In Arequipa

Arequipa, Peru!

The main plaza - town centre

Hot, dry, interesting, chaotic, dirty, messy, a complete free-for-all. Amazing! America doesn't have entrepreneurs like Peru; everywhere there is a little business underway - from selling ice creams, corn, newspapers or plastic bowls to food vendors, shoe shiners or car sales - its all there on the street. Arequipa is full of little yellow taxis called Ticos made by Daewoo - a ride in one makes you feel like part of the street and anything bigger than another Tico seems positively threatening. If you want to experience a real adrenaline rush, better than any bungy jump, climb into the back of a Tico, give the driver your destination (and haggle the price a little) then add "muy rapido, por favor". This phrase will guarantee the driver will take every opportunity to get you there quicker (expecting an extra tip if he does) and the resulting ride is similar to the famous Shotover Jet ride in Queenstown NZ, but with added traffic. And the traffic is something else, hopefully I will get a video to show it in all it's stupendous clamour.



The ubiquitous Tico

Note this is only two lanes wide, and the person getting out is not parked but rather decided to jump out here.

One thing that did surprise me since my first visit (in 2004) is the number of brand new cars on the road. Arequipa is very dry and vehicles tend to last quite well, but obviously Peru's recent growth has created plenty of money for the middle classes, as Audis and BMWs as well as high end Chev and Ford models are seen regularly. I don't imagine that many locals would be keen to try and drive a Porsche or Ferrari on the streets here but I don't doubt that one may be found in a garage in a quiet part of town. But generally you see recent Japanese and European sedans making up the bulk of the private cars. Interestingly I have seen a fair number of older cars which have been clearly lovingly repaired and restored to a degree, and there are a lot of VW beetles and 1980 Japanese cars which look immaculate.



1967 VW Beetle

The weather has been a welcome break from the experience of DeKalb's descent into winter, with an average so far of approx 30 degrees Celcius most days and dry and sunny. It is the start of the rainy season here however, and we have had a couple of heavy downpours and some light afternoon drizzle on occasions. To be honest they are actually quite welcome and refreshing, adding some much needed humidity.

So far, after a lovely christmas dinner with family, we have been mainly walking and exploring. And enjoying an afternoon siesta of course. Our usual day consists of getting up for a leisurely breakfast and an explore about mid-morning, be back for lunch around 2pm (3 courses) and after a brief siesta go back out about 5 for a stroll, remembering to be back in time for supper about 8 or 9.

We have also been out on the household shopping trips a couple of times, usually these are fairly involved affairs as the favoured market is driven too, good selected then the next market visited, perhaps a supermarket for one or two items, then usually a return for something forgotten or an entirely unexpected (to me at least) trip elsewhere unrelated to shopping. This may take a few hours and is usually repeated a couple of times a week.



They take their potatoes seriously, with their own section.



At one of the fruit and vege markets

The markets are of course full of everything you could want; fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, cheese, plastic bowls, cake tins - in fact goods of all kinds, but some of them are apparently better for certain things. For anyone used to supermarket shopping it is well worth the visit to see how things actually are - nothing like a row of cow heads and entrails to remind you where your meat comes from as the butcher dismembers another carcass in front of you. The row of cuy (guinea pigs) carefully laid out with entrails included to prove the freshness I have decided not to post just yet...



Want pork?



Artfully displayed fruit is standard

But the thing I really love about Peru's cities is the architecture. From the Aztec to the Colonial and right up to the modern day, Peru has it all somewhere. Unfortunately a lot of the Aztec buildings were demolished by the Spaniards (although Cusco has a good selection) and in their stead they erected large imposing buildings to stamp their mark on the New World. The photo at the top shows the main plaza of Arequipa and the large church built by the Spaniards (and subsequently repaired many times due to earthquake damage). The photo below shows a typical street of the colonial section of town (in this case surprisingly free of people).



Colonial street in Arequipa

Moving more towards today it is clear that rapid growth and population pressure along with lax building codes and apparently non existent planning resulted in some pretty shocking buildings going up and a lot of people subdividing their land to make some money. In many cases they couldn't divide so they went up - in fact building up seems to be the main activity here as it is rare to find a building less than two floors which does not have some partially completed extra floor or protruding reinforcing rod up top. But while the results often resemble a child stacking blocks, there are plenty of interesting buildings around, often with a variety of colours as well...



note the staircase

Finally, we managed to get out of the city for a day and visit a farm and some countryside, a lot of which is slowly being urbanised as the population flood into the city for work and opportunities. Many suburbs start out as little more than a collection of houses, built illegally, until they reach the critical numbers to force the city to provide a water and sewer infrastructure, and are now almost indistinguishable from the city proper as they have been absorbed in and new suburbs appear outside them. We got out to one of the hydroelectric generation schemes serving Arequipa, and which has started supplying water as well. The main generator has been operating continually since 1905!



I think I remember this from New Zealand...



Dam #1, operating since 1905



Downstream from Dam #1

The plan after New Years is to get down to the beach for a few days rest before returning to the US!