Day 3

We didn't need to get up quite as early this morning, but Jan did anyway. Our bus wasn't leaving until 9 a.m., but Jan was up at 6 and made sure I was too. So we got bathed and dressed and went out to take some pictures in the daylight. There wasn't a whole lot of it, though, because it was very foggy. You could have actually called it a light rain, but that's not allowed in Lima because they claim they get almost no rainfall there. One or two inches a year is supposed to be normal. We did get a few more shots, though. We returned to the hotel and found most people had already brought their luggage down, so we ran upstairs to get ours ready. We delivered our bags and headed to breakfast. There was a guy giving a lecture on the history of the Inca Empire which was interesting, but I had read a lot of it already. At 9:00 we gathered and got on buses to head for the airport. We went past a lot of the same neighborhoods we saw yesterday, but this time a couple of consulates were pointed out. They were incredibly well protected. The Japanese consulate looked like some kind of fort. They even had a guard tower. They must have been expecting some trouble.

At the airport, things again went pretty smoothly. They did move us from one gate to another, but that wasn't a big deal. They had to drive us to the plane in one of the cattle cars. We were told repeatedly to drink as much water as we could stand. We asked for some water as soon as we got on the plane, and the attendant said she only had very large bottles (2.5 liters). I said I was very thirsty so she gave me one of the big bottles. Then she made me take it with me off the plane. I've already finished it.

Cuzco is much nicer than Lima was. Not so much electric fences and barbed wire. They have some very quaint homes built on the hillsides, and some incredible examples of Incan architecture that still exist here (not a lot, but what there is is impressive). The first thing we did was go to the hotel and rest. Unfortunately, I didn't get to do a lot of that. I set up my laptop and started my blog writings (not uploading them, but writing them). Before I knew it, it was time to go on our excursions into the city.

Our first stop was was the Cathedral in Cuzco. It's incredibly impressive. I've been in cathedrals before, but the amount of gold and silver in this one would rival any in Europe. Our guide Harvey (yes, that's his real name, his father is American) was showing us the various altars and architectural details and was about to show us the painting of the Peruvian Last Supper where Jesus is eating guinea pig (a delicacy here). When I looked around, though, Jan and Sam were nowhere to be found. My sister-in-law told me Sam had stumbled and Jan helped him out. I expected, based on that explanation to see them again, but when we left the Cathedral, Juan Carlos, the local tour guide honcho told me Sam wasn't feeling good so he put them in a taxi back to the hotel. I guess that's a better excuse for ditching me than looking for her glasses.

Our next stop was Qorikancha. This is an Inca temple that was converted to use by the Spaniards. They even went so far as to try to cover the walls with plaster to make it look like a colonial building. The stonework in the building was amazing. There were places where, if you closed your eyes, you couldn't feel the seam. Harvey showed us one stone that had fourteen corners and compound bevels, and that was just the part you could see. The places where you could see where the wall had been broken, the seams between the stones were not orthogonal to the wall. They slanted in or out. The masons must have been amazing craftsmen. Not that all Incan buildings were constructed this way. Only important, mostly religious buildings were made from the best, largest stones, and built with this much care. Which made it all the more important to the Spaniards to destroy them or at least make them into Christian monuments, rather than Inca religious places.

After Qorikancha, some people headed to the main square to go shopping. I went back to the hotel to check on Sam. He had been feeling faint, which is why he stumbled in the first place, and when he got to his room almost immediately fell asleep. Jan and I left him to finish recouperating, and walked down to the square to shop. I haven't mentioned it yet, but almost everywhere you go in Cuzco, there are street vendors trying to get you to buy sweaters, postcards, watercolor painting, finger puppets, and just about anything else that's remotely peruvian. They're very persistent. They don't follow you into a store, though, but once in a store, you're at the mercy of the sales people there. We went into a place in an alley and found some sweaters, hats, etc. for pretty cheap. We got another sweater from an old lady on the street who swore she made them by hand. And I got a rather expensive sweater from a place called Sol Alpaca. Not a bargain, but it's a very nice sweater.

While we were shopping people were gathering in the square to celebrate Halloween. We saw one baby that was dressed head to toe like a kitty. It was very cute, but looked like it would be hot in that costume. There were lots of children wearing the standard cheap costumes like we have in the US with plastic masks and the thin, nylon costume that frequently doesn't survive trick or treat. There were adults wearing full body "big head" costumes of various characters. One looked like Winnie the Pooh, and another like Bugs Bunny. There was no Mickey Mouse, though we understand he's the most popular cartoon character down here.

By the time we were finished shopping, Jan and I were both feeling pretty bad. Headaches and nausea. We went back to our room and Sam came by and we watched the first half of a movie on my laptop. Then we went to dinner. It wasn't long before we were regretting that decision and left our plates almost untouched and came back up and watched the rest of the movie. Then Sam went back to his room and we went quickly to sleep.