dogs has died and the other one is elderly. In a couple of years they figure they may be free to ship to Southern Africa and explore that continent. He plays music, she makes crafts, they buy interesting locally made products on the way and sell them online across Europe. They make it work on about $1600 a month. They left Arequipa bound for some beach time after weeks in the mountains. I hope we see them again before too long.

Now we are alone in the campground at least until the next overlander arrives. Rusty has the run of the place and we can use the women’s toilets, the ones closest to us, without fear of me offending a female camper. 

Layne has been route planning and the news we have on a proposed visit to Lake Titicaca is not good. The word is tourism has wrecked the place. The famous reed islands people live on are retained for tourists only and tours are hard core exercises in sales of “souvenirs.” Apparently the balsa reed islands are maintained for tourists and tours are taken on plastic boats camouflaged with reeds. Layne nixed that and I can’t disagree. It makes me glum feeling I’ve come too late to feed the memories of my discovery of Kon Tiki in my childhood. Bugger. Consequently Layne has been looking around and has found some stuff she wants to see around Cusco and the Sacred Valley. There is so much of Peru that is devoid of visitors it is jarring to find Instagram has Disneyfied some bits you’d really like to see. 

The world keeps moving. I am looking forward to moving ourselves. If not Titicaca other interesting places. 

Fish And Chaos

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 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.