The Pichu Pichu volcano is one of the three volcanoes that guard the city of Arequipa, it is located 32 kilometers east of the White City and its capricious shape allows residents and tourists to observe the “Sleeping Indian”.
The Pichu Pichu volcano is made up of seven peaks and the highest is Coronado, which has an altitude of 5,650 meters above sea level and its most accessible area reaches 5,515 meters above sea level.
The summits of this volcano come to form the figure of a person in profile who is lying on his back and can be seen from various points of the city, a figure that is part of a legend that the people of Arequipa know as the “Sleeping Indian”.
The writer Pablo Nicoli Segura in his writings tells that the myth of the “Sleeping Indian” began in the remote past, where the apu Pichu Pichu fell in love with his neighbor (the Chachani volcano) and that the gods did not see this relationship favorably , deciding to raise a guardian in the midst of the lovers and thus the Misti was born.
It was thus that the Pichu Pichu reneged and blasphemed against the gods that illuminate the sky day and night, for which the Pachamama took revenge and the sky opened in cloudy waterfalls, so that the male Apu, possessed by fear, he fell on his back on the highest peak and was turned to stone and asleep until the end of time.
Volcano of Offerings
At the top of the Pichu Pichu volcano you can still find a pre- Inca platform, where offering ceremonies to the gods were performed.
In this tutelary volcano of the White City, three mummies were found in a good state of conservation, one of them is in the José María Morante archaeological museum of the National University of San Agustín, called the mummy of Pichu Pichu.
Likewise, the Andean Sanctuaries museum of the Catholic University of Santa María keeps two frozen bodies, the Urpicha mummy, so called because a small gold cone was found in its chest, very similar to a dove and a mummy that still has no name, both are not exhibited to the public.