Top 20 Photos of 2013 -- #6

Today's edition of the Kuantan Blog's Top 20 Challenge:

April 2013, Perú

A glimpse into a courtyard at the Convent of Santa Catalina in Arequipa.

I love how the shadows play on the stone walls, the monotone broken, and then

just barely, by the wooden shelf.

Top 20 Photos of 2013 -- #7

Today's edition of the Kuantan Blog's Top 20 Challenge: #7.

April 2013, Perú. The Museo Larco in the Peruvian capital city, Lima, is full of outstanding

pieces organized in exhibitions that pique the imagination. This one, of weaponry,

makes a powerful, if silent, demonstration with an actual human skull dating from the same era.

Gory. But effective.

Top 20 Photos of 2013 -- #8

Welcome to the last week of the Kuantan Blog's Top 20 Challenge! Today's photo is one of my all-time favorites.

April 2013, Perú (Convent of Santa Catalina, Arequipa)

Come back tomorrow for more of Perú, this time back to the capital, Lima, and the Museo Larco.

Top 20 Photos of 2013 -- #9

We're in single digits now, people--the final stretch in the Kuantan Blog's Top 20 Challenge. Today it's #9:

April 2013, Perú.

I love this photo for two reasons: one, the person in it (I know, I'm queen of corny)

--(Happy birthday, dushi!)--

and two, because it was a total fluke.

This was taken in Arequipa, Perú, inside the convent of Santa Catalina,

in one of the kitchens, a massive room of even more massive walls

with few, small, and very high windows. 

#8 tomorrow is also from the convent.

Top 20 Photos of 2013 -- #12

Today's edition of the Kuantan Blog's Top 20 Challenge:

April 2013, Perú. At the highest point (4,950 meters above sea level) on the mountain road

between Arequipa and the Cañón del Colca, home of the condors. (Sadly, none of the thousand

condor photos came out well enough to make this Top 20.)

Tomorrow: #11 is one of the few photos from my brother-in-law's wedding I took that

came out well. It made the list because it captured a side of him I didn't know, and probably

won't see again.

Perú, Perú!

Sometimes, delayed gratification is a good thing.

It took me close to 20 years to come to this mystic land of llamas and icy peaks that hem in the land, of soft-spoken people so very proud of their Inca ancestry; of food so varied, so fine, flavor so delicate, the only thing that comes close to it is