Most of the churches are like all the other churches, really really nice, but after awhile it all looks the same. But the main cathedral in Cusco was really different. There were three churches inside with different altars. There was a Last Supper painting with traditional Peruvian food, cuy. There was also a black Jesus statue. It turned black after all the smoke from the candles. It was full of Cusquenan art and was one of thie nicest churches I´ve been to. Its the one on the left in the picture below.
The museums were pretty interesting. I went to Museo de Arte Religioso (religious art), Museo del Sitio Qoricancha (incan and pre-incan pieces from the Temple of Qoricancha), Museum of Contemporary art, and the Incan museum. My fave was the Incan musuem.
I also met up with my friend Kim. We originally met in spanish school in Quito and I had met her in Arequipa a few weeks before. She was heading to Bolivia at the end of the week so we traveled together.... after hanging out and partying in Cusco for a bit.
We ran into Ivan, a Peruvian that lives in Alabama. We shared a cab with him back from Pisac one day. And we also ran into Kim´s friend from spanish classes in Cusco, Matthew, a Belgian. After one of the museum tours, we went to find chicha. They kept mentioning it in the tour. (Tours by the way, are sometimes better to do in Spanish because their English accent is hard to understand). Chicha is an alcoholic drink made from fermented maize. We asked people on the street where to go, and everyone pointed in a different direction. We finally found it. But it was pretty nasty. I think there are better ones out there.
Travelling around Cusco, I ran into other people I´ve met in other cities. Its kind of cool to travel around and recognize people. It´s almost like being home. Okay, not exactly. Everyone generally has the same travel route also known as the gringo trail so you see the same people a lot. Kim and I also ran into our other friends from Yanapuma classes in Quito, Ariana and Eric. They have had some really bad luck with their travels. They´ve been robbed, scammed, and gotten sick several times. This is a picture of them at dinner. They had cuy, or ginea pig, a traditional Peruvian dish. It looked like a rat.
There was also a big protest in Cusco. Apparently it happens a lot. Everything was shut down for a day. I still don´t know exactly what they were protesting. It seemed like they were protesting everything. It looked more like a parade.
We visited the Incan ruins of Pisac, not too far from Cusco. They had a great market. There are markets at every single tourist destination in South America. Pisac had one of the better ones. Oh and the ruins were cool too, but it was no Machu Picchu.
We also went to Salinas de Maras, where they mine salt. They had natural salt terraces of mini salt-pans spread out in the valley.
Moray was also in the Sacred Valley. They had several circular terraces for agriculture. Each level had a different microclimate.
Chinchero..... more ruins. Nothing compared to Machu Picchu.
Ollantaytambo. This Incan site was pretty cool. No Machu Picchu, but it was nice. The tours are interesting, learning about the Incan life. Those guys were so smart the way they built their cities. Its amazing that they are still around.
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