Cusco is a colorful city, easy to walk, with good museums and restaurants and beautiful churches and plazas filled with flowers. The San Pedro market was crowded this Friday before Easter, with children running around and families having breakfast. Older women were busy shelling peas, sorting spices for teas, filleting fish and peeling potatoes. Those wonderful faces!! We always asked permission before photographing. Raul purchased special Easter cookies and lots of exotic fruits which the restaurant for our lunch prepared for us. This was a rotisserie chicken restaurant (a Peruvian specialty basted with soy sauce, garlic, chilies and cumin).
After a visit to an alpaca factory, we had a chance to experience a real medicine man.
Charming small streets with lots of shops (we did our bit to support the economy....)led down to the plaza de armas with the cathedral and museums on the way.
This 12-sided stone is well known. Inca architecture is known for its fine stone carvings, and for the perfect fit between the stone blocks of its walls and buildings, long considered to be amazing feats of engineering for a civilization that did not yet have the wheel.
The Cathedral has a solid silver alter and a chapel dedicated to the lord of the tremblors with a gold crucifix (how did the Spaniards miss that one?)That chapel was filled with masses of pink and fuschia gladiolas. A large painting of the last supper features guinea pig for the main course...........
Cusco, Plaza de Armas
Qorikancha was once the Vatican of the Inka world. The walls and floors were once covered in sheets of solid gold, and the courtyard was filled with golden statues. Spanish reports tell of its opulence that was 'fabulous beyond belief'. The Church of Santo Domingo was built on the site, using the ruined foundations of the temple that was flattened by the Spanish in the 17th century, and is a fine example of where Inca stonework has been incorporated into the structure of a colonial building. Major earthquakes have severely damaged the church, but the Inca stone walls, built out of huge, tightly-interlocking blocks of stone, still stand thanks to the sophisticated stone masonry. Nearby is an underground archaeological site museum containing a number of interesting pieces, including mummies, textiles and sacred idols (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coricancha)
Sacsaywauman (http://www.world-mysteries.com/mpl_9.htm) is a huge fortress built in the 14thC. The stones are pillowed which is unusual for that period. We pronounced it sexy woman........Sacsaywauman which means satisfied falcon in Quechua was built to defend against the Spainards. Didn't work.
The Inka Museum(http://www.sacred-destinations.com/peru/cusco-museo-inka.htm) was once the palace of Admiral Francisco Aldrete Maldonado, hence its common designation as the Palacio del Almirante (Admiral's Palace).
The palace itself is one of Cusco's finest colonial mansions, with a superbly ornate portal indicating the importance of its owner. The mansion was built on top of an Inca palace at thebeginning of the 17th century.
The main draw of this archaeological museum is its collection of Inca mummies, but the entire facility is Cusco's best introduction to pre-Columbian Andean culture, including the rich cultures that thrived before the Incas.
Yet another beautiful church and cloister.
We began our trip to Lake Titicaca with an 8-hour drive to Puno through scenic fields with glorious vistas and bucolic farms. Our first stop was at the ruins of Raqchi, a vast Inca settlement built in the fifteenth century, considered by the historians to be one of the most audacious Inca constructions. The remarkable Wiracocha temple, 100 meters (328 feet) long and 20 meters (66 feet) wide is made of adobe walls built on top of volcanic stone foundations. The complex also includes a residential area made for the Inca nobles and dozens of circular warehouses to store food (http://www.go2peru.com/cuz_raqchi.htm)
Our tour leader, Raul.Our hotel outside Puna had the added attraction of a litter of puppies!! Hotel Taypicala, in Chiquita is on the lake, in a funky little town complete with Inca fertility temple just across from hotel.......
Rema, Peggy Apgar, Claire Bingham, Chaline, Stan Bingham, John Apgar, Ellen
Potatos in the Puna market-so many varieties! We took a ride in the most popular local transportation.....
Lake Titicaca at Sillustani
Sillustani is a pre-Incan burial ground on the shores of Lake Umayo near Puno. The tombs, which are built above ground in tower-like structures called chullpas, are the vestiges of the Colla people, Aymara who were conquered by the Inca in the 1400s. The structures housed the remains of complete family groups, although they were probably limited to nobility. Many of the tombs have been dynamited by grave robbers, while others were left unfinished. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sillustani
Time for the Uros Islands, made of reeds and floating in the lake.The Uros is the name of a group of pre-Incan people who live on 42 self-fashioned floating man-made islets located in Lake Titicaca off Puno, Peru. The Uros use the totora plant to make boats (balsas mats) of bundled dried reeds as well as to make the islands themselves. Around 3,000 descendants of the Uros are alive today, although only a few hundred still live on and maintain the islands; most have moved to the mainland. The Uros also bury their dead on the mainland in special cemeteries.
The purpose of the island settlements was originally defensive, and if a threat arose they could be moved. The largest island retains a watchtower almost entirely constructed of reeds.
The Uros traded with the Aymara tribe on the mainland, interbreeding with them and eventually abandoning the Uro language for that of the Aymara. About 500 years ago they lost their original language. When this pre-Incan civilization was conquered by the Incans, they had to pay taxes to them, and often were made slaves.
The islets are made of totora reeds, which grow in the lake. The dense roots that the plants develop support the islands. They are anchored with ropes attached to sticks driven into the bottom of the lake. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uros)
Raul using the core of a reed for teeth-brushing-it works just fine!!
These women are making matresses which will be sold for about $6.
A few villagers have solar panels..... They were happy to answer all our questions and wanted to know our names and how many children we had. Then they sang for us and we sang for them!
Hypertension is their biggest health issue and swollen legs for the ladies who sit all day weaving and cooking.
Our boat took us to Taquile Island about 1 1 /2 hours away for a hike up the mountain to an adobe house where we had a delightful lunch of fresh trout from the lake cooked by a local family.
Taquileños run their society based on community collectivism and on the Inca moral code "ama sua, ama llulla, ama qhella" (do not steal, do not lie, do not be lazy). The economy is based on fishing, terraced farming horticulture based on potato cultivation, and the approximately 40,000 tourists who visit each year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taquile
Irina is 4 and quite the saleslady.
You can see the house in the distance. It is 220 ft. (UP!) from the lake.
Our last day in Peru we had lunch within the compound of an archeological excavation in the middle of Lima, a 1,500-year-old adobe pyramid built by the original inhabitants of Lima with a wonderful restaurant, Huaca Pucllano, where you can watch the workers digging. (http://www.theperuguide.com/lima/restaurants/criollo/huaca.html)
Larcomar shopping center overlooks the Pacific from the cliffs above Lima
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