Go Peru:The towering sight of the snow-capped and still active El Misti is an ever-present reminder that this is a place with a turbulent past, writes Deirdre McQuillan
FEW PLACES have a more awesome setting than Arequipa, Peru's second-largest city. In the foothills of the western Andes, it is dominated by three huge peaks: the conical volcano El Misti and, on either side, the even higher Chachani and the lower Pichu Pichu. Wherever you go in the city, the towering sight of the snow-capped and still active El Misti - it means the Lord - is an ever-present reminder that this is a place with a turbulent past, rocked by earthquakes nearly every century.
With an average of 10 to 15 tremors a day, buildings here have thick walls and people thick skins. "You keep away from windows and stay put when there's a tremor," our guide, Alberto, commented casually. "People get worried if there are none - they're like breakfast in the morning. We only get big ones every 40-50 years."
The last one, the strongest in Arequipa's history, at 8.4 on the Richter scale, happened at 2.30pm on June 21st, 2001. Only one person died.
Volcanoes built this city. Arequipa is endlessly referred to as the White City because of the extensive use of sillar, a white volcanic stone employed on everything from the imposing cathedrals, colonnades and elaborately carved churches to the grand Spanish colonial buildings.
Our hotel, Casa Andina, used to be a mint house, built in 1798, called La Casa de la Moneda. In the evening its walls took on a warm pearly glow; during the day the whiteness of the stone in the strong sunlight was accentuated by dark metal trees in the courtyard. (A portrait of Bernardo O Higgins, a viceroy of Peru whose father was from Sligo, has pride of place in the foyer.)
Our first stop on a tour of the city was Mirador Carmen Alto, overlooking the River Chile in the Chilena Valley. From this viewpoint you get a terrific sense of the spread of this wealthy city and its fertile fields filled with all sorts of produce, such as onions, garlic, paprika and asparagus. Tea on the terrace included a lesson on the three types of coca leaves grown in Peru and their properties; behind the cafe, penned guinea pigs awaited their fate - cuy, or guinea pig, is a traditional Andean dish.
A city's market always reveals the extent of local cultivation, and San Camilo market, designed by Gustave Eiffel (who was also responsible for the city's Bolívar Bridge, over the gushing River Chile), was a hive of activity, with breathtaking displays of fruit, vegetables and mounds of potatoes - Peru has more than 3,000 varieties. Its avocados are the best in Latin America. It is also a big exporter of oregano to Italy. A section was devoted to herbal and shamanistic remedies - I saw one woman laboriously shaving the skin from the bone of some small animal for a client.
Chickens are fed with corn and grain, and nothing is grown in greenhouses. "We don't have hormones," announced our guide, proudly; you knew what he meant.
Not surprisingly, Arequipa has a huge culinary reputation, and one of the best meals we had was at La Trattoria del Monasterio, which fuses Peruvian with Italian cuisine using the region's freshest ingredients. It's in one of the city's premier attractions, the Monastery of Santa Catalina, which was founded in 1580 by a rich Spanish widow who selected only girls with handsome dowries from landowning Spanish and Latin American families for her exclusive nunnery.
The place is a self-contained citadel within a city, with imposing high walls, streets, houses, gardens and a cemetery. Those who entered, sometimes as young as 12, never saw the outside world again. Though it is undoubtedly beautiful, with elaborate frescoes and priceless paintings, there is something unsettling about its claustrophobic Catholicism and evidence of flagellation.
It was opened to the public in l970, when the local archbishop insisted on installing electricity and running water, and now the few remaining nuns live their cloistered lives elsewhere in the complex.
A female who lay buried for 500 years is another grim yet fascinating attraction in the city. Juanita the Ice Princess was discovered by a local guide called Miguel Zárate on an expedition to Ampato, a mountain more than 6,000m high, 17 years ago. Wrapped in blankets and crouched in the cradle position, she was a 14-year-old girl whose perfectly preserved body was assumed to be an Inca sacrifice. It took days to carry her down and put her in a domestic freezer before sending her off for scientific examination. Since then various other human Inca sacrifices have been found on vertiginous Andean peaks. At Museo Santury it took nearly an hour with a boring guide droning on about various artefacts before we finally got to gaze on the frozen figure.
The Incas worshipped mountains as Gods. The animal that transported them there and played a huge economic role in their empire was the llama, which with the alpaca continues to be the country's backbone. The man generally credited with creating the modern alpaca industry in Peru was a former RAF pilot named Frank Mitchell, who emigrated to South America in the 1920s and whose descendants run what is now one of the biggest alpaca companies on the continent.
Standing in the midst of llamas and alpacas eagerly chomping alfalfa leaves in Mitchell's visitor centre, I was given a brief introduction to the value of their wool, which is exported to countries all over the world, including Ireland, where it goes all the way to Inis Meáin. "It's not as fine as cashmere, but is it warmer and has more applications: it can be used in carpeting, upholstery and knitting," explained Juan Pepper, its sales manager.
Even more interesting are vicunas - shy, wild creatures from the same cameloid family that cannot be tamed or domesticated, don't breed in captivity and whose fleece is the most valuable on earth. Feeling the raw material is the closest thing to feeling a cloud. It is so rare and so expensive that a kilo can cost upwards of €75, compared with a kilo of alpaca at €7.50. (It takes 200g to make one jumper.) In the Mitchell shop a vicuna scarf had a price tag of nearly $700 (€525).
Decimated by hunters, vicuna was declared an endangered species in 1965, when only 5,000 were left. Now, thanks to a government regeneration strategy, there are 180,000 animals and a thriving industry that benefits 300 otherwise impoverished local communities. Each June the vicunas are rounded up, shorn and released into the wild again. It's called the chaccu.
On a trip a few days later to Colca Canyon we got to see vicunas in their natural habitat, in the high sierras, and learned more about these remarkable animals. A family group consists of six or seven females and one male. If you see a lone one it's a male looking for a group. They like to move in groups, have "pillow feet" and can run at 60km/h.
Within two hours of being born a baby vicuna can run at 10km/h. Their predators are mountain cats, pumas, foxes and humans. They live for 12-15 years, need space and, unlike llamas and alpacas, only want to be with other vicunas. They posed, momentarily for photos, like supermodels.
My colleague Elgy Gillespie, visiting Chile more than 30 years ago, wrote that were she condemned to spend the rest of her life on an endless holiday in a place she could never leave, she'd choose Arequipa. After just four days in this lovely city, I couldn't agree more.
Travelling to Peru: Casa Andina Private Collection. Arequipa Calle Ugarte, 403 Arequipa, 00-51-54-226907, www.casa-andina.com. Room rate from $199 (€149) a night.
RealPeru are specialists in organising tailor-made holidays in Peru from the history and culture of cities like Arequipa to the natural world of the Colca Canyon and the Amazon rainforest. www.thereal peru.co.uk or call 00-44-113-216-1440.
For more information on Peru, visit PromPeru's website www.peru.info.
Go there: I flew to Arequipa from Dublin to Lima via Amsterdam with KLM and from Lima to Arequipa with Lan, part of the One World Alliance. Lan offers full connectivity within Latin America. www.lan.com. Other routes to Lima from Dublin are via Madrid with Iberia or Lan, or with Delta via Atlanta.