Arequipa

We spent the morning doing a walking tour of Arequipa from 8-12. It was a hot and sunny day.we visited convents, monasteries, churches and museums. It is quite interesting to see how the indigenous people continued to weave their icons in the Catholic beliefs. One convent had over 500 nuns and now has 18. There is much use of gold leaf I the chuche and silver in the garments- gold to represent the Suns sweat, silver the moons tears.

The Museo Santuarios Andinos which displays the artifacts of the 1995 expedition by Dr Reinhard, where they discovered a perfect mummy 'Juanita' who was sacrificed to the gods, she was 16 yrs old.

The traffic is still crazy here, but not as bad as Lima. No problems with the altitude at this stop.

The meals are very large! I tried quinoa gnocchi, very good! Really we've been eatin breakfast and lunc because at the end of the day we're not hungry.

Finally a good view of one of the 3 volcanos in Arequipa.

The afternoon meant seeing the process of dying the yarn at Calicampo. 

They hand dye the yarn with natural and organic dye, the yarn is steamed, washed then dried in the sun. It reminded me of some of the dying process of the batiks in Bali!

Then to an Alpaca factory where their process are mechanized, and directed more to the clothing industry. Very intersecting with good quality but there's something to be said for small and personal.

Out for a chocolate run, Arequipa is known for fabulous chocolate.

Tomorrow we start our workshops, 4 days of knitting ahead!