Why climb the Eiffel Tower when you can slide down the Eiffel Staircase!? No queues, no effort, cheap as chips. Five different varieties of chips actually.

Arequipa means ‘food’. It doesn’t actually, it means something like ‘behind the great mountain’ in an ancient Inca language, but to us it means deliciousness. This beautiful city brings back painful memories. For one, we ate so much that we wanted to resign ourselves to the Santa Catalina monastery in town for a cleanse. For two, the nuns in that monastery used to wear barbed wire around their knickers. They had their reasons.

We spent half a day visiting the phenomenal monastery, almost a city within a city, which stretches across several blocks. A part of it is still functional with practising nuns, but most of it is a museum to reflect on lives of the holiest and most devout women in world’s history. We truly hope they are all in heaven now, because their lives were tough and it’d be a real shame if there actually was no God or heaven… The above-mentioned barbed wire around the private parts is a true story, it served to remind them the evils of sexual desire. The rooms had no windows to distract the nuns from praying to god and studying his word. Which is a shame, because the monastery is absolutely gorgeous and exciting with its little sneaking alleyways, lush gardens, dark stone kitchens, halls, chapels, nooks and crannies, it would’ve made a seriously naughty place. But I guess I’ll agree with Mark Twain and take heaven for the weather and hell for company.

We pondered that if the servants of the church, from a humble nun to The Pope, spend their lives denying trivial pursuits of the average people and instead devote themselves to studying and contemplation, then surely the church should be the hub for progressive ideas, movements and actions, like a University science lab, for example. But instead, the church has always been the suppressor of progressive ideas, movements and actions. What on earth are they thinking about in those dark cold rooms, meditating and praying???

The Santa Catalina cloister was the highlight of Arequipa, and one of the most remarkable religious buildings we’ve ever visited. The rest of the time was mostly spent indulging in the Peruvian cuisine.

After the odd potato here and there in Ecuador and falling behind with his challenge of tasting every variety of potato in the region, Hendrik rose from the ashes as the first meal in Peru served up 8 different types of spud in one go, followed by the dinner with another half a dozen and so forth.

The dishes are huge in Arequipa. If you order a pork adobo, you’ll get two chops, both inch thick, incredibly tender and delicious. Just the amount of potatoes on the plate is enough to give you a cardiac. An alpaca fillet for starter? It’s a full blown steak – good luck with your main. We actually started to get angry at the amount of food they dished up, gluttony is a sin as we learnt from the monastery, but food waste even worse in our minds. Take food containers with you to an Arequipan restaurant! Ours were constantly in use as even 3 starters between the three of us proved too much to finish. But, it was all so delicious! Grilled salmon with fresh mango, 50 shades of Quinoa, raw seafood, best pork belly ever and of course the almighty potato. Sweet potato purée with passionfruit!? Yeah man!

And so we wondered and ate, awoke and repeat. Hendrik clocked up at least 150 different potatoes, he’s certain, Frida started crawling very confidently and Loren continued to contest  the love of hidden single use plastic here  – they even poke this useless bit of plastic into a Pisco Sour!

PS! Although Italians invented the Negroni, it is really difficult to get a good one in a bar in Italy, with Pisco Sour however, each and every bartender in Peru thus far, has produced a perfect example of their national drink. Forgive us father for our sins in Arequipa.

Sunny Lake Titikaka, Isla del Sol, Saturday 9th of Feb.