Una vista de Arequipa
I’m sitting on the rooftop terrace of my hotel, which overlooks the main plaza, La Plaza de Armas, in Arequipa. The sun has set, and the colors that remian are turning from hot pink and orange to pale orange underlined by the brown that sits on top of the mountains, and above this brilliance hovers horizontal gray whispy clouds against the light to dark blue sky. A sliver of the moon is showing just above the colors, where the blue of the sky is darker. Church bells ring in the distance above sounds of moving and beeping cars and the occasional yelling vendor rising from below. Orange and fluorescent lights begin to glisten individually, spreading out all around and from the plaza to the surrounding mountains. There is a slight breeze…enough that you feel perfect in jeans and a sweater, with a steamy mug of mate de coca (coca leaf tea) to warm your throat. The dry air and sun has been good for me here. The people are open an friendly. I find myself saying, me encanta Arequipa (I love Arequipa).
This is my third hostal here, and the best. A friend helped me get a good price for a room here…even these prices are negotiable. One of the benefits of knowing the language, of course, is being able to negotiate. I’m good at it 50% of the time. As I relax more in a city, it gets easier. These six extra days I have had here in Arequipa have been great. I went out ’til 5 am last night, dancing to salsa and electronic music at Deja Vu. My friend Juanita is muy chevre (very cool). I’ve made a couple more friends here too–Cesar, Jordy, Jonny, Pablo– and will be salsa dancing even more tonight.
This terrace is kind of a hot spot for tourists, because of the view. Right now I hear English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, and very little Spanish being spoken. And it’s more correct to call Spanish “Castellano,” which I have to get in the habit of doing. I like speaking in castellano, and I suppose when I talk I sound the same as these other people around me when they struggle with the language to order food. No matter. The intermediate class I took this week helped a great deal. I plan on continuing my studies in Cusco for the next two weeks, and then afterwards on my own. In general, I’m only making friends with Peruanos (Peruvians). I’ve met a couple other cool extraneros (foreigners), but I call and hang with the Peruanos. Always practicing my skills and learning about the culture, but, simply, I’ve had luck in meeting cool Peruanos, and we have a lot in common. Es lo maximo.
I saw the Monasterio de Santa Cantalina yesterday, a mini-city within a city that is a monastary for nuns. It is about 400 years old (I think) and the pride and joy of the city. It was closed off only for nuns in the beginning, when well-to-do Spanish families sent their second-born daughter to live, learn, and become a nun in the monastary–the tradition back then. They were sent with a dowry, and not only their education, but the education of their siblings (until puberty), cost money. After earthquakes and a volcanic eruption leveled the monastary (and the city) a couple times in the 1700s (I think), the government and a private company helped rebuild, making the nuns open part of the complex to tourism as a payment for the work. I took lots of picutres and walked among the monastary streets that are lined by red-walled buildings and decorated with flowers. The cells of older nuns are preserved in their original state and many are colored blue. Their lives were simple, but privaleged–each nun had up to four servants, who lived their lives like the nuns, but only for food and shelter. Today the nuns live their lives more or less in the same way, but with modern amenities, no servants, and some updated rules. You don’t see them walking around when you’re there, but they’re inside their closed-to-the-public quarters, and they rarely go outside of the monastary. I wondered if they were watching from behind those locked doors and windows.
You can see the church tops of the giant monastary from this hostal roof. Arabic language and culture has much influence on Spanish culture. You can see it in words that start with “al-” and some of the domed-top church architecture. Yesterday, I stood on the roof of that domed-top church in the monastary and took pictures in the direction of where I’m sitting now. The views are far and wide in this city, due to the necessary low-level buildings in this earthquake- and tremor-prone region. Now the sky is completely black. City lights drown any chance of seeing the stars. A two-person band has begun to play traditional music, with a guitar, a drum, and a pan flute…those slightly-mysterious sounding and rhythmic songs that make you tap your feet; danceable with simple light steps forward and back. They make me feel happy and like wandering the streets and countryside. And one of those songs has been stuck in my head the whole time I’ve been here. It was recorded this evening on my voice recorder at #36, 2.5 minutes. Hope to share it and these picutres with you soon.
