Eating Arequipa

I will confess that getting out of bed in a 45 degree morning is not always easy. Our bed is very comfortable and with the duvet pulled up to my nose I can pretend it’s a toasty hot morning in Florida, except it isn’t and then Rusty starts. 

He yelps gently, demanding to be let out and the fact that he prefers to sleep inside on his bed gives you an idea how cold it is here. But that’s not enough so grumbling and muttering under my breath I take him down to the gate and ring the bell and wait for the buzzer that tells me the gate is unlocked by remote control.  Out we go to walk the neighborhood. 

Arequipa is actually quite a clean town, and I pick up after Rusty and there is a dumpster conveniently nearby. One thing I find extremely odd here is how barred and locked up everything is. People live in constant fear it feels like. The small stores aren’t always staffed and you have to call for service so someone can come out from the back. But even then you don’t get to go inside. I find it weird. This restaurant wasn’t yet open for service but it was barred and locked. 

After his walk Rusty was ready to recuperate. 

Later we left him aboard GANNET2  where he sleeps and feels safe and walked into town without him. 

Like I said Arequipa is pretty clean and this mess will eventually be cleaned up by city cleaners who can be seen wandering around town with brooms and shovels. 

Not everyone  loves their city and it’s a shame because this is a pretty old town. 

And this is a beautiful city. 

Imagine how I feel stepping past the poverty and indifference.  We keep handing out coins in an effort not feel so shitty but it doesn’t really work. 

Overlanding friends who cage before is recommended the 13 Monjas (“monks”). Cheesy Naan appetizers. 

Cheesy indeed with three sauces, tomato sauce for pasta, hummus, and a pineapple marmalade. 

I had grilled Arequipa sausage with a cucumber pickle. 

Layne had chicken masala and we shared each other’s. 

With drinks and mineral water I’d was about $50 and the check came in a book of poetry by a Spanish poet I’d never heard of but I have now. 

This is the only street in Arequipa where we have seen outside seating. 

For coffee we went to a roof top. 

The baristas were a fun bunch and produced an excellent flat white for me. 

It was pleasant there but the views weren’t anything to write home about. 

Our plan had been to visit the cloisters of St Catherine under the arch but it was Sunday and the lines was totally backed up so that tour got postponed. It’s supposed to be a really nice historic nunnery worth visiting. 

And so back home to a really happy dog ready to greet us. 

Waiting In Arequipa

Layne has an appointment today with a skin cancer surgeon. She has two small cancers that need to be removed, no big deal the doctor said they aren’t serious.

The big deal is that until we know the process and the timeline for the surgery and the recovery time we don’t know what we are doing next. We have a comfortable spot to wait and see before we finish up Peru by touring Cusco, the Sacred Valley and Lake Titicaca before we drive to Chile.

The other issue as ridiculous as it sounds is that I have to return to Florida before November. My drivers license expires October 31st and I can’t renew it online, as I did that last time and you can’t do that twice in a row. Silly me.

So I will be marching off to Miami sometime. I had planned to go from Lima but the campground there wasn’t pet friendly but here in Arequipa Layne would be fine by herself for a week so I shall probably fly to Lima and connect to Miami and rent a car to drive to Key West and stay with friends.

You know what they say about making lemonade from lemons so I shall probably be in Key West in mid September, the height of hurricane season if all goes well. Slightly weird but necessary.

In addition to getting a Cuban mix sandwich at Sandy’s I shall have to pick up our mail, get my International Driving Permit renewed, renew GANNET2’s registration and buy a suitcase to bring back all the loot Layne has been shipping from Amazon to our friends’ place in New Town. 

It’s funny really as lots of travelers from Europe go home in summer and our Canadian friends will be in British Columbia for September. I hate flying and being shuffled around but it’s extremely convenient to be able to afford the time and money to make this ridiculous journey. Plus I’ll get to see some people I have missed. I’m not complaining. 

Layne will be fine here for a week as it’s a short walk downtown, there’s a giant supermarket around the corner, the campground does laundry and Rusty is very happy sprawling in the sun. She’s also found some cooking classes she wants to take. 

I’m ready to be out of Peru and exploring Chile on our way to Ushuaia at the southernmost tip of the continent. We are trying to plan our arrival at the Beagle Channel in early December which is the beginning of summer so we have to keep an eye on our dawdling as it’s 3500 miles in a straight line and we drive anything except straight lines. There is so much to see. 

In the meantime we are seeing the sights, reading books and trying Peruvian cuisine. Not a bad life. Saturday we ate at a fish restaurant (and got to go boxes as usual).

The tangy bright soup tasting of fish and lime to start. And then we ordered a tasting tray, too vast by half of course. Seafood rice, ceviche, and fried fish. All delicious but we ate the ceviche and saved the rest for our fridge. 

Service was weird of course, rushed impatient and tense. This was at three in the afternoon. 

After it was over he was cheerful and sorry he spoke not much English. We gave a tip which as always shocked him. I wish there were more joy and less self consciousness in Peru as they seem so shy and ashamed at not speaking English. The food in Colombia is boring but the good cheer of the people makes up for it. Peruvian cuisine is fascinating but it’s hard to connect with Peruvians. 

We wandered and bought some chocolate. 

And tried some craft beer and planned our journey south. 

We also walked past a rabbit rescue where you can also groom and board your pet rabbit. I kid you not. Note the red US style barn, our culture permeates everywhere. 

Taking a trip? Board your bunny with us. My mind is blown. 

And the water trucks. Peru is a desert. 

Not a bad day for a couple of retirees was Saturday. 

Mario Vargas Llosa

I was not hopeful when we set out from the campground for the fifteen minute stroll to the place where Mario Vargas Llosa was born in 1936. 

The museum of the Andes left me with a sense of irritated disappointment that made me wonder what kind of reception would we get here. I had been looking forward to the Andes museum and the no photography no mummies and lots of fees had rubbed me all backwards. 

Rusty enjoyed his walk not least because he’s much more relaxed when we are both together. He gets anxious when I try to take him on my own. He takes his chief security officer job very seriously while we travel. 

The temperature here at 7400 feet is slightly confusing because the sun is hot but at this altitude it doesn’t heat the air so you get the perfect climate when the sun is up with about 75 degrees. When the sun goes down the temperature plummets. We wake up routinely to 48 degree mornings. 

This museum operated by the Arequipa Regional Government is in league of its own. Rusty was welcomed and made a fuss of while we discussed the author’s works as we waited for the previous tour to get done. I took Dan’s advice and bought “Death In The Andes” and our guide suggested his autobiography “A Fish In The Water.”  I’ve got some Andean literature to get through now.

The house belonged to Vargas Llosa’s grandfather and he was born there because his father insisted his mother go to be with her family for her confinement. He lived here for a year and has no memory by his own account if Arequipa which makes this museum something of an oddity to my mind. Another modern oddity is the talking hologram wherein the Nobel Peize winning author welcomes you warmly and cheerfully. 

Young Mario was born here and a few months later his father vanished for eleven years before reappearing and making his life hell by essentially kidnapping him and making his son live with him in Lima. 

“The City And The Dogs” (also known in English as “The Time Of The Hero”) published in 1963 brought him fame but his life till then had more twists and turns, many different jobs and varied settings than my own so my hat’s off to him. He also prided himself on writing everything, including his Nobel acceptance speech by hand on sheets of paper. Like this: 

Free his birth the family moved to Bolivia encouraged to make the move to silence the malevolent chatter about his abandoned single mother, and he lived a life of joy and privilege in Cochabamba with many friends and a whole bevy of uncles aunts cousins and friends. Arequipa was merely his place of birth. 

His fondest memories of Peru, he says are the wild north coast around Piura where his family moved, the multicolored sands of the desert and the ocean breaking on endless beaches. I found that sentiment quite striking inasmuch as Peru today sells itself as a land of mountains and ruins and Incas and all the advertising we know with llamas and bowler hats and Machu Picchu. Below is a scene from “The Green House” which in his youth in Piura was a bordello. In the story the villagers attack the whores instigated by the village priest: 

We walked through the house stopping in each room to watch a brief video (in Spanish though I believe English speaking guides may be available) about some aspect of his life. It was nicely done and I found interesting but in a way it highlighted how little of Arequipa is in Vargas Llosa. 

His has been an interesting life and just reading his Wikipedia biography will give you a taste of his prolific writing as a journalist, his many down to earth odd jobs to keep himself in funds and his winding political path through life. 

He started out leftist appalled by the poverty on display in Peru after World War Two (and today as far as I’m concerned). He supported Castro in Cuba until Castro locked up a popular Latin American poet and that sent Vargas Llosa in another direction. He says nowadays he opposes dictatorships of any kind but in 1990 he ran for Predidebtvif Peru on the right wing ticket. He lost to Alberto Fujimori who ended up on the run and in exile in Japan accused of appalling corruption so perhaps it’s just as well Vargas Llosa lost. 

He has dual citizenship now and mostly lives in Madrid where he says Spain gave him the platform to make him famous and he spends months at a time in Peru visiting his family. 

He’s won a couple of awards too. 

And as our guide pointed out he is the only person from Arequipa to win the Nobel Prize, seen here in holographic form accepting it, and reading from his hand written speech. 

It was an interesting visit and despite our inability to slow down stop and pause and view things at our leisure it was well worth while. 

I’m not sure what young Rusty thought of the tour but he sat patiently and laid down quietly during the videos and was praised for his perfect manners. As usual. 

And do we three wandered back to the campground through the leafy back streets of Arequipa. 

Funnily enough the leader of the guerilla movement known as “Sendero Luminoso” (Shining Path) whose name is Abimael Guzman was also born in Arequipa. Some say the reason there were no terrorist attacks here during that protracted civil war was owing to the fact that he had a soft spot for the city of his birth. 

The Shining Path were a ghastly bunch of thugs who killed 70,000 people they say and tortured and terrified absolutely everyone. Guzman was a university professor who spent decades planning his uprising but in his Maoist ideology forgot the critical component of a winning revolution: winning the hearts and minds. They slaughtered at will and thus terrified every single Peruvian and ultimately thanks to some solid police work he was caught and arrested and is finishing up his worthless life behind bars. But he sure left his mark on this country. 

Personally I prefer Vargas Llosa’s story and I think I might start digging deeper into his books. I’m not sure why but he has never previously grabbed me. Today he may have got me.