On Wednesday, June 14, 2023, we got up at 9:00 am and had breakfast around 9:30 am. The breakfast was a delicious, delicious Peruvian breakfast ( bread rolls, butter, jam, fruit, eggs, etc.). We then all got ready to tour a few churches and got into clothing suitable for a church, and left for the tour by 10:30 am. We had an amazing tour guide named Rómulo Valencia who gave us the full story of how the Spaniards came to Peru and the Incan Culture.
We first toured the huge Cathedral in Cusco and he explained to us the history of how the church was built. We learned that many of the churches were built on Incan prayer grounds (including the Cathedral) and that much of the flooring in the Cathedral was stone from past Incan Temples. He then told us an incredibly interesting story about a Jesus statue who they call the “Lord of the Earthquakes”. The story is about a Jesus statue made out of alpaca and llama skin (wooden on the inside) that was in the church while it was still being built. During an earthquake one day, the church started shaking, and a bunch of people grabbed the Jesus statue and started running to the entrance to get him (and themselves) to safety. While running the earthquake was still going on, but the second they got the statue of Jesus into the entrance, the earthquake stopped like magic. Everyone in the church started praying, and since that day, they have called the statue “Lord of the Earthquakes”. Due to people bringing candles to the statue to pray, the fire from the candles slowly turned the statue black until it got its black/brown color that it has today.
We then looked at a painting of a saint who people would go to in order to find themselves a husband/wife. People would write their names and how to contact them in small notes and leave them on the ledge near the painting. After learning about that, we went to an oil painting of The Virgin Mary that was imported from Spain. It was an extremely beautiful painting. After looking at the painting of the Virgin Mary for a bit, we went to look at a huge painting that was painted by artists who went to an art school in Cusco a long time ago. They were extremely talented, but because they were not from Spain, they were prohibited from writing their signatures on the painting. Since they were not allowed to write their signatures on the painting, they drew little cupids holding flowers in every painting they made as a “signature.” This means that anywhere in the world that you see a painting with small cupids holding flowers, you can almost guarantee that it was painted in Cusco.
We were then led into a part of the Cathedral where people would hold their weddings but were only allowed to have them on Saturdays. The room was designed during the Andean-Baroque period, which was a time when people wanted to “show the glory of God” and use lots of gold, silver, and other ornate/detailed things. The whole area was covered in gold and silver and was really pretty.
After finishing the tour of the Cathedral, we were each gifted a calendar and left to go to the next church. The second church was a Dominican Church built on an Incan Temple of the Sun, and learned a bit about the Catholic side of the church. An interesting thing that we were told was that the reason why the leader of the church wasn’t in a big painting that had many important spiritual leaders, was due to him being a different race from the rest of the saints.
We then dove into the Incan history of the Church. Rómulo (our tour guide) walked us through a few rooms the Incas had constructed. We learned that the temple walls used to be covered in all gold (about two-inch thick plates), but when the Spaniards entered Peru, they looted the temple for all its gold. We also learned a lot about how the Incas constructed their buildings in a slight slant and square doorways to help the buildings stabilize against earthquakes. Rómulo taught us how Shamans (basically healers) would go to a mountain and pray until they got hit by lightning, and when they would get hit by lightning, they would get a sort of “sixth sense” for healing. Learning about old traditions, like how the healers got their powers, was extremely interesting. We also learned that they would sacrifice llamas on an altar that we saw back then. After looking through the different Incan rooms, we saw a replica of a part of the gold wall that someone buried and went into a small museum room with cool artifacts. We were told that when the Spaniards came, they had the Incas bring them a lot (a giant, but unknown amount) of gold to them, and after they received the gold, they murdered a lot of the Incan, which was really sad to hear about. We then walked to an area outside the church where Rómulo showed us a wall built by the Incas but partially destroyed and where he told us about how in his opinion, the Spaniards did not come to Peru to help but instead came due to their greed.
After that, the tour concluded, and we went back to the hostel to rest, then went to the plaza for dinner. We all went to different places to eat with our assigned partners at the plaza. Taite and I chose to go to a burger joint called Pachachos which was absolutely delicious. For the table that Noam was sitting at, we all got some onion rings to share, and everyone got their own individual burgers and milkshakes. At Taite’s table, they had their own burgers and drinks. It was an amazing meal, and we got to say that we had the experience of having a burger in Peru. We then returned to the Hostel, got ready for bed, and the next day was a tour of Machu Picchu.
On Friday, June 16, we got up and had breakfast at 8:00 am, and at 9:00 am, we left for a tour of three main sites of Cusco. We saw an Area called Pisaq, an area called Ollantaytambo, and an area called Moray. They were all similar areas used to cultivate crops. The bus ride was around an hour, and people mainly slept on the first bus ride. The first area we went to was Moray, which was three different circles with a few layers of terraces used to cultivate mainly potatoes and corn in the past. The crops, once perfected, would then be sent out to the rest of the Andes to be mass-produced for everyone to enjoy. We then got on a bus and drove a bit to the next place called Ollantaytambo, and it looked like a gigantic staircase with different terraces that were maybe around 7 feet long and 8 feet tall. The area was huge, and it is amazing to think that people could build and use it so long ago. Across from Ollantaytambo was a big mountain with a few ruins.
One of the ruins used to be stored for different crops, and the reason for it being so high up on the mountain was that if it were too low, then floods (which were a big problem) would end up wiping it out. We were also taught that the whole area was unfinished because everyone left when they heard that the Spaniards had hurt Cusco. The interesting thing was that many of the big rocks used to make the whole area were brought from a quarry in a completely different mountain and were pulled using manpower on sleds.
The rocks were also fitted with pieces of gold in between them to keep them together, which caused the Spaniards to tear down the walls to find the gold pieces inside. Once we finished the tour in Ollantaytambo, we went to an area called Pisaq. The bus ride was maybe an hour and a half. This monument was a huge version of the first site but had some cool history to it. We walked around the big half of the circle of agriculture until he explained about the other side of the site.
Rómulo told us that this site was pre-Incas called the Pisaq’s, who had a quiet life up in the Andes mountains. He told us that these natives after someone died, put their organs into jars and then put their bodies into holes in the wall on the other side of a different mountain across from where we were standing. Their bodies were covered with gold and silver necklaces, ankle bracelets, upper pet jewelry, and design headpieces. Then we walked up to the very top of the mountain, where he explained that there is still a community that speaks their native language that their ancestors from Pisaq spoke. He added a cool fact that Nat Geo and some other news organizations found that back in 2016, they found 40 different languages besides Spanish spoken in just Peru. The community is isolated from the outside world and will not let anyone or tourists from visiting their community above the site. After the tour, we took an hour-long bus ride back to the Plaza and ate dinner there. At the Hostel, we ate ice cream for Mathew’s birthday (Happy Birthday, Mathew!) and then went to pack.