“I want a penthouse,” Erika said while looking through AirBnbs for Arequipa. We’d had just about enough of our budget housing for our trip to Machu Picchu, and we wanted something a little nicer again. We still missed our condo in La Paz.

“Oooh, forget a penthouse, maybe I want a colonial house!” The sky was the limit for us, apparently.

We did settle on that penthouse, and on May 5 we left Cusco and flew to Arequipa, Peru. The AirBnb host arranged airport pickup for us with a friend of hers, Mario. It’s always nice coming out of baggage claim and seeing our name on a placard!

Mario wound us through the Arequipa streets, while Erika and I bruised each other repeatedly from all the Punch Bugs in town. We got to the apartment, got checked in, and it was as good as we’d hoped!

It was only fifth floor, but it was the top of the building, had a beautiful patio, and 5 floors were enough to see over the short buildings and houses all the way to the Arequipa central plaza, half a mile away. Also, the patio gave us a spectacular view of the single most imposing and impressive thing about the Arequipa scenery: the volcanoes. Primarily El Misti, the 19,000 foot monster looming threateningly over Arequipa, whose summit is only 17 kilometers away from the city center. Oh, it’s an active volcano, by the way. Unsettling!

El Misti is beautiful, but it’s not the only volcano on view from Arequipa. To its left, sitting slightly further away but rising higher, just a shade under 20,000 feet, is Chachani. Chachani is also active, and is also notable as a popular target for summit hikes. In recent years there has been less snow on the summit, leading to many months of the year with little to no snow, meaning the climb can be done without crampons or other ice gear. That’s unusual for a mountain of this altitude, and makes it one of the more “attainable” super high peaks. I want to go back and do it.

Finally, off distantly to the right of El Misti, is the third of the volcano triumvirate, Picchu Picchu. “Picchu” means “mountain” in Quechua, so this guy is “mountain mountain”. I can’t tell you if there are any trail trails you can hike up it.

Slowly Branching Out

We’d been pretty busy and active making our way to and from Machu Picchu. Also, Erika’s cold came back for a little round two, to sap her energy. So, we got to our penthouse and decided to take some time off. We grabbed lunch nearby–a delicious ceviche–got groceries so we could cook that night, and disappeared into our penthouse for the next 24 hours or so.

Late the next afternoon, we finally decided to leave the apartment for a bit. We made the 20 minute walk up to the Plaza de Armas, and were floored by how beautiful Arequipa is!

The plaza is totally beautiful, but unfortunately for us the centerpiece was under some maintenance, leaving us with a rather more unsightly view in the middle. We’ve read online that Arequipa’s Plaza de Armas is considered one of the most beautiful plazas in all of Latin America. Even with it not being in its full glory, we can see that.

The most stunning part of the plaza is the Basílica Catedral, the enormous cathedral that takes up the entirety of one side of the quite large plaza.

Just this small sip of Arequipa had affected both of us, and we agreed it was special and we were falling for it. We went back to our apartment and extended our stay by three days.

We had hoped to use Arequipa as a jumping off point into the nearby Colca Canyon, the second deepest canyon in the world. The Grand Canyon? Hahahahaha, Colca is over twice as deep as the Grand Canyon! That’s insane! Sadly, we were pretty exhausted, and didn’t think we had the necessary hiking in us. So like the multi-day trek to Machu Picchu, Colca would have to tempt us to come back to Peru.

Walking Tour

Naturally, we found a free walking tour, it has kinda become our thing. Actually, we found two, and couldn’t get a good feel, from reading online, for which was better. So we decided on the earlier one.

When we walked near, though, it looked kind of… sad. The tour guide looked pretty schleppy. We called a quick audible and walked past!

The second one started an hour later, so we hung around Plaza de Armas until then, deciding to take our chances with that one. And though we can’t directly compare it to the tour we skipped, I can tell you we loved the tour we took. The guide was charismatic and knowledgeable, funny and fun to spend the nearly three hours with. He told us about Arequipa history, before and after the Spanish arrived. He talked about the volcanoes. He talked about food, and Peru’s burgeoning reputation as a foodie destination.

But the one detail Erika and I both best remember from the tour: the trash trucks. Huh? Yeah the trash trucks. He pointed out how the trash trucks in town play music, so that residents know it’s coming and can bring out their trash. What music the trucks play has morphed and changed over time, but a very, very common one that many trucks play: “Under The Sea”, from The Little Mermaid! We had heard that from our apartment before, and thought it was an ice cream truck maybe. Wrong: trash!

Santa Catalina Monastery

In the middle of Arequpia is a Dominican monastery of nuns, dating from the 1500s. It’s essentially a little city within the city, as the nuns who went to live there, naturally, went there for good. It’s well preserved–and a portion of it is still actively hosting nuns–and we’d heard it made a good self-guided tour.

But first, Erika wanted to go visit the alpacas we’d found during our walking tour the day before. They have a few different types of alpaca captive–some look like afghan dogs, some look like huge cotton balls. One of those cotton balls looked like a giant cuddly teddy bear. Disturbingly, this teddy bear tried to mount an alpaca that had been born just earlier in the year. Seems too young!

We even got the opportunity to feed them.

Anyway, eventually I could pull Erika away and we went to the monastery. As I said, it’s laid out like a small self-contained city, and the roads–basically the walking paths between houses and buildings–are all named after cities in Spain.

It makes you feel a bit claustrophobic to walk thru, and tour the old houses these women lived in, and imagine your life being just… that. That house, those couple roads. Just that, and nothing else, forever. As Erika pointed out, it was probably better than where a lot of people came from at the time–you had no worry for food and shelter, after all. Plus, the weather in Arequipa is fantastic!

Still though.

It was an interesting visit. For some reason, you couldn’t get into the old cathedral. But you could climb up to the choir and see into it from there, which was beautiful.

Date Night

We hadn’t had a fancy date night in a while. So, we put on our fanciest fancy–which for Erika included the new alpaca poncho she bought in Bolivia–and went out for a nice restaurant that Erika had found, called Zig Zag. Zig Zag had fantastic pisco sours–of which we definitely had too many. They also had a dish where we got small fillets of lamb, steak, and alpaca.

Yeah, we went and hung out with the captive alpacas earlier, Erika was wearing alpaca, and we ate alpaca. We own you, alpaca! We felt a little badly, but it was too good to stay too upset. Turns out alpaca is very lean and healthy too!

What’s Next?

It was a lovely, restorative trip to Arequipa. Arequipa is a city we instantly felt comfortable in, and felt we could relax and slow down. We loved strolling the beautiful streets, and frequenting the gorgeous Plaza de Armas. We also got maximum enjoyment out of our apartment, spending plenty of time relaxing there reading, or watching numerous episodes of Arrested Development.

But, the time had come for us to leave, and head to the last city we’d visit in South America–which was a sad realization! We were off to the enormous, cosmopolitan capital of Peru: Lima. Thanks for stopping by the blog again, and come check out Lima soon!