Friday — after a 2.5 rest, I followed the advice of my transfer escort and had some chicken soup at the hotel restaurant. It was so good! The soup has huge tender pieces of white meat chicken, one slice of potato that was very dry and starchy even though it had been sitting in broth, and there were vermicelli noodles in the soup, along with the occasional carrot sliver.

I then joined a Cusco city tour. Much better than the Lima city tour, this guide was excellent and we got on and off the van at various sites.

Driving around the city, we saw a lot of school children dressed in uniforms bearing their school’s crest. The guide stated the educational system is not very good. Students go to school for a half day: 6:45am – 12pm or 1-6pm.

I got a primer on the Incan religion and the contentious relationship between the Incas and Spaniards. For example, the Incas believe in three worlds: heavens/sky, the present/mother earth, and the snakes/the under world. Three is an important number to the Incas since it signifies the three worlds, and therefore the Andean cross has three levels.

The Spaniards conquering the Incas impacted not only structures and religion, but vocabulary as well. For example, the word Cusco means dog. The world “Cosco” means center – center of the world – since the region was the religious center of the Incan world. The Spaniards changed the name of Cosco to Cusco to minimize the Incas.

We visited Santa Catalina – a Christian convent built on top of Incan temples. Earthquakes caused the convent to crumble and the Peruvians discovered the perfectly preserved temples underneath.

The main square in Cusco was surrounded by Incan palaces but the Spanish destroyed everything. The churches erected in its place were constructed by Incan slaves for the Spaniards.

We visited La Catedral, and the two smaller churches on either side of it. No pictures unfortunately, but the place was massive and ornate. So many instances of an Andean influence on the Catholic structures. For example, the Incans would carve potato flower designs into the wood of an alter. The churches had mirrors in them, which is not typical of a Christian church / colonial design, but the Incans installed the mirrors to reflect the moon glistening off the water. The Virgin Mary statue in the church has rosy pink cheeks to represent the altitude and blood pressure of Cusco’s children who have rosy cheeks. The main alter was covered with 1200 kilos of silver. The whole place was just amazing.

And, I got to see the Last Supper painting that I thought I had missed in Lima. Turns out, it was in the Cusco cathedral instead. Jesus and his disciples are dining on guinea pig, and instead of Judas the artist replaced the face with that of a Spanish conqueror. And in the painting they are drinking chicha morada — the purplish beverage that was served to us at the cheesy restaurant after the Lima by Night tour.

We left the city and went to Sacsayhuaman, an Incan military base. We learned how the Incan temples were built, held together (melted bronze or Lego-design), and how the winter and summer solstice were very important to them. Saw a single large stone cut with 14 angles to it at the entrance to the sun temple.

We then went to another Incan guard /look-out point, but I can’t remember the name!

For dinner, I walked 15 minutes up hill to LIMO restaurant which came recommended to me by a work colleague. The food was excellent; I had two appetizers for dinner. The deep fried yucca balls were stuffed with queso andino (Andean cheese.)  I also had a green salad with slices of avocado, and since I sat at the bar I was given a basket of homemade French fries with three dips (my favorite was the mayonnaise.)

After the 15 minute walk back to my hotel, I was exhausted. My room was extremely stuffy, my heart was pounding, I had a huge headache, and there were no windows to open. I couldn’t find any way to lower the temperature and no vents in the room, so I headed to the front desk. Turns out, A/C and heat in hotel rooms is not commonplace, even though the hotel website says all rooms at the hotel have A/C.  So they gave me a room fan, but I felt horrible in the room. So nauseous. And I didn’t feel better until I had one hour of fresh air on Saturday morning.

More on Saturday’s adventures in the next post.