Arequipa is a beautiful city, the city centre has a lot of European/Spanish style buildings, all made from the same white stone. The city is also very clean and the main square and some of the surrounding streets are closed to traffic which gives the inner city a more calm and relaxing feel than some cities where you feel you could be hit by a car every time you attempt to cross the road.
In the morning we went to Museo Santuarios Andinos. This museum held the mummified and frozen corpses of "Juanita", a girl in her early teens who was sacrificed by the Incas more than 500 years ago at the summit of Mount Ampato, presumably to appease the gods when some natural disaster struck. The body was found in 1998, and it was only by pure luck that it was discovered, as the body had only been exposed for about two weeks. Other mummies have been found since, but Juanita is the best preserved and most important, as she had been frozen so well her body and internal organs were intact. At the end of the tour we were taken to see Juanita in her freezer, where she is displayed complete with hair and skin, although it was quite dark and difficult to see much detail.
It was another beautiful day so we enjoyed another afternoon sitting on one of Arequipa's terraces, before returning to "Indian Cuisine" for a final dose of Indian food, who knows when we will get the chance again!
No comments:
Post a Comment