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Our Year of Adventure
We grabbed a quick sandwich for breakfast before setting out on our chores for the morning. Primarily it was getting money to pay for our Colca Canyon trip. Not many companies accept credit cards in Peru which means trip upon trip to the ATM. Even the ATMs are annoying because you can only take out a small amount of money in a single transaction, a hangover from the days when there were lots of robberies at ATMs in Peru.
Once the payment for the trip had been sorted we took a walk to the mirador (viewpoint) on other side of river. It was supposed to be a one hour walk but we were there within 20 minutes. It didn't feel like we had walked up much but we had nice views back over the city centre.
Our guide on yesterdays walking tour had told us about a good 'Picanteria', a restaurant specialising in local cuisine, which was close to the mirador. It wasn't quite where we expected but after walking through a few small cobbled streets, we came across the small entrance of La Nueva Palomino. There was a huge queue of people outside waiting to go in and we decided that we should put our name down and wait because it had been talked up so much. It didn't take too long to get a table and as we were led into the restaurant there wasn't an empty table to be seen. We were quickly taken out the back of the restaurant into another full room before, to our releif, being taken to a huge outdoor seating area.
We decided that we really should go for the most traditional dishes so Maria had a pepper stuffed with minced meat, spices and cheese while David opted for the deep fried guinea pig. The stuffed pepper was not as spicy as the locals made it out to be and the guinea pig was hard work to get what little meat there was on it off. Despite that, all the food was really nice and we felt so full afterwards as we waddled back down the hill towards the centre.
We arrived just in time at the Museo Santuarios Andinos for the tour to be conducted in English. The museum centres around "Juanita", the beautiful young girl of the Ampato Volcano who was discovered in 1995 after an erupting volcano had melted the ice which had kept the body of the girl frozen and hidden for over 500 years. The guide explained the rituals surrounding the Inca's offering of a child to the Volcano Gods.
On the way back to the hostel we popped into the cathedral to see if we could find the Devil and sure enough, carved underneath one of the pulpits was the Devil.
Once the payment for the trip had been sorted we took a walk to the mirador (viewpoint) on other side of river. It was supposed to be a one hour walk but we were there within 20 minutes. It didn't feel like we had walked up much but we had nice views back over the city centre.
Our guide on yesterdays walking tour had told us about a good 'Picanteria', a restaurant specialising in local cuisine, which was close to the mirador. It wasn't quite where we expected but after walking through a few small cobbled streets, we came across the small entrance of La Nueva Palomino. There was a huge queue of people outside waiting to go in and we decided that we should put our name down and wait because it had been talked up so much. It didn't take too long to get a table and as we were led into the restaurant there wasn't an empty table to be seen. We were quickly taken out the back of the restaurant into another full room before, to our releif, being taken to a huge outdoor seating area.
We decided that we really should go for the most traditional dishes so Maria had a pepper stuffed with minced meat, spices and cheese while David opted for the deep fried guinea pig. The stuffed pepper was not as spicy as the locals made it out to be and the guinea pig was hard work to get what little meat there was on it off. Despite that, all the food was really nice and we felt so full afterwards as we waddled back down the hill towards the centre.
We arrived just in time at the Museo Santuarios Andinos for the tour to be conducted in English. The museum centres around "Juanita", the beautiful young girl of the Ampato Volcano who was discovered in 1995 after an erupting volcano had melted the ice which had kept the body of the girl frozen and hidden for over 500 years. The guide explained the rituals surrounding the Inca's offering of a child to the Volcano Gods.
On the way back to the hostel we popped into the cathedral to see if we could find the Devil and sure enough, carved underneath one of the pulpits was the Devil.
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