Travel With Betsy

…to buy…well, just about anything you can think of. What an interesting mix of items.

The market was the first stop on our tour of Arequipa. I have seen some markets in my day, but I can’t say that I have ever seen a group of items quite like this. I’m not kidding, we saw everything from the typical fruits and vegetables…..

…..to fish roe with the membrane still stretched over it…..

……to whole chickens with blank eyes staring down pointed, lifeless beaks and feet with limp talons reaching out towards us……

……to potatoes, and lots of them. We learned from Liliana, our very excellent Gate 1 Travel Guide, that there are about 3,000 different kinds of potatoes grown in Peru.   We saw only a fraction of them….and tasted even less of them in our time here so far. But, they come with every meal made in all different ways.

There was also a section of the market that was dedicated to medicinal herbs and other items used as good luck charms.

This little baby llama fetus is one of the good luck charms we saw. Strange, but nice to know they only use fetus’ that are found in the fields and are as a result of a miscarriage of the mother.  No killing is going on here.

Liliana would stop every now and then as she led us through the market to give us an explanation about what we were seeing and sometimes a small taste of the items that were safe for us to eat.

Then, she would pass around a roll of toilet tissue, and we would all rip off a piece and wipe our hands, which I found to be a very strange custom. I’m guessing that toilet tissue is cheaper to purchase than napkins……..not sure. This is all I can figure out! After all, everything is usually about money, isn’t it?

Our trip to the market was the start of an interesting, albeit long, day that culminated in the Colca Valley after a drive through the highest point that we would reach on this trip at a little over 16,00 feet. Whew…still trying to catch my breath!

Anyway, our next stop in Arequipa was at the Santa Catalina Monastery.

I can’t say that I have ever visited such a place on any of my trips, and I found the early customs of this type of life to be quite interesting.  The monastery was where they trained young girls to be nuns. So, it was a convent as well….and, still is. It’s story made me grateful that I didn’t live in the 18^th century when this institution was getting started…and, here’s the reason why. Around age 12, the direction of a young girl’s life was decided. If there were 2 girls in a family, the oldest one married and had a family. The youngest one went to the convent and was “married” to the church. Both of which, by the way, required a dowry. I am the younger of 2 girls in my family. So, in this scenario, I would have become a nun. Can’t imagine it…someone telling me what to do all the time? I don’t think so!

The upside to living in the convent then, was that the life was pretty easy especially if your parents had some money and could provide a nice dowry to the church. In that case, the girls had their own rooms that were actually pretty big and looked to be fairly comfortable. It also seemed that they were well taken care of and quite looked after. Later on in the girl’s life with the church, the wealthy nuns could run for office in the convent and had some freedoms to make decisions for themselves and the other nuns.. It seems that with money comes power……surprise…..surprise.

Over time, the life of the nuns changed with the oversight of Sister Joseph Cadena.   There were no longer the freedoms that the nuns had once seen. The transition was so dramatic, that the other nuns tried to poison her….3 times! Then, they went to confession and absolved of their sin. What a story! Suffice to say that the life of the nuns was changed forever.

The monastery itself is quite beautiful. It is divided up into streets that were designed and named after cities in Spain. Here are a few of them.

After the tour, we headed to a local restaurant for lunch before heading to Colca. At the restaurant, our group was treated to a fun concert by local musicians while we ate! Dinner and a show! Fun times!

After lunch, we boarded the bus and began our ascent to our highest point of the trip.

The guides had instructed us to drink lots of water in order to combat the altitude sickness. You don’t have to tell me twice.

On the way up, we stopped at a famous coffee stop for some coca tea, also a good cure for altitude sickness.

As it turns out, the copious amounts of water and the coca tea paid off, and I did pretty well with the high altitude point. Some of the others in our group didn’t fare quite as well and ended up short of breath, headaches, nausea and diahrea. I could definitely feel the altitude and had to remember to take deep, long breaths to capture every possible molecule of oxygen. When we descended to our hotel in Colca Valley, I did muster up a small headache. But, trusty ibuprofen did the trick in taking it away. It was actually one of the best night’s sleeps of the trip for me so far. Hoping for another one!

Off to a good start in Peru!

This entry was posted on September 16, 2016 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Group Travel, South America, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.