Monday 18th April - Arequipa

In today's pic you can see my lunch - super tasty cerviche (raw fish in lime juice) with two slices of cold sweet potato (a surprisingly excellent accompaniment to the limey spicy fishiness). Sarah and I were sharing that and a sandwich but unfortunately I had eaten both my halves by the time she decided it was too spicy so ate her portion as well.
Sarah, Linda and I had a quite cultural day today and went to visit the santa catalina monastery while Emma and Ben were at work (poor things). It is like a tiny ancient secret city hidden away behind high walls right in the centre of town and had the most peaceful atmosphere as you walked around its terracotta coloured streets. The nuns actually had very nice rooms and apart from all the religious stuff I suppose would've been necessary I could definitely have lived there. There are still some santa catalina nuns (aged 18-90) but they live in a new modern bit, which seems like a shame. It can't be as nice as the old bit even if they have more mod cons.
After breakfast we sat on the terrace for a bit and are absolutely convinced we saw a condor flying over. Not that either if us have ever seen a condor, but we happened to have brochures about condors on the table at the time (going to go on a condor spotting trip tomorrow!) and it looked just the same. Apparently they never come into Arequipa but what do the locals know!
We're in bed now ready to nest as tomorrow's trip starts at 2:30 am...aaagh.
PS you may be interested to know that channel 17 is pretty much non stop reruns of Friends with an occasional other American sitcom thrown in :-)