PERU DAY FIVE

Another warm day in Arequipa! We sleep and laze about in bed and finally get up and ready because we are STARVING. We have a healthy and balanced breakfast of crepes at ZigZag. I have palta y tomate and they bring it with the green oregano spice that is sprinkled on every dish here. Wade gets mango y limon y azzucar. I don't really know the names of those fruits, yet, but I can tell you that his crepe was a lot tastier than mine. On account of the oregano spice. And the sugar.

This morning we split up. I go to the monastary, and he stays at ZigZag researching our upcoming trek and drinking beer.

The Monastaria de Santa Catalina used to be a huge, popular nunnery that rich families would send their precious daughters to. These rich daughters were accustomed to a life of friends and parties and servants, and inside the nunnery, none of this changed. Eventually some religious head person got wind of the non-Catholic activities, the parties and escorts and money, and she sent all the rich girls back to their parents. The servants and poor girls stayed on as nuns. Sadly, the nun population has dwindled to about thirty. The monastary, however, is enourmous, covering over one square city block. Recently, the Peruvian government has forced the Monastaria to open for tourists. The remaining nuns live and do their God business from one of the corner cloisters.

The place really is huge. I try to keep left, a trick I use at big art museums to ensure I visit every room, but even this trick fails me here. I must constantly tell myself, left, LEFT LEFT!!!. It's like a maze. The colors are brilliant. All the walls inside rooms are white, but in courtyards and streets they are painted vibrant adobe red and blue and yellow. The colors help me navigate. Slightly.

Among the things I notice:

• In one room, there are a series of nun portraits hung on the wall, in which every subject has her eyes closed.
• The infirmary has hundreds of different sized and shaped bottles filled with various colored liquids. They all wear mysterious handwritten labels. Perhaps not so mysterious to those who know Spanish.
• One room is devoted wholly to production of Eucharist wafers.
  
• In one cupboard I opened in a random kitchen area (if there is no sign or rope, I must touch), and there, laying on a shelf, was a graying animal skin.
  
• One small nook showcases an interesting seat contraption that resembles a toilet throne carved of wood, but instead of a bowl filled with water, there is a spinning plate. I don't understand, either.
• From the cafeteria patio, I can see our room in Casa Reyna! And my towel hanging in the window! Hi room!
• I check the visitors' book. A giant group of Polish people have just signed before me. There has been only one other USAer today. Surprisingly, we are few and far between here in Peru. That's why Americans are worth points, and the Dutch aren't. They are plentiful.

After the monastary, we have more crepes. Then we go to the grocery store for more carbs, these for our trek.

We try to hang out in one of the city parks, but turns out they are only opened on weekends and holidays. All other times they are locked. What the fuck? So we end up eating cookies and "Cola Re-al" (not as good as Inca Cola) on a strip of grass in the middle of the intersection and reading Bill Bryson aloud. This reminds me of the story of my parents going camping this one time. They arrive at their destination late in the night, so they find a patch of grass on which to set up their sleeping bags, and when they awake in the morning, they see they have camped out in the middle of a parking lot.

In the evening, we buy tickets to Canon de Colca for the next morning. We repack all our stuff to put some in storage. Sadly, I sit on my beloved huge bug-eye sunglasses. The break is minimal; they will have to do for now. For dinner we go to a touristy place on the Plaza, and I have "Avacado Stuffed for the Gardener." The alternative was "Avacado Stuffed for the Queen," but that contained chicken.