estas alturas

An update from Arequipa, Peru´s second biggest city.

There are now 5 total in our group: Lena, Alex, me, Judith, and now Linda, a Dutch student we met at Huacachina. We got into the city early in the morning and went to see the Sanctuary Museum, where you can see a frozen Inca girl (we saw Sarita but there`s also one called Juanita). Sarita was a human sacrifice made to the volcanoes. We also saw the Monastery of Santa Catalina, once a home to party-girl nuns who fraternized with their servants a lot until a strict Mother Superior type was sent there in the late 1700s.

We spent the past two days on a tour of the nearby canyon country. We saw the Cañon del Colca, saw giant condors flying around, saw pre-Incan burial grounds with bleached bones everywhere, ate alpaca meat, saw the Wititi love dance (performed like clockwork for tourists), went to hot springs, and saw beautiful green valleys covered with pre-Incan and Incan terraced hillsides. Also, all of us got some killer altitude sickness, despite all of the disgusting mate de coca we kept drinking at rest stops. 4 out of 5 of our group got the same stomach bug, but yesterday I also got a fever and started shivering uncontrollably. They took me to the hospital in Chivay and the doctors fixed me up and gave us all medicine. We´re now back in Arequipa rehydrating and taking medicine and feeling so much better than I was before.

If all goes according to plan, I`ll be off to Puno tomorrow to check out Lake Titicaca. Then from Puno our supergroup will continue on to Cuzco/Machu Picchu.

Altitude here in Arequipa: about 2300 meters or so
Altitude for the tour: over 4000 meters