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As you know we ran out of pages in Yang Ke’s passport and have no other choice than return to China or Singapore to get a new one. But we didn’t feel ready to leave South-America yet! Lucky us – Yang Ke had a multiple entry visa for Peru 🙂

After the rather chilly Chile we were keen to get some warmer weather, but also looking forward to meet again our dear family in Arequipa, indulge more in the great Peruvian food and finetune our Spanish skills!

Coming back to Arequipa felt like we never left and we quickly got back to our previous rhythm. Going for Spanisch class in the morning, working on our exam preparations in the afternoon and having nice gatherings with family and other guests in the evening.

 

As we are both on our last few actuarial papers, these are getting bigger and tougher, with a study volume of 1000 pages and more. We realized we were already lagging behind considerably (a typical study schedule for my exam allocates 4 months of preparation – studying every day of the week!) and decided to switch one gear higher. We therefore stayed a second week in Arequipa, this time without Spanish class. Anyway we were getting enough practice in the evenings 😉

After that we moved on to Lima, complementing our studying with some further explorations of the capital’s artistic and historic districts and of its excellent restaurants.

We also opted for more unconventional accommodations this time. First staying in a tiny Airbnb room at a great location within popular Miraflores district, where we were the only ones and had the big living room all to ourselves.
Next we moved to the neighboring up-coming district Baranco, which in the olden days was a beach resort area for the upper class and stayed in one of the classy beach villas – turned hotel. The only reason we got it at a decent price is because the family run hotel only recently opened and was still far from being ready. Smaller maintenance was ongoing and most rooms were still lacking few basic amenities. But I just couldn’t resist, being intrigued by the beautifully restored rooms, with original wooden parquet, huge ceilings, original doors and windows and the also rest of the hotel full of nice antiques and decorations. The owner had already spent two full years restoring the building, with a lot of passion. Only a shame that, while single-glazing was adequate at begin of 20^th century, that was no longer true now with a busy street just next door. After one noisy night we moved from our romantic turret-room with sky-ceiling to another huge king-bed room.

After that we moved to a very quiet and cute house, which an ex-lawyer had turned into four bright and beautiful boutique rooms

 

Saying good-bye to Peru in style, we treated ourselves to a sumptuous dinner at an acclaimed restaurant, with an 8 resp. 11 course dinner of local flavors in unusual preparation. Like the gorgeous “cuy three ways” which came with cuy pate and crispy skin or something as simple as a variation of Amazonian tomatoes, with incredible flavors.