We got back into Arequipa for the day, before taking the night bus to Nazca.

Known as The White City, because most of the colonial buildings in the historical center are built with sillar, a white volcanic rock, which gives the buildings & entire a city a very distinguished appearance. We visited Juanita (the best preserved mummy ever discovered, of a 12-year old Inca girl offered as a sacrifice to appease the gods) at the museum at the Santa Maria University.

The Santa Catalina monastery was also fascinating. With its various dwellings, streets and other functional buildings, it is really a city within a city - where many nuns lived in total seclusion from the rest of the world since the 16th century. (In Peru, monasteries are for nuns, and convents are for monks - the Spanish words "monasteria" and "convento" are respectively feminine and masculine.) The modest furnishings in the dwellings and the antique clay ovens in the basic stone kitchens contrasted sharply with the beauty and grandeur of the architecture of the buildings.