Well, it is almost December. Now you are probably thinking about Christmas, because it is only 26 days away today. To me it seems closer and at the same time further because it is 3 houses away. Close, but far.
We went to see The Crimes Of Grindelwald in Spanish. It was really cool. I would not recommend going to that theatre in Cusco, it was small and stuffy. Also it was a mall. Chinook centre kind of. Not so big! I would suggest just turning on Spanish subtitles in you own home.
If you know me, you know how much I love Harry Potter movies and books, so of course I am going to end up getting myself the play script when it doesn't cost $81.51 so I can see what happened because I didn't really understand very much in the Spanish movie... 😭 It costs SO much!
We went to some Catacombs yesterday. We were not able to take any pictures of the bones, but it was really cool. We saw he 3rd largest painting in the world. It was the largest in South America! We did not take a picture, it might damage the oils. It was so big it had over 700 people in it. It took up a whole wall in the cathedral. It had Nuns, Bishops and Priests. It had everyone in that Church at the time. Wow, right? The bone were kind of creepy. In some of the tombs, it smelled weird and was very humid. Also our tour guide kept on laughing in this creepy way whenever we were inside tombs or going inside one. I am fairly sure that he only knew what to say and nothing else in English except "I don't know about that." Anyway, look at these pictures of the courtyard!
Wow!
Amazing, right?
Panorama shot.
Where did we go? Here!
We ate more picarones, and they tasted good. They were light and fluffy, and we got as much syrup as we wanted!
I don't look happy here. Wonder what went wrong.
A few days later, we went to El Mercado De San Pedro. We saw corn, cheese and people. Normal day.
Corn.
Cheese.
Random People. Normal day.
For some reason, seeing Alpacas and Lambs on leashes is a daily activity for us now. Terran and I still point every single Lamb and Alpaca out. We just aren't used to it yet. We also see Llamas often. Alpacas and Llamas are SO cute! The video is of an Alpaca. You might see a brown spotted Llama though.
For our last Saturday here in Arequipa we decided to visit the Santa Catalina Convent. The convent is located in the historic center of Arequipa and it is considered the most important and impressive colonial structure in the city. Constructed from Sillar, a white volcanic stone quarried locally, the convent was founded in 1579, and is truly a city within a city. The nuns constructed private cells within the convent where they could lead isolated lives, protected by high walls sheltering them from the surrounding city. Most museums, or tourist sites here in Peru encourage you to have a guide, normally we prefer to do it without one, but this structure was so large, and with so much history, that I am glad we opted to have a guide show us the place. One of the many alleys within the Convent. Each street within the convent is named after a Spanish city, I think this one might have been Malaga.
Monday morning we said good bye to our nice home in Cusco, and headed to Urubamba. We walked down to the paradero, and took a "colectivo" (a large 20 person van), paid our 6 soles/per person, and rode for about an hour and a half to the town of Urubamba. According to Wikipedia, Urubamaba or Urupampa in the Quechua spelling means "flat land of spiders"....poor Maija. (We didn't tell her yet... she can wait until we leave or she reads this blog post to find out). The Sacred Valley is much warmer than Cusco, and is full of flowers. A beautiful little town
So, after I went to Rainbow Mountain on Saturday, I have a few things to say about it.Pretty, and painful. If you wanted to do it while you are in Cusco, I would suggest it only if you are a strong hiker, and if you are an intermediate hiker, I would suggest getting to the first summit and sucking on Coca leaves. Maybe get help from horses, it pays off with the view at the first summit. My dad made it to the 2nd summit. The hike down is easy and it has a good view. You see a valley with random alpacas dotting the green grass. The alpacas are fairly tame, but will still run away if you approach them too fast. Some fun facts about this Mountain are: 1. Another name for Rainbow Mountain is Vinicunca. 2. When you are on the first summit of the Mountain you are closer to the Mount Everest summit than you are to Calgary. 3.There is snow on a mountain close to Vinicunca. The roads on the second half of the way there are the scariest roads ever. And we were in...
So candid :) I like the bit about the guy that didn't really speak English. Spencer and I both laughed.
ReplyDeleteI love the video of you and the alpaca, Maija! I need to figure out how to teach my alpacas to do that.
ReplyDeleteI love your new normal Maija!!
ReplyDeleteI love the video Maija!
ReplyDeleteMaija, I love the pictures of the monastery! Wow!!!
ReplyDelete