August 22, 2006

August 22, 2006

Today we spent a leisurely day reading, eating and shopping. Arequipa is delightful. It is sunny, dry, warm (not hot) during the day and cool, but not cold at night. This is important because heat is at a premium in Peru and the Andean highlands are very cold at night. Arequipa also has a beautiful downtown plaza and a huge variety of good restaurants nearby. Food and taxis are really unbelievably inexpensive. The people are all amazingly capitalistic, all figuring out their own way to make a Peruvian Sole (worth about $0.30). It is easy to be generous in a country where a single Sole is valued. On the other hand it is frustratingly difficult when nobody has change for even the smallest of Sole bills. We are continually running out of coins. Arequipa’s only problem is El Misti, the massive, perfectly cone-shaped active volcano looming over it.

At 7:30pm we take a taxi to the bus station for another overnight ride, this time to Nasca. I am not looking forward to this. Unfortunately it is the only way to get there. Only a handful of Peruvian cities have air service.