We spent the night on a bus from Nasca to Arequipa. As always, I slept almost the whole 10 hours and did not pay attention to the road but maybe do the people from the tour were commenting how crazy the view was and that it seemed like we were going through Mars, big rocky landscape I assume.
Arequipa is called the white city because many of its building are made with the white ashes/rocks from the surrounding volcanos. The city itself is beautiful! Very colonial and some of the buildings are very beautiful, specially the banks.
After a quick breakfast/lunch we went for a stroll to San Camilo market, the local market of Arequipa. Every time I travel and go to local markets memories of when I was little come to my mind. I used to take the local bus with my grandma and we would go shopping to el centro de San Salvador. We would buy all kinds of El Salvadorean delicacies, fruits, and since I was very spoiled we would stop and by many posters to decorate my room with the pictures do popular boy bands or singers... I loved it!
It is very interesting to walk around and see what the locals eat and what is sold in the market.
My first stop was to take a picture of a little dried lamb hanging... So sad... I asked the woman what it is used for and she said "curaciones" which means that they use it to mix with herbs and what not to make some kind of potion/ medecine when someone is sick.
Then we walked to the food aisle... Oh my! We saw so many yucky things!
First of all... DRIED FROGS! Yuk! Of course I was intrigued as to what was the use for such "delicacy" and the woman said that it is used for soups! Apparently they put the frogs in a blender add it to the fish stock for fish soup!!!
Then we walked passed some goat/ lamb heads and ended up by the woman selling bull's testicles... No comments!
Peru is also well known for it's many kinds of potatoes and we surely saw a lot of them. And finally ended the tour by the fruit and juices! So many nice looking fruits over here!
After our delightful tour through the market I walked the city with some of the other girls. I really enjoyed the old look of the city. The most beautiful part of Arequipa is the view of the mountains surrounding it. Mostly everywhere you look you will see a mountain top.
The plaza the armas was filled with hundreds, if not thousands, of pigeons!!!! Even more so than in Venice! The pigeons are very polite, one can barely move around them but they do move when people are passing through!
Plaza de Armas at night:
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