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DAY 1: Arequipa.

After 1000 kms of following the Pan-American Highway from Lima through Peru’s wild and desolate coastal desert, I have reached the country’s second city, Arequipa. Lying in the shadow of two huge snow-capped volcanoes, Chachani and El Misti, Arequipa is one of South America’s most beautiful cities. Fabulous Spanish colonial architecture has produced spectacularly ornate churches with elaborately carved portals that blend Catholicism with Spanish and local Indian culture. Houses are adorned with brass-studded doorways and finely carved wooden balconies.

I have arrived on the eve of Arequipa Day. The grand Plaza de Armas, with its elegant colonnades, swaying palms and neat gardens is packed by cheering crowds. A parade is in progress. I photograph the rather disquieting spectacle of groups of uniformed schoolchildren goose-stepping around the square, saluting a smiling mayor and a waving Festival Beauty Queen who are both standing on the steps of the imposing seventeenth century Cathedral.

After a hasty supper, I head back to the Plaza de Armas. The crowd has swelled so you can’t move, let alone photograph, so I make for a restaurant on a first floor from where I can look down on the concert below. I am conscious of the need for caution but have not allowed for the determination of Peru’s ladrones. Professional thieves have come from Lima to harvest the festival’s visitors. The restaurant fills up, people are standing all around me, then suddenly there is a gap in the crush. My bag is gone. Disconsolately, and feeling not a little stupid, I make my way to the Tourist Police to join the line of people reporting similar stories. A policeman appears in an ill-fitting tunic. He looks like the Peruvian version of Sid James.

DAY 2

Hassles aside - and the last 48 hours have produced their fair share, with visits to the Honorary British Consul to apply for a new passport, fruitless efforts to get more money cabled out from England and many happy hours spent filling out forms with a laughing Sid James (better known as Officer Cordova) of the Tourist Police - Arequipa is indisputably lovely.

Santa Catalina Convent is a city within a city. Inside its huge buttressed walls, 200 nuns and their servants lived in seclusion, praying for the souls of their families and their wealthy patrons. A few nuns remain in a restricted part of the convent, but the remainder is open to visitors. It is a maze of narrow cobbled streets, bedecked with pots of geraniums; brightly painted cloisters adorned with religious murals; small plazas decorated with fountains; nuns' cells; washing areas; a mortuary; catacombs; a refectory and a chapel. I am entranced by the contrasting colours: ochre walls against piercing blue sky; sky blue walls against white colonnades. There are many exquisite details, carved doorways, potted plants framed by shaded windows. The atmosphere is totally tranquil, yet signs commanding silence and other evidence of the cloistered life of the nuns, make me feel as though I am looking at a gilded prison.

Across the road, the Museo Santivarios Andinos houses the mummies of children sacrificed by the Incas 500 years ago. It is eerie to look into the sightless eyes of Juanita, a 6 year-old girl crouched in the foetal position with her skin stretched taut over her face and her hair still in place, knowing that she was led in elaborate robes up a harsh mountain to over 20,000 feet and then killed as a sacrifice to the Inca's Gods.

These two influences - Spanish colonialism with its heavy Catholic overtones, and the traditional Indian beliefs - have shaped modern Peru. I feel them wherever I go.

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