Cusco is a cool place!

Hey hey!! I'm back in Arequipa! Our adventure in Cusco was super-fun! And it's really nice to be back in Arequipa. We had a great great time!

This adventure began on Wednesday night when we got to... sleep in a bus! Oh yay! We arrived in Cusco early Thursday morning, checked into our hotel, ate breakfast, and took a nap. I had the pleasure of sharing a room with Sydney and Amy. After our little nap, the three of us decided that it was time to go exploring a bit around the city. We left our hotel and started walking. It didn't take too long for us to find the Plaza de Armas.

And here is the beautiful Plaza de Armas in Cusco!

From the Plaza de Armas, we walked a bit more in search of a place to eat. We quickly decided on a cute little restaurant.

We ate here. It was quite yummy.

After our lunch, we made it back to the hotel where we met our guide, Jesús. He had been told that he was going to give the tours in English, but when he realized that we were all in Perú learning Spanish, he taught us in Spanish instead. He stayed with us for four days, and he was a phenomenal guide. We all learned so much from him!! We've had guides every time we have gone on excursions as a group, and Jesús has by far been the best one. He kept reminding us that he is our friend from Cusco, not our guide, and he really did act more like our friend than our guide. Instead of continually talking at us, he asked a lot of questions and let us participate a lot, which made the tours super fun.

The first thing that we did with Jesús was take a short walk to Qoricancha. Qoricancha was an Incan temple until the Spanish came and turned it into a Catholic Church. Today, it still contains bits of Incan and Spanish architecture. 

Look! The arches are Spanish architecture. But behind them, you can see Incan structures.  It was very very common for the Spanish to construct Catholic Churches on the sites of Incan religious areas. This was a way for the Spanish to spread the Catholic faith. We learned that the transition from the Incan religion to Catholicism was made easier by some similarities between the two. In the Incan religion, there are three gods: an unseen, all-powerful god, the sun god, and the moon god. Then, beneath them, are all of the gods of the peoples who they had conquered. These were seen as minor deities. When the Incans transitioned to Catholicism, instead of believing in three separate gods, they turned to the Trinity, and instead of minor deities, they had saints.

The wall on the right is a wall constructed by the Spanish. The wall on the left is the original wall constructed by the Incans. How can I tell the difference? There is mortar stuff between the rocks on the Spanish wall, but not on the Incan wall. How, then, does the Incan wall stay up if there is no concrete or anything between the rocks? Good question. Believe it or not, the Incans were the original inventors of the LEGO! They shaped each rock so that it would have little pieces that stick out on one rock, and little spaces for them to fit in another rock! This must have required lots and lots of mathematics and exact measurements.

SEE? There is a rock missing in this picture, and you can see the little LEGO holes that  are in the rocks that are there!!

And in these rocks, you can see the LEGO holes and protrusions! This is brilliant!! 

Ok, this is awesome. Look at the walls here. The wall on the right is straight up. The wall on the left, you can see, is angled 13 degrees. In Incan structures, three of the four walls were tilted at a 13 degree angle, and the fourth wall was straight up because this made the structures stronger against earthquakes. And, sure enough, when earthquakes have hit Cusco, 70% of the Spanish structures have been destroyed while less than 30% of the Incan structures have have been damaged. Please just stop and think for a moment about how impressive it is that the Incans were able to make these structures without modern technology, that they had a pretty effective way to combat earthquakes, and that all of the angles measure 13 degrees. That is mathematically pretty sweet. 

This is the LITTLEST rock used by the Incas. Later on during our adventure, we saw the biggest one. It's a lot bigger than this one. 

And in this picture, please note that all of the windows line up perfectly! If you look in one window, the one in the next room is in the EXACT same place! That is also a feat of mathematics and measurement. I hope you're beginning to see that the mathematical abilities of the Incans were pretty awesome. They might not have written any math books like the Ancient Greeks, but they definitely applied some pretty sophisticated and awesome mathematics in their architecture.

And I learned a few other things at Qoricancha, too. I learned that the Incans never "obligated" anyone to become their subject. When they defeated other people, they "invited", but never "obligated" them to join. They simply told them that they are welcome to become subjects of the Incan Empire, and that if they didn't want to become subjects, they didn't have to. However, the catch is that if they chose not to become subjects of the empire, the Incans would destroy their gods. Yeah, most people decided to just become subjects of the Incan Empire.

And I learned the origin of the word "llama"! When the Spanish people saw llamas, they asked the Incans "What are those things called?", which, in Spanish, is "Como se llama?" The Incans, however, didn't speak Spanish. So they responded in their language, Quechua, and told the Spanish that they didn't understand what they were saying. So, the Spaniards just kept asking and getting more and more frustrated. "COMO SE LLAMA???" And, eventually, the Incans just repeated the last word back to them... "llama?" And we still call them llamas. Oh man.

Okay, after we spent some time at Qoricancha, we walked a bit more to the Plaza de Armas and went in the Catedral de Cusco. This was a Catholic Church built during the colonial period. It was really interesting. There was lots of paintings all over, and though I couldn't take pictures of any of them, I did find a picture online of one of the most interesting paintings.

This is a Cusqueno depiction of the last supper. The dish being served? Guinea pig and fruit. And the drink? Chica -- an Incan beverage made of purple corn. And the guy in the front on the right looking straight forward... that's Judas. We know that because he is holding a money bag. And there is something else that is interesting about him. The artist painted his face to look just like Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish conquistador who defeated the Incans.

After spending some time at the Catedral, we walked around Cusco a bit more. Sydney and Amy and I ended up eating at a chifa, which was delicious, and then we headed back to the hotel for a nice slow evening.

The next morning, right after breakfast, we piled in the bus and drove a short ways. The things that I saw out the bus window were... absolutely beautiful. The city of Cusco with mountains in the distance slowly turned into a green and really amazing valley with fields and rocks and rivers and trees... oh man. I could have taken pictures, but I was too busy just looking out the window for that. We stopped in a town called Pisac where there is a very large tourist market. Look. These are tourist markets and they are all over tourist towns. The rule in these markets is to bargain, and most of the markets all have the same kinds of stuff. Similar scarves, hats, sweaters, jewelry, and touristy things. Yes, I have done some shopping in similar places. But I'm still not sure what I think of these markets. The only people who shop there are tourist. They buy things for pretty cheap that only tourists wear. And... that whole idea doesn't always sit well with me.

And after spending a long while at this very large market, we went to a buffet for lunch and ate a bunch (yes, that rhymes, and yes, I did that on purpose).

And after the buffet, we went to Ollantaytambo, which I will write about another day. But be excited to read about it, because it was super sweet!!

Father, I thank You for such a fun experience in Cusco this past week with the Calvin group. Thank You for being with us and for protecting us. God, it was so much fun! I thank You for this group that You put together. God, these are some awesome people and I have been so blessed to get to know them more! In the month that I have left here in Arequipa, God I pray that You would do immeasurably more than all that I can ask or imagine. Help me to surrender every moment to You. I give you these days, Jesus, and I pray that they would exalt and glorify You!