Arequipa

Up after 8:00. Both Lisa and me slept like rocks. We took our time and headed out for breakfast after 9:00 sometime. We were going to have breakfast at the hostal, but the cook was off today, so we walked to the Plaza del Armas. A huge parade in the plaza this morning, tons of people. We picked a restaurant (actually, a woman was outside, saw us and suckered us into her restaurant), it had a 2nd floor balcony overlooking the plaza. We had breakfast while we watched the parade go by.Arequipa is a beautiful city. So clean and well maintained, infrastructure seems in tip-top shape. My favorite city so far. Apparently Arequipians also consider themselves culturally superior to the rest of Peru.After breakfast, we found a Scotiabank (no fees for Lisa to withdraw!), shopped in a little market, I bought a leather cowboy hat for $8 US, Lisa bought a belt (to hold up her pants, she's losing weight) and a bracelet, got some info on treks into the Colca Canyon. We're going to go it alone, but wanted to get some maps and info on the towns and accomodations.Around 1:00, headed to the Santa Catalina Monastery, built in the late 1500's, and some nuns still live there today. It's a huge complex, and very interesting, a great was to kill a couple of hours in the afternoon.We then walked down to the the river (nothing interesting), Lisa saw a "big box" store that said "Everything is Cheaper" on the side. Just for kicks, we went in just to see what it was like. Very much like a Superstore, we ended up buying new earbuds for our MP3 players, and some buns, cheese and ham to make a late lunch. I also bought 1 litre of fresh milk, something I've been missing for a while. We walked back to the hostal with me chugging milk (very creamy, definately not 1 or 2 percent), and had sandwiches on the rooftop patio of our hostal. I finished about 2/3 of the milk, and I had to make a mad dash for the toilet. Holy cow, it totally went right through me.We hung out at the hostal, Lisa uploading pics, and me doing researching on Colca Canyon.Around 8:00ish, we walked to the square and had a dessert.Finally, clear blue skies have found us! Not a cloud in the sky, amazing weather.