Saturday we had a free day. We were supposed to go to a cooking class, but it was canceled at the last minute. So I booked an alternative one that was shorter just from 12 to 1:30.
Susan and Tim and I went to museums in the morning. We tried to go to the Machu Picchu museum, but it was closed so we went to the Museo Histórico Regional de Cusco, which turned out to be the former home of Cusco chronicler Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. On the first floor is a lot of archeological information (old pottery, weapons, geographical information etc. On the second floor there are paintings, furniture and what stood out for me: a painting of the rebel leader Tupac Amaru II being executed in 1781 during a rebellion by the Incas by the Spanish Empire in Cusco’s central plaza after having watched his wife and sons killed (except his 10 year old son who had to watch it all. The rebellion was a failure, but led 40 years later to Peru’s independence.
After that, we went to the Museo de Sitio Qorikancha, a small museum under the gardens behind the Sun Temple. This garden used to have golden statues in it.
The museum contains a history of how the Inca ruling class wrap the heads of children so that their heads would be elongated and they would be taller. There were a couple of mummies showing the way the Incas mummified their dead in sort of a fetal position so that they could be reborn. There’s also a timeline of Incan and pre-Incan history. Both museums are included in the Cusco 10-day city pass.
I then went off to my cooking class where we cooked ceviche and Lomo Saltado. Two facts were interesting: that’s ceviche cured in key lime only takes about three minutes to “cook” and that lomo saltado is a dish cooked in a walk with stir fried vegetables!
The cooking class I went back to the market and bought some blueberries and some of the small corn snacks as well as a bag of smoked salt. The market was really busy because it was lunchtime and many people were eating communally at the benched tables with the cooks between the rows of tables. There were a lot of fruit stands (blueberries, sugar cane, mandarins, pomegranates, and some fruits I didn’t know) outside the covered market. However, vegetables were hard to find inside or outside, other than potatoes, which were pretty varied, inexpensive (2 soles/kilo other than the awesome yellow ones that taste like they are buttered..those are 4 soles a kilo or just over $1 for 2.2 pounds), and onions. There were some..well interesting cuts of meat too. And outside the market there was a roasted guinea pig stand. Throughout the city there were people selling watermelon, pineapple and sugar cane from carts.
I walked back to our hotel, met up with Susan and Tim and we walked to the Inca Pachacutec Monument. The monument consists of a large statue on top of a tower of about seven or eight stories of the ninth Incan ruler (Pachacutec). He was the most powerful Incan ruler and greatly expanded the Incan empire. From the top we could see that there were topiaries in the ground of various Incan symbols. If you look closely at the photo below middle right, you can see the outline of another Incan emblem.
All the sites we visited today were included in the Cusco 10-day city pass we had and of which we made excellent use.
We walked back to our hotel and stopped along the way to look at a souvenir mall so to speak which is across the street from our hotel. There was nothing new there, but if you ever want to buy anything Alpaca, Cusco is the place to shop.
I ended up with 18 to 19,000 steps Saturday. Off to Lima Sunday!
