Video produced/edited by Malinda.
Hello!
On March 12th morning, we all woke up feeling refreshed after a good sleep. We all got ready quickly, so we could explore Cusco sooner! Lidia and another tour guide met us at our Airbnb at 8 am. We were so hungry, so we went out to look for something quick to eat. We spotted street food. We all got a very simple sandwich. The options were avocado with bread, cheese with bread, or egg and bread. The choices were limited, but the sandwiches were great and very filling after just eating one sandwich. We weren't so hungry anymore, and we started to explore Cusco.
Our tour guide brought us to an area where we could see Saint Pedro's church. It was beautiful and ancient-looking. The tour guide told us that 90% of Cusco people are catholic. Whoa, that's a lot of Catholics! The tour guide took us to another church. The path we took to reach the church was very cool. Each building is different and colorful. Finally, we reached the church called La Merced. We learned that La Merced became a temporary hospital when the earthquake hit in 1960. We all moved on to another church called the Cathedral. It was huge! We saw real gold as decoration. There were a lot of versions of Jesus. It was very interesting to see. We learned that the Cathedral was built in 1620 by the Spaniards, and it took them 132 years to complete it. The Cathedral is one of the most significant churches in Cusco because it shows that the Spaniards took over. There was a huge painting in the Cathedral called The Last Supper. The twist in the painting was that the meal was a Guinea pig, and the drink wasn't wine but a purple corn drink! It was very cool to see a common painting in the Peruvian version. Our tour guide was very wonderful because he explained the details of the church.
We moved on to Qorikancha. The building is a blend of Incas and Spanish. The Incas had multiple temples, and every one of them worshipped different things. There were temples that honored the sun, moon, lightning, stars, and more. On the Spanish side, there was more painting and gold. The building was more modern than the Inca's building. There was a top view, and we all wanted to go up there. We went up together. The moment we saw the view, we were in awe. Inside the bell tower, there are several bells. Unfortunately, we couldn't touch it. When we looked down, I could see almost the whole Qorikancha. It's so cool! We can tell which areas were built by Incas or Spaniards by looking at them from a bird's eye. We could see almost the whole city of Cusco, which was beautiful. We took some pictures before leaving. It was one of the best views we have seen on this trip.
We got hungry again, so we went to a place to eat lunch. Some of us got cow feet. Everybody tried it, and most of us didn't like it because of its texture. It was rubbery. Then we learned that we wouldn't go to Sacsayhuaman today due to a strike happening in Cusco. Aw, man! We might go there someday this week. We had a free afternoon, so we decided to go to the market to buy some things. Everybody ended up buying something. After a while, we returned to the Airbnb to relax until dinner. At 6 pm, we went out to eat our dinner. Some of us got an alpaca meat burger. Everybody liked it! We were so full… but not for dessert! We went to a dessert place. We all got different things, but most of us got ice cream. We were exhausted from walking all day. We went back to our Airbnb. We all went to sleep thinking about tomorrow already!
Come back tomorrow to see what we did!
-Kaelyn