Arequipa and the search for the Cuy

Finally we totally arrived in Arequipa (after the stopover before Cabanaconde). We found ourselves a nice hostel with an ever-cleaning owner :) The city center is really nice with a lot of old houses that are still good in shape. But it is full of tourist as well, so a lot of people will try to sell something to you or want to get you into their restaurant. On the main Plaza de Armas there is the cathedral and shop passages with a balcony. The best view is from the balcony on the other side of the cathedral where you can see it with the three moutains/volcanoes in the background (everyone of them almost or over 6000 meters hight).

In the evening we wanted to have cuy for dinner. That is one of the traditional peruvian dishes, fried gunieapig. We took a cab to the place the hostal recommended to us, but as we get there it was closed... First we could not explain why, but a man from the neighbourhood told us, that the traditional peruvian restaurants just open for lunch. But we could try another one at the other side of the city. So we went there, but same situation as before. The cabdriver went two blocks back to the third option, but it was closed as well. At least we found the security guy from there telling us to come the next day starting from eleven in the morning (till six in the evening) or to try the last next to another bridge over the river Chili. We already went through the whole city so we gave it a last try and as the security told us it was open till ten o´clock. It was a peruvian argentinian restaurant with a lot of meat and traditional dishes on the menu. So we picked cuy and our favourite lomo saltado. But then the waiter told us they don´t have cuy anymore (sure it is a lunch dish). We almost wanted to go and I told him we searched the whole city for cuy. Anyhow he made a deal with the kitchen and half an hour later we had a whole fried gunieapig on our plate. And what could we say it was delicious, almost like roasted chicken, but lighter in the taste and softer in the structure. I think the waiter was reliefed that we ate the whole plate - after he got it somewhere down their special fridge or something ;) Funny thing was, that we discovered on our way home that the restaurant was only five blocks away from our hostal and we could have walked it easily instead of going around with the cab for almost an hour.

The next day we went rafting on the river Chili. We booked it via our hostal and met a dutch family going with us - but we had seperated boats (Bernd: thank god!). I think we for the first time we were not even bad. The guide was capable and took it slowly so we could enjoy every rapid.

Von Arequipa

Von Arequipa

Von Arequipa