July 1: Arequipa

I had one more day in Arequipa to unwind (and finally shower) from my trip. Carolyn and I spent the morning at the museum that houses Juanita The Ice Princess, the mummy found in the Andes in the 1990s with most of her internal organs still intact. She was an Inca sacrifice from hundreds of years ago and her body is on display in an icy sarcophagus at the Museo Santuarios Andinos. The tour guide told us that the girl, after walking many miles up a volcano and imbibing both chicha (alcohol) and coca (drugs), was hit on the head with a star shaped stone. Deification can be kind of rough if you’re an Inca, huh? Apparently fifteen other child sacrifices have been found in Peru and Argentina and all the bodies are housed in the laboratories at the Museo. Though Juanita is the only one on display, Arequipa is apparently a premier research station for the Incan culture. This is a picture of Arequipa's Plaza de Armas:
Carolyn and I then walked to Yuanahara, a suburb of Arequipa that has a lovely view of the city with Mt. Misti towering over it. On the way we stopped at Sol de Mayo, a restaurant where I got to taste the infamous cuy. Yes, it's a guinea pig. And yes, I ate it. Some people seem to like it quite a lot but I found it greasy and difficult to get the tiny bits of meat off way too many little bones. But it does make for some great pictures.
I also took Carolyn to the market where I tried to find the frogs for the jugo de rana but, as it was Sunday and Peru is fervently Catholic, most of the merchants had closed up shop. We did buy a ton of fun fruit though, including lucuma, which has a dark green skin and orange meat surrounding a pit that tastes like dates. Back on the Colca Canyon hike, on the way to the hot spring in Chivay, Victor our guide got in an argument with the taxi cab driver about frog and toad juice. “I would never drink toad juice,” Victor said (en español), “Toads are big and ugly. They would make the juice black.” “It’s the same thing,” replied the driver, “They’re both good for you.” And in the backseat Carolyn broke in with “Either way, frogs or toads, eating them is terrible!” To which I heartily agree.

I also got to try some weird South American ice creams: queso (cheese) which was salty and weird and chirimoya (a green fruit with white meat) which also did not taste so great. But when in Rome...

Anyway, tomorrow Mike, Carolyn and I are off to Lake Titicaca and maybe a view of Bolivia!