Eager to have some downtime to catch up on work and even more to explore Cusco and its surroundings, Colin and I decided to rent an apartment for 2 months just a 10 minute cab ride from the main square. This would be our home base until the beginning of September. A couple of the first things we did in Cusco (actually, before the Inca Trail) was buy me a purple sweater and try a restaurant called Cafe Restaurant Aldea Yanapay, which is joined to a children’s charity. The food was delicious (though pretty dang expensive) and the place was all decked out with stuffed animals and children’s books. Even the menu was placed inside of a children’s book.
After we returned from the Inca Trail Colin and I set about exploring the city. Starting with the churches around Plaza de Armas (the main square in Cusco) we began walking around. We managed to duck into a couple of the churches during mass, so we got a feel for them without having to pay the ridiculous fees they impose for viewing the artwork inside. (It is really pretty petty that churches do this now, but they know with dying faith in their belief structure that every tourist dollar counts.)
We passed the Monastery of Saint Catherine (which was closed) and ended up going into an excellent Casa Concha museum containing numerous objects from Bingham’s Machu Picchu explorations.
The museum started by introducing us to Hiram Bingham (a Yale scholar) and telling us about his expedition which took him to explore the (still hidden) lost city of Machu Picchu. On display was a model of Machu Picchu which showed us (by lighting up) where different events took place in the complex. Hiram Bingham’s 1912 expedition found artifacts and numerous skeletons of former workers and support staff of Machu Picchu along with their personal items. On display in the museum were numerous black-and-white photos and records from the exploration, along with some of the personal items which had been buried with the mummies.
From both the model of Machu Picchu and the artifacts left behind by the Incas it was clear that the Incans loved to party and eat. They even had a special area towards the outside of the Machu Picchu complex where they entertained guests with chicha and food such as llama, and especially, maize. The Incans consumed a lot of maize. Interestingly the human bone collagen of people who consume maize has a distinctive carbon isotope ratio as compared to those who consume potatoes or grains. By testing the bones of the mummies found at Machu Picchu we can see the Incan people consumed a diet of 65% maize.
At the end of the museum was an exhibit with beautiful, colorful weavings from Museo Maximo Laura.
After a quick vegetarian lunch, Colin and I ended up in Cusco’s Coca Museum – which happened to have free entrance that day! While we had already visited a museum about coca in La Paz, this museum was different enough to prove interesting and expand our knowledge on the subject. There was a timeline about coca usage in Peru, and some ‘tips’ about how Peruvians used the leaf. We saw baskets of certain minerals (lime and alkaline ash) which were placed in people’s mouths along with the coca leaves to help extract the effects from the coca leaves.
Upstairs in the museum there was photos of a really cool butterfly called the Eloria Noyesi which feeds exclusively on coca leaves. The next room discussed the processing of coca leaves into cocaine, which interestingly begins in the same way the indigenous use it – by adding water and an alkaline substance. It takes a massive 30kg of coca leaves to make just 100g of cocaine, as shown in the diagram below.
After the coca museum we headed to the Pre-Columbian Art Museum in Plaza de las Nazarena. This is an (expensive, but worth it) museum filled with pottery, jewelry, and metalwork from various cultures who lived in the region throughout Peru’s history. In the bottom floor of the museum were silver and gold objects from the Chimu culture. One of the interesting pieces was a set of gold “tupus” (clothing pins) shaped like different types of birds, including small yet detailed parrots and toucans. There were crowns made of gold, and in the next room there were Nasca and Mochicha breastplates and necklaces made of seashells.
The museum also had a collection of wooden anthropomorphic statues and other pieces. There were staffs created by the Chimu culture which had ‘rattles’ attached to the top of them, for making music during ceremonies. There were also staffs created by the Mochicha culture which were very detailed and would be quite imposing during a religious, possibly drug-infused, ritual as was common practice. Upstairs was a collection of Vicus work including masks and pottery attempting to capture aspects of the supernatural, as well as Nasca art which was done in such a distinctively abstract and colorful style, that the pieces looked like ancient ‘pop art.’
The standout pieces of the collection were clearly those done by the Mochica culture. The designs were beautiful, sometimes stunning and the colors were chosen masterfully. There was everything from simple monochrome sets of corn toasters to truly talented sculptures of various animals and spirits. Most of the items had two uses, one practical (a vase, jar, cooking appliance, cup, etc.) and one purely decorative.
There were three additional groups of pottery completed by the cultures Huari, Chancay, and Inca. I loved a Huari piece which resembled a llama, and some other really cool animal items the different cultures created.
After the museums we headed towards San Blas, which is a very artistic area which had lots of sculptures. While in the area we visited Museo Maximo Laura which contained more weavings (as we saw earlier at another museum) by Maximo Laura. Things were pretty dead in the area at the time so we went back to the Plaza and paid a visit to the Chocolate Museum. We read up on the history of chocolate and its processing, but since I completed a chocolate workshop later I’ll leave the descriptions for that separate blog post.
On July 30th I headed back into Cusco on my own to check out a few more sights while Colin stayed at home to get some work done. I headed to the Museo del Convento de la Merced, a convent with many detailed arches, soft painted blue ceilings and huge decorative religious murals. One room in the convent contained a couple of Jesus Christ statues sculpted out of ivory, and a huge pearl sculpted into a small statue attached to a larger religious altarpiece. The upstairs of the convent was closed off for maintenance so I didn’t make it up there.
After the convent visit I ended up on a really bad walking tour done by ‘Free Walking Tour Peru’ which started at Recogijo Square. While the walking tour claimed it would bring us to interesting places and include loads of free samples, it simply didn’t. Here is the review we left on TripAdvisor about the bad experience:
Reviewed July 31, 2014
This tour was conducted by a guide who looked tired and hungover with bloodshot eyes, and was not worth the time and effort to go on. The tour was in Cusco, and started on time at 10.30 am, but the main problem was not the guide, but that the tour did not include the promised stops on the website.
The site advises that the tour goes to the following places:
Chocolate Museum, Botanic Park, Tupac Amaru's grave and Happiness Land, none of which were visited at all. There are three free samples also advertised on the website, including samples at two of the places we did not even go to (chocolate and the Peruvian dish causa limeña). A free pisco sour (drink) was also promised at the end, but never materialized or was even offered by the guide.
The tour was not very interesting for a backpacker who has spent some time in South America, but as a very basic introduction you might get something out of it. We did not tip the guide, and were glad the tour did not go on longer. There are other tours offered by this company, we will not be going on any of those.
The guide was quite annoying at the end by trying to passive-aggressively exhort tips by hovering a bucket in front of the tour group. Yeah right!
After I finally got out of that horrible walking tour I headed to the Central Market of Cusco called San Pedro. There was a lot of good-looking produce here, but since we had just done a big grocery shop at the apartment I wasn’t in the market to buy anything. Just to look at the frogs for sale! Frog leg ceviche, anyone?
On August 2nd we headed out on a ‘City Tour’ of Cusco’s ruins. This began with a visit to the Temple of the Sun or Qurikancha. This temple used to be covered (the walls and the floors) in gold, which wasn’t seen as being a sign of wealth but as a religious tool. Since many of the religious ceremonies of the Inca involve hallucinogenic drugs such as San Pedro (which distorts colors and makes anything giving off light or shiny look stunningly beautiful) a temple covered everywhere in shiny plates of solid gold would be a great location for a ‘spiritual experience.’ Our guide for the afternoon explained that the combination of the gold of the temple, and the super-colorful clothing the shamans/people wore for the ceremonies meant that the experience would be unforgettable.
The side of the temple used to have a massive gold disk on it, and the little niches were filled with gold and silver statues. Some of the niches had emerald stones or other gems embedded into the stone as well. The front garden area contained life-size solid gold statues of people and animals. Gold llamas, gold pumas, everything in gold. Of coarse the Spanish immediately set their mind to getting this gold in any way they could. While disease weakened the people and depleted their numbers, the Spanish used their superior weapons to capture Incan leaders and trade them back in exchange for this gold and silver. Unlike the Incans (who only gave the material religious significance), for the Spanish the gold meant money. They melted the gold and other metals down and using them for churches, sending lot of the metals back to Europe.
Our group drove up to the Sacsayhuaman or “Sexy Woman” ruins next and sat in the grass in front of the ruins to hear the “story.” The guide began by telling us about the 3 different types of architecture the people of the time used. The typical “everyday” architecture of different-sized stones with no real cement. The religious architecture of very ‘tight’ straight-cut stones cemented with gold or silver (possibly.) Finally, the military architecture which uses huge, well-cut stones.
The area looked very much like a fortress and was known as the center for the city’s military. The stones were massive (20-60 tons) and carved with precision and the entire structure overlooked the city, so the Inca were able to see anyone trying to attack. The rooms of the fortress were reported to be military equipment storage rooms. Interestingly, there is a (now collapsed) underground tunnel between the Temple of the Sun and Sacsayhuaman. Much of Sacsayhuaman has been destroyed, not just due to time, but because the Spanish used the stones to build their houses, churches, and political buildings once they arrived.
After Sacsayhuaman we made a quick stop at Q’inqu, a natural stone formation which was honored by the Inca as a religious place. Since it was crowded we only briefly viewed the alter inside the cave from above.
The sun was already starting to go down by the time we made it to the ruins of Pukapukara, another military fortress and an Incan administrative center for a short stop. The final stop was Tambomachay, also known as the Incan baths. There were a series of waterfalls running through the rocks which made a beautiful sight, especially late in the evening.
Francesca
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