Juanita is the best preserved pre-Columbian mummy in South America. Carbon-14 dating has put her at around 1490AD. A girl of only 14 years, she was brought from Cusco and sacrificed to appease the gods of the Ampato volcano.

Rather than mummification in the Egyptian sense, where the body is embalmed, Juanita was effectively deep frozen by the ivy conditions at the 6,380m summit.

It was over 500 years later that she was found in 1995 by anthropologist Dr Johan Reinhard as the ice on Ampato briefly melted due to the eruption of the adjacent Sabancaya volcano.

You can still see Juanita, sealed in her chamber at -20°C. It doesn't take any imagination to see what she would have been like. I found it very eerie.

Between January and March, Juanita is taken away for restoration and another mummy is displayed in her place.

The rest of the museum has artifacts found with the mummies. They are in stunningly good condition, in particular, the clothes you would have sworn had come straight from the nearest market stall.

A video (in English) sets the scene, following Dr Reinhard as he finds more mummies. It also gives a recreation of what Juanita´s last journey must have been like.

The entire tour cost S./15, with a tip for the guide at the end. Photography is not allowed.

I enjoyed this well organised and haunting view into history and highly recommend it to anyone visiting Arequipa.

The tour consists of two parts the first half was a National Geographic Society video that was about Juanita. I had already seen it so it was not really all that meaningful but if you know nothing it is better than a guide that can only speak garbled English. (Note: our guide spoke pretty good English.) After the video you are taken into a series of four rooms. The first three contain grave offerings that were found with Juanita and the other mummies on Ampato. The last room contained the remains of Juanita and two other mummies found on Ampato. They are encased in refrigerated glass cases.

A couple of notes: I was lucky. Juanita was away being studied at another university until the day before I arrived. While she was away the museum was still open so you may want to ask if Juanita is there before you pay for the entrance.