Retired Nomads - Part 2 : Cusco Ruins, City Tour & Holy Monday, Peru

Monday was our final day of this trip and was our city tour of Cusco. We had another interesting start to the day as they were a bit late again (remember the rock slide from yesterday) meeting us for the tour, when some girl comes running up breathless and says she doesn’t really speak English and could we follow her. We do. A guy meets up with her and speaks only a bit more English. He says follow us. Along the way he mutters something about big stones in the wall. We get to the main square and he says now we have to wait 10 minutes or so. We do. Finally, our guide shows up and he takes us into the church. We see a few things and then we are back out. He explains we can’t tour any of the other sites as it is Holy Monday and most all sites are closed.

So, we headed to the 4 small ruins close to Cusco that were next on the list. Lucio is the same guide we had for a couple of other places and is quite long winded. He would talk for 10 to 20 minutes droning on about history and politics of the Quecha people. (by now he is repeating much of what was said on previous tours with him) He would show us pictures in his notebook. If you walked away or tried to take pictures while he was talking, he would stop until he had your undivided attention. He would state a fact and then ask “why”. (about every other sentence) If I heard the word “why” one more time I was going to push him off a cliff. We spent more time listening to him talk than actually seeing what was there. The rest of the tour was still more talking than seeing. Just not our style of touring. So, that was done by lunch time and we had the rest of the day to ourselves. Yay! We did get into the one and only museum that was open and wandered about the city taking in the culture. At first I was disappointed that many churches and museums were closed, but the Holy Monday experience was amazing. So much better!

It was Semana Santa (Holy week) and today was Holy Monday (Indian Christ, Lord of Earthquakes) and around 3:00 the procession started and went until 7:00 or so that night. We watched this float with a statue of their dark Jesus being carried through the city stopping at most of the churches with bands playing and people in balconies throwing red flower petals on it. Women were weeping and babies and children were held high to see it. Very moving. More than 100,000 people from all over the country crowded into the small square to witness the site. It’s their most holy day. A severe earthquake struck the region on March 31, 1650. Tremors continued until November that year until it was said that this statue stopped the earthquakes.

We walked around the city for a while and went back to the hotel for some warmer clothes.

Then we headed back to the square to await the finale of the processional. We got seats on the curb nestled in between some indigenous people who welcomed us to sit amongst them. The float was now lit up and flashing. It went right in front of us. We then headed off to dinner----following the float and the crowds of people just swept us along. We felt like honorary Catholics at this point.

We went to dinner at an interesting place called Fallen Angel. The interior was very artistic. It was a cross between purgatory and heaven and everything in between. Some of the tables were bathtubs that were fish tanks. Lots of bordello type furniture. The food was fantastic! Each room in the restaurant had a different theme. We had flames on our ceiling and flying pigs. I always try to seek out unusual places to eat with good food reviews. This one was all that and more. It was a great finale to our Ecuador and Peru trip.

Then we went back to the hotel to finish packing for our early flight the next morning.

Tuesday April 19 Travel day home

We were met promptly at 6:00a to be driven to the airport and we flew back to Lima. We had a small layover and flew to Miami where our flight was an hour late. Instead of leaving at 11:00p we left after midnight. We got home around 2:00ish in the morning.