Arequipa and finally some pictures (but not all 400)

Good Evening from Arequipa the White City-

We left Lima this morning with no problems and arrived here at 9:00 AM.  Arequipa is surrounded by spectacular mountains. Here is Misti a lovely volcano.  We checked into our hostal with is run by Jose. He is probably in his 30s and is a pro a customer service.  We are in a cute little room on the third floor with an amazing view of the city and mountains.  We also have a rooftop terrace with a 360 view of the city.  Not bad for $14 a night including a bathroom in our room and free wi-fi.  Once we arrived we unpacked and then went to get money and visit The Monastery of Santa Catalina recommended by Moyra's friend Claire (thanks Claire).  It is called a city within a city and was beautiful.  We took many pictures.  I may try to post some to Facebook later in the week as it takes a long time to upload pictures to Blogspot on my netbook.  After that visit we found a vegetarian cafe for lunch.  We had the menu of the day which was a salad, bread, huge bowl of soup, rice, fried yucca, a beet, potato, asparagus salad, yogurt, a jello like dessert and a drink for $2.  It was an insane amount of food and delicious.  It also had a sign that said "No comemos a nuestros amigos" meaning "We don't eat our friends" and it had a picture of people and animals together.  There are actually quite a few vegan restaurants here....so nice.  After lunch we came back here for a little rest and were delighted to find that the internet works in our room even though Jose thought it wouldn't.  We got online for a bit to make sure all of you were ok and then we set off to explore some more.  We went to the main square which is also home to the cathedral.  It is a hot tourist spot and gathering spot for locals as well.  We explored some shops and finally hit the grocery store for yogurt, more Inka Corn (corn nuts but made from the large corn here and so much better than regular corn nuts, Whole Foods carries them as does Food Fight) , and tangerines.  We had previously bought a large bottle of water.  We are excited to stop taking our high altitude meds tomorrow and hopefully we will not need them again.  Both Arequipa and Ayacucho are lower than Cuzco.  We were back to our little room a bit after dark.  Thanks to Gilli who helped me figure out how to get the pictures to upload.  For all of you that are starting to doubt that we are really in Peru at all simply because we used Machu Pichu images from Google here are a few pics that prove we were really there.

 Also I have included a picture of a young woman and her baby.  She was selling things on the street in Cuzco.  The people work very hard here.   The adventure continues to be amazing although we miss you all.  Stay tuned.  Hugs!