Trans Americas 2009 - The Blog

After a really good night's sleep, I woke as usual shortly after 6am, and showered and went to get some breakfast before updating the blog. Then before heading off on a cultural tour of Arequipa, I had some minor bike maintenance to attend to. The garage was a hive of activity, with Jeff fixing a puncture on Nigel's bike and several of the riders performing checks and fixes to their own bikes. Mac had just changed the rear brake pads on his R1150GS Adventure, and I noticed mine were a bit worn so he changed mine too, whilst I topped up the oil, replaced a bolt that had dropped out from my screen and then started checking all the other bolts for tightness and checked my tyre pressures. When done, I noticed that my right hand pannier had split around the top mounting point and was bent out of shape...





Jeff worked his usual magic on it, bending it back into shape, then with Jim's help (he speaks very good Spanish) we engaged the hotel's maintenance man to make a plywood washer to fit between the mounting wheel and the split aluminium, spreading the load and making the pannier more stable. Doesn't look pretty but should hopefully stop the split getting any worse, which would render the fitting useless. With the bike back in tip-top shape again, I joined up with Nick and Van Al for a visit to the Monasterio d Santa Catalina, just a block or so from the hotel. The monastery, which is really a nunnery, dates back to 1579, just 40 years after the Spanish colonised Peru, and is quite a remarkable place. Covering some 5 acres, it is a city within a city, with its own streets, church, library, art gallery and lodgings. It's still a working monastery as well, currently home to some 20 nuns, but they are now housed in a new monastery built within the grounds. We paid our entrance fee and hired a guide to show us round, which turned out to be a great idea as she imparted a wealth of knowledge, a little of which I remember, as regretfully I'd left my little notebook back at the hotel.

The entire monastery is built from local volcanic sillar rock, which is naturally a brilliant white (as is most of Arequipa). Some portions are painted in vibrant oranges or ocean blue or deep ochre, the colours creating the sense of being in a Mediterranean resort rather than in a monastery in Peru. The architecture is pure colonial Spanish, with heavy arches to withstand the earthquakes, which still managed to destroy much of the old servant's quarters on the upper levels. The nuns for this monastery came from rich Peruvian families but followed the same tradition as for nuns in other monasteries across the region. As they had very large families (with up to 10 children), the tradition was for the eldest daughter to get married and have children, the 2nd daughter to go into the monastery at 12, whilst the 3rd daughter would be tasked with looking after the parents in old age. That means that Katy should be getting married (as opposed to just having 3 kids!), Laura should have become a nun (now THAT's funny!), whilst Danielle should be preparing to look after me as I approach old age... somehow I think they'll all be glad they weren't born in Peru 430 years ago... The novice nuns entered the monastery at 12 and were mostly illiterate, learning their prayer from paintings in the novice's cloister where they would live for 4 years. In theory they could choose to leave the convent, but none did as this would bring great shame on them and their families. Once “qualified” they would remain in the monastery for the rest of their lives. Their families would have to pay for the girls to be admitted to the monastery, some 2,500 special silver coins, the more they paid, the better the accommodation the nun was given. They lived in small “cells” with a bedroom, living area and kitchen, and were looked after by servants. At any one time the monastery would be home to 500 women, but only 175 of them would be nuns, the rest servants. They would be completely isolated from the outside world, with no visitors being permitted into the grounds, and only a priest and doctor allowed to meet the nuns. They would be allowed visitors with whom they could talk, but only through a “talking room” which looked like those in prisons where there is glass separating the visitor from the inmates, but in this case the glass was a wooden lattice with a separation distance of a couple of feet to prevent any physical contact. However, rather than feeling sorry for the nuns, the monastery gave the impression of being a very peaceful and well-ordered way of life, with the nuns being self-sufficient and living in a sort of female-only commune. And it was absolutely beautiful, as these pictures show (as always, hover over them for a caption)...











Another remarkable thing about this monastery is that it was home to Sister Ana de Los Angeles Monteagudo who was a nun in the convent from the age of 3 until her death, aged 80, in 1686. She was taken from the monastery when she was 10 or 11 with her parents intending her to marry, but she had a vision of Santa Catalina of Siena showing her the habit of the Dominican nuns, and so returned to the monastery, her brother, a priest, paying the dowry. She went blind in 1676 and was beautified (the first real step to becoming a Saint, by which the Pope recognises that the person was responsible for a miracle during their life) by Pope John Paul II on 2nd February 1985. So far she has not been canonised, the final stage in becoming a Saint. Her “miracles” extended to visions and predicting the future, right up to her death. Her rooms and personal effects, including the cilice (a sort of barbed-wire blanket) on which she slept to feel the pain and suffering of others, are on display in the monastery, in the room she lived in until her death. She now has a cult following, who visit these rooms and pray in the presence of her spirit.

There were also some surprises in store, as to how the nun's lived. In the kitchen was a “water purification unit” comprising a conical bowl made of volcanic rock, with is slightly porous into which impure water would be put, which then dripped out into a bowl below as pure, drinking water...





At the far corner of the monastery was the “launderette”, a novel channel and bowl system that the servants and nuns would use to do their washing, filling the hole in the bottom of the pots with a carrot and diverting the water from the drainage channel using small rocks...





But if you think this was an entirely cultural experience, you'd be mistaken. Remember, I was here with Nick and Van Al, two of life's great comedians. Nick was busy chatting to our pregnant Peruvian guide, and then asked her if she could have been a nun (completely missing the fact that clearly she couldn't as she was visibly pregnant). Val Al and I tried unsuccessfully to stop laughing, but fortunately the guide understood what we were laughing about.

After the guided tour of the monastery (well worth the £6 each entrance fee and the £4 for the guide between us), we went towards our next stop at the museum, but were side-tracked by a nice quiet street with an outside café. We stopped and Van Al and I ordered a jar of lemonade each, whilst Nick had a beer, and a toasted sandwich. The lemonade was delicious and we both drank our entire jug's worth, probably around 1.5 litres, as it was already very hot and we were getting dehydrated. Just as we were enjoying the peace and quiet, and settled in to the usual bout of people-watching, 5 guys turned up carrying instrument cases, which was ok, until they donned ponchos and broke out the pan-pipes...





Now I'm all in favour of traditional music and dancing, but here we were on a quiet back street in the very picturesque city of Arequipa, trying to enjoy a peaceful glass of lemonade, when these guys started making a racket. Ok, it wasn't bad music (if pan-pipe music can be anything other than bad), but it destroyed the peace and made any conversation impossible. When we'd finished our drinks and toasties, and paid the bill we started to get up to leave, just as the band put away their instruments. Clearly they'd only turned up to piss us off, and it had worked... well, almost, as we were in too good a mood to be bothered by such trivia...

Van Al had to return to the hotel for a meeting, so Nick and I wandered off to the museum on our own. Just behind the main square is the Museo Santuarios Andinos, which is the only museum in the world displaying Inca offerings recovered from the high mountains of the Andes. It is also home to the frozen mummified remains of “Juanita”, a 12-14 year old girl who was sacrificed by the Incas on the summit of Mount Ampato and discovered as recently as 1995. Unfortunately we were not permitted to take cameras into the museum, but if you google search her name you will see images of her on the web. The tour started with a half-hour National Geographic video explaining her story, and then we were shown round by an English-speaking guide. He explained that the girls that were sacrificed by the Inca (and there were more than just Juanita discovered in the mountains) were probably specially selected when very young due to their unblemished good looks and schooled in Cusco specifically so that they were ready to be sacrificed when the gods needed appeasing or the king was sick. She would have been taken from Cusco and walked the 120 miles or so to the mountains, and then with the attendant priests would have climbed to the summit of Mt Ampato, which is 20,700ft above sea level (an incredible feat in itself). Here she would have been part of a ceremony which would have seen her sedated before being struck on the temple and killed. She was then buried with various artefacts including silver statues and pottery. The archaeologists also discovered 2 other sacrificed children below the summit of the mountain, in similar positions and with similar artefacts. Many of the artefacts were on display in the museum, their intricate workmanship testament to the effort put into these sacrifices by the Inca. But the most important exhibit is the frozen body of Juanita herself. Still wrapped in her dress and cloak, she lies in a refrigerated glass case, kept at a constant -20degrees, her knees bent as though she was kneeling when killed and had simply fallen backwards onto her back. Her eyeless sockets stare upwards, whilst her hair and teeth are almost as they would have been in life. Standing staring into this glass coffin, looking at the remains of a butchered 12 year old girl was quite the most disturbing feeling. Just 500 years ago this poor child was indoctrinated to believe that her destiny was to be with the high gods of the mountains, and so walked willingly all the way from Cusco, climbing a mountain that is higher than I climbed when I went to see Everest, only to be struck on the head and left in a shallow grave on the mountain...

Her remains are of great scientific importance, as the high snows that buried her for centuries until the nearby volcano erupted, sending clouds of ash which caused the snow to melt, have preserved her internal organs. So even in death she is the subject to interference by other people. Sure, she'll reveal a great deal about a long-dead culture, but here in this glass case lies what was once a poor child, prevented from living a normal life and killed before she reached her prime... quite, quite, sad... This time, there were no silly quips from either Nick or me, the experience moving us both to silence for once...

After the museum, we made our way back to the hotel to rest up (and for me to write this part of the blog whilst it was still very fresh) before the meeting at 5pm and the evening's group meal...

The group meal was in the same restaurant that we ate at last night, and the food was just as delicious. I stuck to the same starter and dessert, but tried the Shrimp in Tender Garlic for main course, and I've never had more tender prawns, they were simply delicious. When the meal was done, around 10.30pm, I retired to my bed, surprised to find Jim once again absent from the room...