After a long drive from Cusco, stopping at the deepest canyon in the world,Colca Canyon, which is about twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in Arizona. The purpose of our stop was to see the condors with the 3 meter wingspan (!) HUGE! After that, we arrived in Arequipa, Peru, where I would leave my group of traveling friends that I had been with for the last two weeks.

In Arequipa, I visited a couple museums - the Convento de Santa Catalina and the Museo Sanctuarios Andinos.

The convent covers an entire city square block, and is practically a city within itself. It was started in th 1600s as a place for rich families to send their daughters. Some of the 450 nuns living there never left the convent for their entire lives! In the beginning they had up to four servants each, and entered the convent with dowries equivilant to about $50,000 USD. They entered the convent because there was a tradition that the 2nd son or daughter of a family was supossed to enter religious service. Over time, the convent became less of a "resort," and more of a traditional convent. It was opened to the public in the 1970s and now there are only about 30 nuns living there and most of the "city" is open for tours, only a small portion houses the nuns (and is not open to the public). It was very nice inside, lots of little streets and courtyards.

Probably the most interesting museum I have visited on this entire trip so far has been the Museo Sanctuarios Andinos. The museum is dedicated to the finding of several mummies discovered in the nearby volcanoes. They are the sacrificial offerings by the Incas to the Gods. Most of the mummies that were found were children, three females and one male. Buried with the mummies were several types of offerings to the Gods, including pottery, animals made of gold, silver and copper, and little figurines dressed in traditional clothing. Unfortunately, pictures were not allowed in the museum, so I had to use my mental camera.

The most famous of the mummies, is a little girl called Juanita (named after the man that discovered her, Johan Reinhard) found at the top of Mount Ampato in 1995. She was found because the eruption of a volcano near Ampato caused the ice cap to melt, revealing her, after she had been there for about 500 years! She was almost perfectly preserved because she was buried at such a high altitude, 6300 meters, where the air was very dry and cold. It is believed that she was brought up to the top of the mountain and was sacrificed for religious purposes, first being killed by a blow to the head, and then buried in traditional clothing and with many other offerings to the Gods.

After she was found, she was taken to Johns Hopkins University and studied. They did all kinds of tests on her, which is when they found the crack in her skull and also were able to examine her DNA and discover that she was in perfect health when she was sacrificed. This made sense, since she was being offered to the Gods, the Incas would have wanted to choose someone that was "perfect" to sacrifice.

Heres a picture I found of Juanita on the internet.

Arequipa was a very nice city, probably my favorite in all of Peru. Not too many kids begging on the streets trying to shine your shoes (even when you are wearing sandles). I did, however, get approached by a guy that was selling shoelaces. I thought he looked like a life sized pom pon, or maybe one of the fry guys! Souvenir shoelaces for everyone! :)

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