Today is my last day in Cusco. As I write this, I am sitting in our hotel's courtyard, which is filled with geraniums and flowering trees. My table has a woven cloth on it with bright colors in a regional pattern. I purchased a few similar to this one. I'll bring them in on Friday.
Today we went to two sites that the Peruvians consider to be holy places. One place had passages that went through huge rocks. (See photo.) People would hide in these places when Spaniards invaded their country. One of these passages was more like a cave. It was used to prepare dead bodies for mummification. There was a large, flat stone slab that was cold to touch. This cold stone would help preserve the dead person as they were working on it. Off to one side they would hang large sheets of silver or gold to reflect light from the outside to inside the cave. This was so they had light to see. We didn't have any light so my photos didn't turn out so well.
Outside of these passages, some of the rocks were smooth like slides in the playground. I saw Peruvians sliding down one of them. Our tour guide called them sliders. (See photo.)
Our tour guide arranged for a shaman (like a medicine man) to conduct a cleansing ceremony. He had gathered many natural things together like seeds, cotton, candy, corn, and coca leaves as an offering.
The ceremony was to cleanse negative things from us. Then the offering was burned. (See photo.) This is something many Peruvians still do today. Some claim to have been healed from many different things after this ceremony. The animal in my photograph came over to us of its own free will. It is the endangered vicuna that I blogged about earlier.
We had a late lunch at a fantastic restaurant! I ate alpaca steak. It was delicious, tasting similar to llama that I've had at home, nothing like chicken. My plate has the restaurant's name across the top of it in catsup. (See photo.) This restaurant also had a beautiful view of Cusco. You can tell that the city is nestled in an area between mountains. (See photo.)
Tomorrow we fly back to Lima for a short day there. I need to repack my suitcases again. All this shopping is just horrible! No more room in my suitcase. Tomorrow night we'll go to the International Airport in Lima. Our flight leaves at 1 A.M. on Wednesday morning. This is normal for international flights. Hopefully, I'll be able to sleep.
Have a great day! Just one more blog entry to go...
Questions of the day:
Scott Betterton- "Are the portion sizes of the food they eat similar to ours or do they eat smaller meals more often?"
Answer- Peruvians eat three meals a day. They eat more than we do. Restaurants have about the same portion sizes as we do, but not all. We have gone to two Chinese restaurants on our own. We ordered a family order for four people. We had six people eating but still had left overs! I have never left a meal feeling hungry.
Blake Sondag- "Did you get to go in the church? If so, how nice is it?"
Answer- Yes, we went in the church, but we couldn't take pictures. It is a huge stone building with stone floors. The altars are made of solid silver. Silver and gold are used often for decoration since they are both mined here. They had wooden pews like we have, but everything is old and somewhat worn. There are many oil paintings around the outside walls. The style reminded me of a church I saw in Paris but with a lot more decoration. Google search churches in Peru or Paris if you would like to see or know more.
Paul Johnson- "Why do they have to pay to use the tiolet? Explain."
Answer- Many public places around the world are the same. Here in Peru there is a popular saying that necessity is the mother of invention. The woman we saw decided to clean the public tiolets and they were very clean! Otherwise, the tiolets weren't cleaned-yuck! This was a way that she could earn money for her family. Many families here have dads and moms working because they need the money for basic things like food, clothing, and schooling for their children. In our hotels and in restaurants, we are not charged to use the restrooms, just other public ones. It is just common here to be charged to use the toilet. It seems strange since we don't have this, but many countries around the world have this custom.
