The Earthquake

Trip Start Aug 02, 2007
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14
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Trip End Aug 22, 2007


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(Arequipa hotels)

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Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Day 13: Today we get to stay at Casa Arequipa, the hotel we stopped by to make a reservation before going to Colca Valley.  We knew it was really nice, so we were excited.  Once again, the cab driver had issues finding the hotel.  We even showed him where it was on a map, yet aside from which area of the city it was in, he had no clue where the hotel was.  And it's not even that difficult!  At one point he even stopped the car at a stop sign, turned the car off and took his keys (with us still sitting in the cab), and got out to ask someone on the street if they knew where it was.  Very odd. 

After checking in, we walked to the main square, which took about 10 minutes.  (It's not so far that you'd think cab drivers would have such a hard time!)  We went to the Santa Catalina Monastery, which was built in the 16th Century and is like a little city in itself. The nuns paid a pretty steep dowry to get in and lived a lot better than you'd expect of   nuns.  They had servants and seemed to have big rooms decorated really nicely.  About 100 nuns lived there back then and about 20 nuns live in the modern part of the monastery now.  It was a really pretty place to walk around; it is built of volcanic rock and petrified volcanic ash and it has an open air style with pretty courtyards and alleys.  All of the "cells" that the nuns lived in were definitely not what I'd call cells.  Some were really big, and most had multiple rooms, with a kitchen and a little courtyard area.  In one of the passageways in a cell, there was an odd smell...there were guinea pigs there!   Mike pointed and said: "Dinner!"  Guinea pigs (cuy, in Spanish), are a popular food in Ecuador and Peru.  They are typically served roasted, with the guinea pig intact...head and legs and all.   Neither of us tried cuy, even though Mike kept saying that he wanted to try it.  I guess the timing was never right...
 
Speaking of food, we were hungry when we left the Monastery, so we were very pleased when we saw that Zig Zag's creperie was right across the street.  (It's the sister restaurant of Zig Zag, that restaurant we went to for the alpaca and other meat served on the hot stone.)  They had a really pretty courtyard area to sit in and again we had an amazing and relaxing lunch in the beautiful weather.  We started off with some white wine and enjoyed savory crepes.  We stayed there for a while, talking and drinking our wine, and eventually shared a dessert crepe.  After a few hours relaxing over our wine and lunch, we decided to look in some stores.  We realized it was the first time we were going to go shopping the entire trip!
 
We got back to the hotel late afternoon and relaxed and read for a while.  It was such a beautiful hotel...it's a converted mansion and only has 7 rooms.  We stayed in #7 and it even had a balcony.  (It also had the nicest bathroom!)  At about 6:30pm, the room started shaking. I thought Mike was playing a trick on me; Mike thought some people were walking really heavily and making the room shake.  But then I saw that the chandelier in our room was shaking!  Later when we went downstairs, the woman at the desk said there had been an earthquake.  We did not realize the magnitude.  It's weird being in the insulated world of vacation in a foreign country.  We went back to dinner at Zig Zag (the restaurant, not the creperie) and again had a delicious dinner.  Again, throwing caution to the wind, Mike tore off his bib (and so did I).   We were sad that we'd be leaving our nice hotel and Arequipa the next day.  And, we had a very early flight.  We loved Arequipa.
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