Cusco: Breakin it down

I've had a pretty fun filled last couple of days, so I'm gonna break it down into separate entries.


Friday:


6 a.m. Raquel and I grabbed our stuff and walked over to the ISA office where we boarded the bus to the airport. Joel and Jose Luis, the same guys that went with us to Junin, were also our ISA chaperones on this trip. Our flight from Lima to Cusco left at 8:40. It was only an hour and a half flight, but the seats were roomy and they gave us drinks and a little meal. All of the U.S. airlines should take a page out of Peru Air's book.
I had a window seat and an awesome view of the snow-capped Andes that we were flying over.
Cusco was the capital of the Incan Empire. Today it's a huge tourist town, but it still has a lot worth seeing. It sits at about 11,000 ft, so it wasn't quite so bad as the Junin trip, and this time I was prepared to combat the altitude with coca toffees that I bought at the airport.
After we got off the plane, we split into 2 groups, Tigres and Pumas, and loaded up the buses. The tour guide on our bus was named Coco (that's his nickname, his real name is hard to pronounce) and he accompanied us to our hotel, the Hotel Suenos del Inca.
At the hotel we had time to drink a coca tea, get settled in our rooms a bit, and then we met again for lunch. The Tigres went to a restaurant right on the edge of the Plaza de Armas (the main square). We were up on the 2nd level, and got to eat at a bar right by the windows, so that we could look out on the plaza and on all the houses spread out on the hilltops. It was a gorgeous sunny day (the sun actually shines in Cusco, unlike Lima) and there were even some live musicians in a band called Pachamama (in Quechua, mother earth) playing traditional Andean music. We ordered off the tourist menu, so we got a 3 course meal (I had cream of asparagus soup, aji de gallina, and apple pie) for 15 soles, or about 6 or 7 dollars. After that, we started our tour.

(Sacsayhuaman, not my pic, for reasons soon to be revealed)

First we drove a little ways out of town to Sacsayhuaman, the remains of an old Incan fortress. When the Incans built Cusco, they made it into the shape of a puma, and Sacsayhuaman is the head. It has 3 large terraces of stone, some weighing over 300 tons. It was gorgeous, and when we climbed to the top, we had a perfect view of all of Cusco.
There was also a section of rocks shaped like a rainbow, and perfectly smoothed and arced, so that they could be used as a slide. We didn't have time to slide down them, but there were plenty of other tourists doing it. Next we walked over to a cave and crawled in one side and out the other. It was pretty long, and the middle section was pitch dark, so you had to hold on to the person in front of you to make sure you didn't lose your way.
After that we walked down to the road and our buses picked us up and took us back into town. We began the city tour at the Koricancha, or Temple of the Sun. It was built by the Incas in honor of the sun god, Inti. We went in one room built out of stone, where all the walls leaned in toward each other, and all of the stones locked perfectly together, making it able to withstand the earthquakes. During Inca times, the walls were completely covered with silver, up to a certain line, at which point the walls depicted the night sky. The height of the sky was such that when the Incas were praying and lifting their arms, they were just short of the sky, which represented another world.
We also visited a place outside, where there was a hollow carved into the stone wall. This used to be the place where the Incas put an idol of the sun god made of pure gold. It's of course no longer there, because the Spanish took all of the gold and silver that was in Koricancha, but (if I'm remembering right) after an earthquake knocked down the structures that the Spanish had built around the temple, they realized that the Incas had put the golden statue in that precise little nook, because for one day a year, on the summer solstice, the sun shines directly on it.
These structures that the Spanish built over Koricancha are the church and convent of Santo Domingo.
Next we walked to La Catedral. I've seen some pretty churches in Italy, Germany, and Prague, but this was by far the prettiest church I've ever been in. Unfortunately photos were strictly forbidden. The construction began in 1560 and took 104 years to complete.

The inside is covered wall to wall with paintings, silver, and gold. I was absolutely in awe of the beauty of it. At the same time, it also disgusted me that the church can be so lavishly decorated when you can peek your head out the door and see a 6 year old walking around the plaza by herself trying to sell yarn bracelets to tourists for 1 sol apiece.
The choir is made completely of cedar and has carvings of the saints and popes. There's also a shrine to El Senor de los Temblores (Lord of the Earthquakes) with a carving of a dark skinned Christ on the crucifix. It is believed to have the power to calm earthquakes, and every year during Easter there is a festival where it is paraded around Cusco. One of the most interesting things about the church was a painting of The Last Supper by Marcos Zapata, which gives the traditional Last Supper a little bit of Andean flair.

In the foreground (not seen in the pic) are some typical Andean ceramic pots and on the table is chicha morada (a drink made out of purple corn) and a very interesting looking animal. Some believe it is a guinea pig, but Coco said he thinks it's a vizcacha, which is a cross between a rabbit and a squirrel.
After the church, we went back to the hotel and had free time for the rest of the night.
I went with Ashleigh, Ashley, Mary, Hannah and Christina to go look for a restaurant. We ended up going to a place called Aldea Yanapay. It felt like Alice in Wonderland. There were crazy bright colors, stuffed animals, board games, papier mache lamps, and all kinds of random stuff. It's part of a social project that includes schools and art and culture activities. We got to sit on the balcony at a table in the corner. It was low to the ground and surrounded with pillows and stuffed animals that we sat on. The menus had pictures of fairy tales on them, and we got to play cards while we were waiting for our food. At the end, our check came in a little box, like a present. It was pretty cool.
After eating, we walked around some of the shops. I ended up getting a pretty good deal on some necklaces and earrings, even though I had already spent too much money on souvenirs. Outside our hotel there was a guy selling paintings, and while I was looking at his stuff, his buddy who sold carved gourds also came up and started talking to us. He said something in Quechua, so I thought that would be a good time to practice mine a little bit. I greeted him in Quechua, answered when he asked my name, and asked his, but that's about as far as my Quechua goes so I responded to everything else with "no comprendo" and he would explain to me what he was saying. It would have been really cool if the trip to Cusco were at the end of the semester when I knew some more, but oh well, I think he was happy that I was trying and I think he gave me a pretty good price on the gourds :)
Unfortunately, when I got back, they had turned the water off in the hotel. Luckily, our room was literally right next to the dining room, so I just made a couple trips filling up coffee cups with water from the tea kettle in the dining room and using that to wash my face and brush my teeth.