A Sunny Day in Cusco

A sunny day at the Plaza Mayor in Cusco
(Templo de la Compañía de Jesús in the background)

It's the rainy season in the Andean highlands. The forecast was for a 60 percent of rain. Instead, it was a sunny day, perfect for exploring the city at a slow pace. (A slow pace because my adjustment to the altitude is, as they say, a work in progress.)

The hotel is about a half-mile from the Plaza Mayor, the tourism epicenter of the City of Cusco.

It is located on Calle Union, which gets a lot of traffic for a one-lane, one-way street.

This is the Iglesia de San Pedro.

It is across from the Mercado de San Pedro:

The area around it is packed, probably more locals than tourists. The Mercado de San Pedro is supposed to be a good place to by souvenirs (at a lower mark-up than the souvenir shops around the Plaza Mayor) and is supposedly a great place to try local food in that middleground between street food and a sit-down restaurant. It's only open until late afternoon, so it's not a dinner option.

This is the Arco de Santa Clara, on Calle Santa Clara.

Passing through this Arch means you've left the Cusco of the locals and now are in the pure tourism town.

This is the Basilica Menor de la Merced:

Strolling along:

This is the Cusco Cathedral, on the eastern perimeter of the Plaza Mayor:

The Cathedral is incredibly beautiful and ornate inside. Unfortunately, no photography is allowed inside, even "sin flash" as they say in español. There are a lot of photos online of the interior. Not sure if they are official church photography, or if they were taken surreptitiously contrary to church law, or if the rules changed at some point. 

Which means we skip right to the exit door from touring the cathedral.

The Cathdedral was built on the site of the primary Incan temple in the City because, of course. Lots of cathedrals in major Latin American cities were built on such locales, primarily to destroy the indigenous religion in a manner that demonstrates the dominance of Roman Catholicism over the pre-hispanic religions. And before you tut-tut-tut about this, the Catholic church was not unique to this. See, e.g., Hagia Sophia in Constantinople/Istanbul being repurposed into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of the Byzantine Empire.

And this is the Plaza Mayor, a.k.a, the Plaza de Armas, as seen upon exit of the Cusco Cathedral.

There is no "no photography" rule in effect outside the Cathedral proper. The statute of Incan Emperor Pachacuti is in the middle of the plaza, on a pedestal atop the fountain int he middle of the plaza.

It's a popular portrait-photo spot. Pachacuti is the Incan ruler who is believed to have transformed the Inca from a regional presence into the dominant military and cultural force in western South America.

He is the first true "emperor" among the Inca.

That is the Templo de la Compañía de Jesús, on the southern perimeter of the Plaza Mayor.

Let's juxtapose Pachacuti and the Dome of the Basilica Menor de la Merced.

Let's zoom in on the juxtaposition:

The two cultures of Cusco, together forever. Whether they want to be or not.

This is Qorikancha. It is the ruins of an old Inca temple where the walls were covered in pure gold.

As you can see, the Spanish built the Iglesia y Convento de Santo Domingo de Guzmán literally atop Qorikancha.

Next up: the search for the Twelve Angled Stone.

It is a building stone with 12 angles, perfectly fit into the stone wall along what is now Calle Hatunrumiyoc. It's somewhere among the stones in this wall.

This wall was built by the Inca, who perfectly fit the stones together without mortar and without any visible space between the stones. The twelve angled stone is the most prominent of the large stones used in this wall construction.

Selfie at what might have been the Twelve Angled Stone:

I've got the eyes of a man ready for his afternoon nap.

This is now part of the exterior wall of the Palacio Arzobispal del Cuzco, now a religious art museum. The Palacio Arzobispal del Cuzco (no photography allowed inside) was built atop ... what? ... built atop what? That's right. An Incan temple.

Next top, the Museo de Arte Pre-Colombino:

Photography allowed! So let's click away!

This is a collection of Chimu Silver Spoons:

I didn't know the Chimu used spoons. Or had good silver cutlery for special occasions.

Above is a fine example of Chimu silversmithing. I like the Chimu. I visited their main hub, Chan Chan, outside Trujillo, Peru, on the northern coast, back in 2018. I soon realized the main purpose of this museum. Most of the tourists visiting Cusco and Machu Picchu will not go to the Chimu sites in Trujillo or the Sican and Sipan sites in Chiclayo. This museum, a Cusco outpost of the awesome Museo Larco in Lima, serves as an appetizer course for the pre-Incan cultures of Peru for those whose only visit to Peru might be to Cusco and Machu Picchu.

And there's nothing wrong with that. None of us can go everywhere. And, even if you did, could go through everything at a deliberate enough pace to remember anything?

Woodworking.

Bird staffs.

An owl to the left. Parrot to the right. I can't recall which bird species is stuck in the middle.

The explanatory language says this guy is in a religious pose.

He looks like he is having a particular difficult B.M.

I always find these sort of masks a bit on the creepy side.

And here are ceramic bowls from a pre-Incan culture, I believe the Paracas from the southern coast of Peru (near Nasca) (but not the Nasca, famous for their desert lines that will always remain inexplicable). The bowls are decorated with chili peppers.

Many thoughts. First, I did not know that South American tribes had chili peppers pre-Columbus and the globalization of the food trade. I associated chili peppers with Mexico and the four corners region of the USA. But they had them in Peru over a thousand years ago. And they decorated their bowls with them. Which left me with this thought: I too have some ceramic bowls with a chili pepper motif. Should I save them for the collection at the future Spretnak museum?

Dog and fox ceramics.

Unlike a lot of "anthropomorphic" imagery on ceramics, especially ceramics from more than a thousand years ago, these two -- especially the fox -- are very realistic.

Same with these llama head ceramics.

But I think the fox gets the gold ribbon for "most realistic" looking.

That's it for the museum. That's it for the day's sunshine-filled tourism. I'm tiring out easily here due to the combination of altitude and old age. But, in this instance, I think altitude is legitimately the primary culprit.

Time to pass through the Arch of Santa Clara and leave the tourism part of town.

Coda:

Supper blogging.

I decided to eat at a restaurant close to my hotel, primarily because I didn't feel like walking much. I chose the Restaurante y pizzería URPI, which was just down the hill from my hotel.

This was a local's joint. I was definitely the only tourist in here.

This is an Italian restaurant serving a lot of Peruvian dishes. I was going to order the lomo saltado because it is the classic Peruvian dish. But I realized that I really had a craving for pizza. So I opted for an "Italiana," with ham, mushrooms, and tomatoes.

I had a pitcher of maracuya juice -- passionfruit juice -- because I was thirsty. And they served up a big plate of ooey-gooey garlic cheese bread that would have been worth it at any price and definitely was worth what they charged for it: nada. Gratis.

The pizza arrived looking beautiful.

I ate so much of the ooey-gooey garlic cheese bread that I could only finish four of the six slices of my personal sized pizza. The price was 20 soles, or about six or seven bucks U.S. Yes, the mushrooms were probably canned. Tough to get fresh-everything up on a mountainside in a third-world country. Yes, the ham was processed and not artisanal. Did I mention it was six or seven bucks? I would have gladly paid that for the ooey-gooey garlic cheesebread by itself. Essentially, given that reality, the ham and mushroom pizza came free.

The May Break Starts in Lima, Peru. With Museums.

Good doggie: the best boy at the Museo Larco in Lima.
The museum was generally light on dogs. But cats were plentiful. I question the priorities of a whole culture.

I have said this before and I will say it again;  Emergency vacations are much better than vacation emergencies.

Even though the rough contours of this vacation were planned out in the final days of 2023, whether I would take this vacation was in doubt up until the night before I left.  Work load and dog health were both concerns.  But things fell into place and off I went.  Destination: Lima, Peru.

For the next few days, I am staying at the Aloft Hotel in the upscale Miraflores neighborhood of Lima.  The hotel is very nice.  It's part of the Marriott family of hotels.  (You know you're staying in a Marriott branded hotel when you see the Book of Mormon next to the Bible on the hotel room desk.)  I'm on the top floor.  My room looks toward the Pacific Ocean, which is nearby.  

But you can't see it.  Or, to be more precise, I can't see it from my hotel.

This is an "unfinished business" trip.  I am visiting two cities in South America where I have been before.  I only had three nights, which meant two days, before in each.  I allocated too little time to both on prior trips, having heard that each was boring and dangerous.  Both were neither.  Both warranted a second look.  This trip is the second look.

The second look started with the Museo Larco, an archaeological museum of the pre-hispanic cultures of Peru that included, but by no means is limited to, the Inca.  I will say this once to avoid repetition:  the pre-hispanic cultures of Peru go back many thousands of years.  The Inca were the last 120 years or so of that several thousand year period.  There is much much much more to pre-Columbian Peru than the people who showed up right before the Spanish conquistadors -- and their advance party -- deadly germs -- arrived.

Let's go in.  Shall we?

The museum was started from the collection of Rafael Larco Hoyle, the first pre-eminent Peruvian archaeologist.  Before Mr. Larco arrived on the scene and start digging around Peru, people in the western world thought pre-Columbian Peru was all about the Inca and only the Inca.

Larco changed that.  Now his collection is a museum.

It's most pottery, including a very large collection of pornographic pottery, but there is more.  There are stone carvings for example.

Before the museum tour is over, we will see mummies and metal-working.

But, for now, it will be all about the pottery.

This Janus-looking head illustrates the duality of nature.

Which was a common theme of all the pre-hispanic cultures of Peru (and, generally, the world over):  Sun / moon.  Day / night.  Wet / dry.  Gold (representing sun and the day) / silver (representing the moon and the night).  Male / female (a duality well represented in the pornographic pottery collection).

Well, not everything was illustrative of the duality of nature, but much was.

In addition to the duality, there was the three levels of existence, something which exists in Judeo-Christian culture, too.  The gods in heaven above.  Man at the level of surface earth.  The realm of the dead in the underworld.  

And each level was represented by an animal.  Bird for the gods in heaven.  Serpents who can travel into the underworld.  Felines who ... rule ... the earth.

All three of those are represented on this piece o' pottery.

Cat.  Draped by serpents on either side,  There is bird in their somewhere, too, but I'm not seeing it now.

Deer were important, too, mainly as sacrifice animals.  But the importance of deer is completely eclipsed by the worshipped cats.

This looks like a salamander -- maybe the GEICO gekko -- on the side of a cup, but I'm sure the symbolism is not that.

And, again, not juts pottery:

But, yes, pottery aplenty:

And the Inca are in the house, represented by quipus.

This is the Inca system of recordkeeping by knotting strings to serve as numerals in a base-10 counting system.

(The Inca did not have a zero in their counting system.  The Maya, like the people of India, did.  Just sayin'.)

Then things got dark.

Not thematically.  It's just that this part of the museum had very low lighting.

Say, is this turquoise?

When turquoise shows up in meso-American art and jewelry, usually from the Maya, it meant that the trade routes extended into the American Southwest.  The four corners region of the USA is the only source of turquoise, at least in any quantity, in the New World, as far as I know.  So I believe the presence of turquoise here indicates that trade routes from Peru extended into modern-day Arizona and New Mexico.  Which I think is interesting.

And here's a mummy:

Mummification was popular in the dry desert regions of Coastal Peru.

And here are a collection of heads:

This is how the warriors wore the nose-plate jewelry that you occasionally see in these museums of pre-hispanic America artifacts.  Kind of reminds me of the look of COVID masks.  Only even more uncomfortable.

Finally, there were several rooms of uncategorized, undescribed pottery just sitting on shelfs.

It is very loosely organized by theme, but only very loosely organized:

This shelf reminded me of the figures in the New Order "True Faith" video.

So much of this.  Here's a self-portrait in a wall of pottery:

At this point, I thought I had completed my walk through the museum.  And I had a sad thought.  Where was all the pornographic pottery that I heard was in the museum collection?  Of course, my interest was purely scientific.  Not prurient.  Banish that thought.

I didn't think I could ask where the pr0n collection was.  But then I saw this sign with an arrow that was just an arrow:

This way to the adult part of the collection.

From this point, things may not be safe-for-work computer viewing.

Let's start with the "Tree of Life".  That's an innocent start to thing isn't it.  Yes, there is fertility imagery inherent in the "Tree of Life," but it's not erotic.

And those guys are relatively innocent looking, no?

But then we hit:

And things go completely off the rails at this point:

A giant stone phallus with a circumference that no phallus should ever have.  At this point, there is nothing left to the imagination:

If you need to stop at this point, I will understand.  If you choose to continue, you were warned:

Of that.  I actually have a ceramic flower-watering kettle that I bought on my last trip to Peru -- at the airport souvenir shop no less -- that looks just like that one.  I guess this was a common motif in Moche culture in Northern Peru, circa 600 AD.

And speaking of that motif, once again we lose all sense of proportionality:

And let's not leave the ladies out of this exaggeration of the naughty parts:

I hope these weren't the everyday stoneware.

Congress is now in session.

That was not a reference to what the politicians in D.C. do to constituents.  I was merely using an alternative meaning of the term "congress."

You might want to reconsider your decision not to bail as we move into the next section of the museum.  I will call this:  The Erotic Dead.

Sexual imagery with death imagery.

As the Beach Boys would say:  Fun fun fun 'til her Daddy took the T-Bird away.

And on that, we end the tour of our first museum of Lima, the Museo Larco.

We can visit the gift shop on the way out.

It sells a lot of jewelry, but, alas alack, no pornographic pottery.  I guess we will have to go to the airport gift shop if we need to fill out our collection with additional pieces.

Across the street from the museum entrance, in a small park, is a statue of the man from whose loins this museum sprung, metaphorically of course:  Rafael Larco Hoyle.