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Short blog: In the morning we were confronted with Lolo, the 35 year old tortoise that lives in the hotel garden! First job of the day was to return to the same bus station we arrived at earlier in the morning to book tickets to the Colca Canyon for the next day. While we were there we saw lots of loaves of bread with faces on them strung up in the shops (you will see a demonstration of this in a subsequent blog).
Then we went to the Santa Catalina convent in the centre of the city, which is a huge former nunnery and still has 25 nuns living in a complex within it. We enjoyed a juice in their nice cafe located in a former nuns house and then took a guided tour, which was really interesting. The nuns were never allowed out of the property, and could only ever see their family through two screens, once a month, with a head nun listening in. Before they even became nuns the novices lives in isolation for around 4 years. This convent was fairly unique however, as the nuns here had their own houses and servants until the Pope put a stop to that and made them live in communal poverty. From the roof viewpoint we caught a glimpse of a current nun hanging her washing up on the top of her complex... they still are not allowed out into the rest of the world, and she scuttled away from our view very quickly, making it all the more exciting!
We later walked across the Rio Chili to the Yanahuara district and tracked down a typical Peruvian restaurant called La Nueatra Palomino, which was quite an amazing place. The restaurant was enormous, and full of Peruivans having their Saturday lunch out. The waiters wore big hats and orange scarves, whereas the waitresses had to wear red blouses and tie their hair in plaits.... the type of scene you´d only expect to see tourists. We had the most enormous plates of meat and did a good job considering it was only lunchtime.
After lunch we walked to the Iglesia San Juan Batista for great views of the city and Volcan Misti. Then to the Plaza de Armas in the centre of town, which was absolutely heaving with people and pigeons, and quite a sight with perfect colonial buildings and the massive cathedral taking up a whole side.
After a cup of tea at the hotel we made ourselves go out again for yet more food at a neat little retro cafe near the plaza that was also showing particularly gory horror movies to help your digestion. Mum and Alex settled down for an early night while I sat up and did some research / made reservations for Macchu Picchu... I came back to find them both asleep and both snoring a little. Luckily Mum brought earplugs.
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