DAY 168
Cuzco is the touristic powerhouse of the county and is unsurprisingly overrun by tourists. The city center is especially bad with its throngs of tourists and vendors. It's what it is for a good reason though. The number of Incas palaces and temples, churches and convent, and the quality of these buildings is humbling.
Fun fact: Cuzco is the city that has been inhabited for the longest time in the Americas.
Probably in need of western culture, we have coffee at what is probably the most hipster place in Cuzco before starting our self-guided walking tour. It's on the late side and we only have time to do half of it. The hippie neighborhood of San Blas is chilled and has commanding views of the city center. Walking in the little streets away from the crazy traffic is a treat. At the bend of a street, we come across an alpaca, 2 lamas and a goat herded by a group of ladies in traditional outfit. They all are available for pictures for a small fee ;)
We have no time to do much more today because we're desperately looking for a hotel with a good internet connection. Mar has a work-related thing to do in 2 days and a fast and stable connection is mandatory. We eventually find a place that has it. A bit outside of town but still within walking distance. We end the day with a deciduous goat cheese salad with flowers in it. I though I ordered the goat cheese, not the goat's food but it turns out it's delicious! Peruvian cuisine does not disappoint so far ;)
DAY 169
Transferring from one hotel to the next gives us a glimpse of how difficult it is to drive in the city but our taxi driver has no problem with the very difficult maneuver in tiny and very steep streets; my hat to him! The rest of the day is studious with some local beer tasting to wind down.
DAY 170
The work obligation behind us, it's time to start the customary tour shopping. We also do a bit of groceries shopping so we can have a bread, cheese and cured ham at home. It has nothing to do with the Peruvian cuisine but more with being tired to eat out every single day. Bread seems to be a disaster here (one of these countries... No one is perfect) and in Cuzco, service is only in tourist areas. Outside it's Bolivian style... Or is it Andean style? Around the world, people living in the mountains don't tend to be the most cheerful and friendly one so no big surprise here.
DAY 171
Free city tour this morning; It's quite common in South America to have tours for tip. It's not impossible that paradoxically, the guide earn more that way. I can easily see them having a broader audience and very little people not tipping at all. First we go to the coffee museum and are treated with a little tasting at the end. The place is also a coffee shop with delicious coffee, a quiet ambiance and a bunch of sofa...we'll definitely come back later :D
The plaza de arma is the heart of the city. It used to be twice as big during the Inca time. Inca warriors gathered here with all their weapons to fight the Spaniards hence the name of the plaza in Spanish. The Incas name of plaza is plaza of sorrow (Aucaypata) because Tupac Amaru was executed here, ending his 4 year rebellion and dashing the hopes for a new Inca empire.
14 churches were built downtown. The city was the center of the Inca religion and Christianity needed to erase that. On the site of the 14 churches was previously an Inca religious building of course, adding insult to injury. Some of the Inca walls were kept however and they have no problem standing the test of time. The region is seismically active and the non-Inca buildings suffered a lot from it... The Inca ones not at all. They were not using mortar but the trapezoidal structure of their buildings was able to withstand earthquakes. They had different level of quality for constructions and on imperial ones, the stones are so well adjusted you couldn't slip a sheet of paper between then. Sure it was a difficult and time-consuming process but it's still standing proud 5 centuries (and a bunch of major earthquakes) later. To carve the stones, they were using obsidian (black diamond) and in the quarry they used the wet wood technique to extract stones (insert wood in a crack, wet it, it expands and creates a fissure. Rinse and repeat... Pun intended). To move the stones from the quarry to the construction site, they were using the same technique as the Egyptians, rolling them on wood. The stones were polished by rubbing a small stone on the big one with a mix of sand and water in between them. It was taking 2 to 3 month for each step of the process. The things they were building were went to last, clearly.
Of course a dog tags along during the tour. It sleeps during the explanations though but I guess it heard them too many times already and in countless different languages ;) The next stop is in a little park close to the plaza de arma. A very charismatic guy in full Inca outfit presents us the different instruments they were using. They had lots of different ones and strangely (or not), the music is not unlike Amerindian music.
The park also have resident lamas and alpacas! Lamas are cuter but the more fashionable one is the grunge alpaca. That's what happen when they are not sheared... Scary but cool
We finish the tour by a "Cooking class". It's a bit ludicrous to call it a cooking class, we are shown how to prepare a Ceviche and luckily for you, I took notes ;)
Recipe: first of all, fresh white fish is the best pick for a good ceviche. Cut it in cubes. Prepare a green lime juice. Have a cilantro, a Peruvian red chili (aji limo), salt and pepper, a red onion, fresh corn, a sweet potato (cooked with their skin then marinated 10 minutes in orange juice reduced it with sugar) and a canchita (special corn) handy.
Add salt and pepper to the fish. Then cilantro, Aji limo (optional) and the lime juice. Mix 4-5min maximum in lime juice or the fish becomes hard (the lime juice cooks it). In the plate, put the lettuce, corn and sweet potato. Add onions to the fish mix at the end of the 4-5 minutes. Mix all then put it on top of the the salad in the place. Add the canchita and eat right away!
The tour ended with the ceviche preparation and degustation and of course left us hungry! After lunch we go back to the museo del cafe for a delicious coffee, more time in the museum then some relaxing in this really cool coffee shop ;)
We tried in La Serena but failed. We tried many times in San Pedro but with the same outcome. Finally, here we're able to attend an astronomy tour! It's a bit overcast but should clear a bit tonight. And the tour is not only about looking into a telescope but mainly about the Inca approach to astronomy. The knowledge we have from the Inca comes from the chronicles. It was written by Spaniards much later by different authors who didn't spoke Quechua... Not a very reliable source of information but it gives some clues nevertheless. In the difficult environment that are the Andes, agriculture was the key to civilization and power, and astronomy was the main tool to figure out when to plant and harvest. That's why it was so interwoven with religion also. The design of temples itself was a way to identify winter and summer solstice as they show us on aerial pictures. The people of the region were also very creative when it came to conserving food with granaries dug out of cliffs so the wind would dry the content and avoid the vermin to feast on their supplies.
As is tradition there's a dog with us, Gandalf! A big white furry dog who makes bear noises during presentations ;) The astronomers are very interesting and the tour is well thought. One of the unexpected thing for me was the Inca concept of dark constellation. On top of seeing things by randomly linking stars between them, they also saw shapes in the darker sections of the milky way for example. Eventually we head outside and even though the conditions are questionable (thanks to el niño and the wet season that is about to begin) we can see Andromeda, a binary system, a globular cluster and the Pleiades... standard stuff ;)
Back in town, we try out a key local specialty... the pisco sour! We do so at the Museo del pisco. Don't believe the name though, it's just a bar but they have lots of delicious pisco :D
DAY 172
Today, church marathon! First one is the cathedral. It's on the plaza de arma on the former site of the Inca palace of Viracocha. Again they used construction material from nearby temples. The strange thing about it is that it's flanked by 2 churches, the church of Jesus Marie and the church of the triumph. The 3 structures are connected like it were a single construction, very odd. It's the cuzcenian school with a heavy dose of syncretism. The amount of art is staggering; one is very emblematic, the last supper. The food on the table is Andean. They eat a "cuy" (Guinea pig) which is a local delicacy that we'll also have to try :D They also have more classical elements like the very first cross that came from Spain with the conquistadores and the remnants of Garcilaso de la Vega. Famous poet and writer born of an Inca princess and Spanish captain. We owe him to know more about the history of the Inca with his famous "The royal commentaries of the Incas".
On another side of the plaza stands the Jesuit church. It's only a church but it's so gorgeous it was a challenge to the cathedral and eventually caused them problems. The pope had to step in to mediate between the bishop and the Jesuits but it was already too late. The squabble is clearly not over because the church is not on the tourist ticket that includes most of the churches of Cuzco, it has its own system. Old grudges die hard I guess. The facade is truly gorgeous, they clearly succeeded in making it nicer than the cathedral. The altar inside is a golden monstrosity. The goal is to display immense wealth and power and it has so much gold it's obscene but it's ... Ugly.
The museum of the archbishop have an impressive collection. All of it is religious obviously and mainly from the cuzcenian school. It's very baroque and extensively use syncretism. What makes it unique is the use of gold in the paintings. They use it to further enhance the decoration of the clothes in general. Art in the Americas was viewed as a way to educate the locals about Christianism. Because if that, the church much less rigid about how things were presented. For example, some paintings have the trinity represented by 3 identical character. It was heresy in Europe but tolerated here because it made it easier to explain to a polytheist population.
We're back in San Blas to visit the temple. It's smaller than the ones in main plaza but again filled with paintings and altars. The chair is unbelievable. It's the same artist that the one who worked on the main pieces in the cathedral. It took 20 years to finish it. It's hyper charged with details and has 70 characters in it! At the bottom, a little meanness from the Catholics to the Protestants shows Calvin and Luther with demons on top of them. It's supposed to represent the victory of Catholicism over reform.
We go get our instructions for tomorrow's 4 days Macchu Picchu tour, grab a kebab and head back home.