Santa Catalina Monastery

I have little doubt that the Santa Catalina Monastery would top any list of the coolest/weirdest things to see in Arequipa. Nearly 500 years old, this sprawling complex is like a mini-city-within-a-city... and it's actually not a monastery. It's a convent. Supposedly it was specially built for rich Spanish families to send their daughters to live a life of chastity -- but they ended up throwing crazy parties and having men visit and generally just live the lives to which they had become accustomed... for several hundred years, until the Vatican finally had to do something about the debauchery and sent a special nun to lay down the law.

These days the monastery is open to the public but still feels very much like it must have in 1706... narrow passageways, beds and little altars in each of the tiny (and some not-so-tiny) bedrooms, lots of little labyrinthine rooms that open onto more rooms that open onto courtyards that open onto dead ends. The nuns still live on the grounds, in a private complex built in the '60s.

I spent most of the afternoon yesterday getting lost, taking photos, getting lost again, and finding secret little staircases or silent courtyards with fruit trees and fountains to sit and meditate. If you come to Arequipa, you must do this.