We didn't do much exciting while in Arequipa. We did try Arequipena beer, which we think is better than Cusquena (it is drier but not boring like some of the national lagers/pils). We visited the museum where they have the "Ice Maiden" aka "Juanita", a frozen body found on one of the nearby nevadas (snow-capped mountains) which is about 500 years old. Lots of impressively preserved textiles and other artifacts accompany the "mummy". [It's not a real mummy since it wasn't prepped for preservation, it just happened to freeze well.] We spent a good amount of time simply wandering around the city, looking at the mountains, and appreciating the buildings. We also ate. The food here is quite good, and there are lots of places that make very good desserts. It's been hard to find cake in South America, but Arequipa has it. We also had lucuma cheesecake, since lucuma is the sort of thing we have to try while we are here. It's an odd fruit, kind of caramel-prune flavored. And, we finally got ourselves a cuy for lunch one day. Turns out cuy is mostly skin and bone, not sure why people eat them. The meat, such as it was, was greasy. We'll not be ordering one of those again, but it's good to have tried it at least once.
One thing we did do was watch some movies. We were able to find Harry Potter 7, part 2, for S/.3.5 (about $1.30) after unsuccessfully finding one that was only dubbed in Spanish. Now we've seen it! Our hostal also had a kitchen available for use, so we cooked dinner for the first time since arriving in Quito 6 weeks ago.
We also did a little shopping, which is hard to avoid near downtown (as are the moneychangers; every other stall will change dollars and euros to soles). After several hours visiting many stores, and then going back to the stores, and going back again, we picked up an alpaca blanket. Very soft and fluffy.
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