We were very lucky to avoid the worst of the winter shock Asia had been suffering in the weeks leading to Chinese new year and only experienced one snowing day, before temperatures started to climb steadily, reaching a very comfortable 15 degrees.

After 10 relaxing days I said my farewells and left for Japan, where I was meeting with a few colleagues for skiing – a traditional event running in the fourth year.

After nearly eleven months traveling non-stop together, this was actually our first time “separated” for more than an hour!!

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.

[See image gallery at 2young2simple.debraaf.eu]

I have added a little map of our travel itinerary to the blog, which you can find in the menu drop down in the upper right corner – check it out!

After three months of blissful traveling without any insurance “contamination”, Yang Ke and myself had to painfully realize how fast our next exam dates are approaching ;(
To avoid spending a lot of full time on studying and instead try to have a good balance between traveling and boring reading, we had to urgently get going! We had a strong kick-start over the last few days to get into the right (?) study mood, spending our “free” time behind insurance texts.
Unfortunately this also means we are a bit lagging behind with our blogging, but hopefully can catch up soon!

We had a little set back, as Yang Ke has only one full page left in her passport and despite several attempts we didnt manage to get her a new one. We are therefore forced to return to China or Singapore to get her a new one and till then cant visit any more countries requiring visa for Chinese (as we need to keep one page free for a possible transit visa on the return).  Which basically rules out whole South America and leaves only very few (mostly uninteresting) options on this side of the ocean. Luckily there is still one friendly communist country remaining, which had been high on our travel list anyway

Our current plan is therefore to spend another month in Peru, relaxing one more week in beautiful Arequipa and exploring the north of Peru, and then spend a month or so in Cuba.
We also have to time our journey with Yang Ke’s exam on 1st October, where we have to be at one of the exam centers. The list is again very limited in South America, but then we spotted some interesting places close to Cuba    We are currently hesitating between Bahamas and Jamaica. Anybody has a recommendation?

Many greetings to everybody and hasta luego!

The next day turned out to be the birthday of the (now) 8-year old Nicolas and we got to know the whole family during his birthday party   Nico is a huge Star Wars fan who has seen all movies several times and loves running around in his Darth Vader mask.

We stay in a very pleasant part of Arequipa, just a nice 20 min walk to our Spanish school and can even reach the city center by walking. On the way one passes by many of the typical white houses, built from sillar (volcanic stone), giving Arequipa its name of “white city”.

The below building is not a museum – but the branch of a bank

Arequipa has a super dry climate – so far we had blue skies every day and no single drop of rain. Here people don’t have to bother about umbrellas and can enjoy more activities outside. Squash is plaid outdoors, restaurants survive without having a roof and we are enjoying our Spanish classes in the garden of the school.

The only small inconvenience comes from noisy animals. Rooster fights are a popular hobby in Arequipa and many keep their favorite pets at home. Our neighborhood seems to be very international with roosters kikeriki-ing their wake-up calls at every time of the day. They also get support from dozen of guard dogs who protect their house at the cost of their vocal cords.

We are having four hours of individual class every morning which feels pretty intense, so we spend many of our afternoons eating and relaxing, while doing homework and practicing. Some days we stroll through the nice city center, its churches and museums and the market, or we go for Salsa class which we recently started.
Arequipa is quite catholic and has a few old monasteries, some of which only opened their doors to the public for the first time a few years ago after being cut off by the outside for centuries (behind huge walls)
The biggest one, Santa Catalina, is like a hole district with a few streets and many houses.

We continue to explore the rich Peruvian cuisine. We love the fruits, like the Arequipenean Papaya (a smaller and sweeter variation), the Grenadia (also called “sweet maracuja”, similar to passion fruit), the guavas (again much softer and sweeter than what i have tasted elsewhere), the custard apple (here called chirimoya) and and and …

Yang Ke has found here favorite Ceviche place where she indulges once a week and she had her second guinea pig, this time fried (and flatted with a big stone) which we preferred to the previous oven-baked one….

I think we need a separate post for all the good food, speak you again soon

But instead of jumping into action and take the next plane to a remote island or the deep Amazonian jungle, we opted for a ”soft-landing”.
Ok, it wasn’t fully a choice, but it turned out to be a good thing. Yang Ke still had an exam end of April she needed to study for, and I also could time my next exam to the same period. We therefore decided to spend our first four weeks with Yang Ke’s parents in Wuxi, China, studying while spending time with the family and enjoy the pleasant spring weather.
After the last weeks in Singapore were pretty rush in getting everything prepared, saying good-bye to all our nice friends and colleagues, arranging visas and clearing our apartment, we didn’t really have a lot of time to think about the travel itself, apart from the vague plan to fly to Peru and sometime later continue to Chile (after we had to change our initial plan last-minute – Yang Ke can tell you more
Sitting then in the plane to Wuxi after everything went pretty smooth, we finally released a huge sigh of relief, looking forward to a relaxing study-time, with enough time to sort out any remaining to-dos and do a bit of travel planning and reading.

And we had a very pleasant time indeed. Yang Ke’s parents took great care of us, not only with delicious and healthy home-cooked food but her mum had also scouted everything in advance for us, from the best study places to organizing us a monthly gym-membership.

We developed somewhat of a daily routine, containing with some variations a morning visit to the neighbouring hill + park combined with a Tai Chi session or walk up to the summit (1668 stairs in total!), some reading in the morning, lunch at home, a swim in the gym in the early afternoon, study-session in the afternoon/evening, dinner outside.

We had a few cooling days with some crazy temperature changes, but mostly very nice spring weather with all trees in full blossom

Coming down the mountain from another side comes with the comfort of a cable-car and nice views on a pagoda and Wuxi’s skyline.

We spend our last week in Shanghai where we both had our exam. As mine was the style of a project, which I had four days to prepare, we settled-in in a nice hotel, which became my study-place for the whole four days. Initially I didn’t plan to venture out much, as the exam was supposed to be very time-intense, but after the first day I felt quite comfortable and started to slot-in more breaks and get more sun-exposure. Discovered that our hotel actually had a great location, just next to a huge park 中山公园 , which was perfect for having a walk but also for admiring all the activities of the locals, from calligraphy painters over kite-flyers to Tai Chi groups and all kind of other dance groups.
Despite so much activity it never felt too crowded and I found myself a quiet spot to do my own Tai Chi session. After my first session I immediately got into a chat* with some older locals who took the time to give me advice and do a long Tai Chi session together.
The surroundings of our hotel also had a few nice streets and restaurants to explore, which made for nice-breaks. I think overall I enjoyed the stay so much that I became very motivated for my exam

And then our stay already came to an end, much too quickly. After good-byes in Wuxi, we headed back again to Shanghai to catch our flight to Peru, with stopover in Toronto.

[* whenever I refer to “chat with locals” this usually implies understanding of at most half of the conversation and includes a lot of guessing, hand-signs and misunderstandings]