December 12
After a ton of sleep over the past two days, I woke up feeling… still tired! But I slept through the night, so it was time to just suck it up and get moving. We did spend some time in the hostel using up some wifi and trying to plan the future of our travels, but then we got moving and went into the town center.
After just a blocks, we took a seat on a shaded bench in the town center. Michael started reading while I did some people watching. But Michael got antsy pretty quickly, so he jumped up to take a walk and grab some waters, etc. Not a minute after he left a dude walked up and sat down next to me. Ugh.
Recently, I’ve been feeling very burnt out with other human beings. A reminder that before this trip, I would spend some 10 hours by myself in my office, speaking to almost nobody. Seriously. I would say a word or two to my favs is the office when grabbing another blueberry coffee, but mostly, I just got to work by myself in silence. So going from that to a situation where not only do I have to deal with people all day, but many of them in Spanish, and I’m exhausted. Since my Spanish is better than Michael’s, I take the majority of the work there and it leaves me drained. So for the past few days as I’ve also been so exhausted from the altitude sickness, I have been basically unwilling to speak to anyone unless it was a complete necessity. Michael has stepped up and deal with a lot of stuff that I could have possibly navigated easier.
So when Leond approached me, I was just not into it. But he asked to sit down and then asked me to fill out a cultural survey about Cusco. How could I refuse? Those five written survey questions, that were to help him with a presentation he is giving next week to pass his English class, led us to almost an hour of great discussion.
Going into the trip, Michael and I both claimed to want to learn as much about the cultures that we are visiting as possible. This was my reminder to talk to locals and see what’s going on. It helps that his English was pretty strong and so I only had to supplement slightly with my bad Spanish.
We talked about a lot of things – he seemed enamored with the US and how rich and important we are. We spoke about having kids for a bit. Since he’s 34 and hasn’t met a “special woman” yet, he seemed pretty set on the fact he was never going to get married. I told him that things are very different in the US where a lot of young people don’t get married until their late 30’s or 40’s and still have kids or adopt. This led to a long discussion on the ability of the US to adopt in any country in the world (his exaggeration) and how he feels about people from the US adopting Peruvians. For the record, he thinks it’s not his place to tell others what to do with their lives or their children’s lives.
Leond has an obsession with NASA, so we talked about that and the US putting a man on the moon for an obscenely long time, from my perspective. He also told me his (possibly borrowed) theory that the US colonized Cusco with tourism. He didn’t have the negative connotation of “colonize” that I would expect when explaining this thought. His opinion is that because the States has been sending tourist and explorers to visit Machu Picchu for over a hundred years, their needs/expectations/desires have been built into the tourism culture in Cusco.
He also said that until 9/11, the majority of the tourists were from the US. Now, the majority are Europeans who he claimed to be “frio” or cold but he thinks people from the US are very friendly and kind. Now whether he was tailoring his comments to me to flatter me or not, who knows, but it was nice to hear such kind things about US tourists. Michael came back at some point and added some value to the NASA convo and threw in some futbol input to the discussion. Leond’s closing request was that we keep engaging in the people in Cusco. What a good reminder to us, even when I’m exhausted.
So after a ton of words with no pictures, I’ll make things a little more enjoyable. After our Leond convo and a quick lunch at the market we went to our first museum of the trip.
Qorikancha – the House of the Sun
Qorikancha is from the Quechua words quri for gold and kancha for enclosure and it was supposedly the most important temple in the Inca Empire. It is located in the heart of Cusco which use to be the Inca capital. This incredible painting, by Miguel Araoz Cartagena, from inside the museum gives insight into why Qorikancha was the most important temple. The Incas had these things called wakas which were important buildings, squares, sacred stones or fountains. All of them lined up directly with Qorikancha. So this painting depicts the different wakas with black dots and shows the imaginary lines from the House of the Sun. Everything the Incas did was on purpose. Everything lined up, everything had significance. Nothing was done without complete thoughtfulness.
In the mid 1400’s, Pachacuti was the ninth Incan leader who built Qorikancha (and probably Machu Picchu) and added oracles and vases of gold and silver to be used when praying to Mama Pacha, or Mother Earth. He also put the bodies of seven deceased Incan rulers in the temple (they would mummify the bodies and keep them readily available to worship) and decorated the bodies with head-dresses and masks and all kinds of gold jewelry, before putting them on a gold bench. Then Pachacuti covered the walls of the temple in sheets of gold and put gold statues in the courtyards. History sidenote: when the Spanish arrived, they threatened to kill the current Incan ruler, Atahualpa, unless the Incans filled a building with gold. Most of that gold came from Qorikancha. In case you’re wondering, the Incans followed through and Atahualpa was killed anyway. Don’t trust the Spanish conquistadors.
Qorikancha was mostly destroyed after the 16th century war with the Spanish conquistadors, but a lot of its stonework still forms the foundation of Santo Domingo Priory. Earthquakes throughout the years greatly damaged the Spanish construction, but the incredible Incan masonry was never damaged by the earthquakes.
Incan masonry:
Crappy Spanish masonry:
Another cool thing in the museum – this Inca Gold Plate
Sticking in line with the thought that everything the Incas did was on purpose – here is a golden plate that includes a ton of symbolism that was important to the Incas. Much of the symbols represent stars, the sun and moon, Mama Pacha, different animals, rivers, and trees.
Leading up to my favorite part of the visit, I’ll give you my second favorite. While basically running to the bathroom, Michael and I entered through a beautiful courtyard that had flowers, including these:
Don’t these flowers look like ballerinas!?! They have the long stems hanging down that look like their legs, one set of petals hangs down which looks like a skirt and the (more) upward facing petals look like their graceful arms. I stopped and was just loving these flowers and then got strongly criticized for “stopping to smell the roses” when I had been the one complaining about how bad I needed to go to the bathroom and had caused the rush in the first place.
OK – now the favorite, favorite part of the visit – this painting:
Ok – so what’s cool about this painting? Everything. Have you seen those pictures in the mall where they are paintings, but then someone stuck LED lights into the painting where the street lamp is, or something like that? This was the same except there was no LED lights. When you turned the corner, the painting just glowed. The stars illuminated the hallway. It was breathtaking. I mentioned before that the Incas have a thing for stars and the moon and the sun. This painting is in keeping with that idea. The Incas designated constellations just as we now see animals or people in the constellations. So the above is the Milky Way. Smack dab in the middle you can see a long creature with four legs and a bright white eye – that is a llama. To the right of the llama’s head is a partridge and a toad below that. To the right of that is the snake. Back to the llama – underneath the llama is a baby llama that is upside down. To the left of the llamas is the fox with its red eyes chasing the llamas. And finally to the left of the fox is the shepherd with outstretched arms. I feel like there should also be a puma since the Incas were really into pumas, but my notes don’t say anything about this, so we’ll just leave it as is. Note – this painting is also by Miguel Araoz Cartagena, who is quickly becoming my favorite artist.
I could have stared at this painting for hours.
I also mentioned that this is Saint Dominic’s Priory. That is true and there was a lot of info about the Dominicans and a lot of old Dominican stuff from their history in this space. To be honest, the longer we stay in Cusco the more distaste we have for what the conquistadors and the missionaries did to the people here. So we brushed through this stuff pretty quickly… and I spent a little more time staring at my favorite picture.