Perú: The Culture of Cusco
One thing we felt missing in past countries was overflowing in our next country. With spectacular views from the sky, Perú was so much more than meets the eye. It is a citadel of culture — especially the city of Cusco. With such a strong presence of the ancient Incan heritage as well as Cusco’s unique character, celebrations, and cuisine, the city felt like a welcoming home-away-from-home.
Cusco, the capital city of the once-great Incan Empire, was originally home to the elite as well as religious nobility. One of the most important places in the city is the Qoricancha, or the Temple of the Sun. It’s the most sacred shrine in old-world Cusco. The Incas believed they were direct descendants of the sun-god, Inti, who they revered the most of all their gods. They also believed in the equivalents of heaven (Hanan Pacha), earth (Kay Pacha), and the underworld (Uku Pacha). You’ll see homages to these worlds on display at the shrine. And, you’ll also find their incredible masonry at the Qoricancha in addition to artistic pieces created in homage to their heritage.
Making the city all the more sacred, the inner city of Cusco is shaped like a puma — a revered animal in the Incan religion. Sacsayhuaman, a hillside fortress protecting the city from invaders, makes up the head of the puma and is located about 25 minutes north of the city center. The puma’s tail lies at the junction of the two rivers in the south. While the city center of Plaza de Armas encompasses the beating heart of the city in so many ways.
Today, Cusco is a beautiful, bustling city with clean, cobblestone streets lining the Plaza de Armas. Sitting atop the plaza’s central fountain a noble Inca warrior captivates the focal point of the plaza.
From the murals adorning city streets to vendors flanking them while selling food, tours, medical appointments, and a plethora of other goods, we found that a strong entrepreneurial spirit and abundant creativity characterized the people of Cusco.
Moreover, the Incan heritage is not only in their ancestral DNA, but it’s also present in their everyday lives. Rock walls along Calle Hatunrumiyocto and Calle Loreto were built with perfect precision by the Incas, and have stood the test of time surviving past countless earthquakes. Due to their snug fit, the large stones vibrate just enough to prevent them from cracking, and settle back into place after the tremors pass. It’s a pretty amazing feat of ancient structural engineering without the use of mortar between stones.
The stones also lined a small plaza on a random side street. As we rounded the shops, we spotted a trio of alpacas! An adolescent male tried unsuccessfully to mount the adolescent female. The owner pulled him off and scolded him before we walked up laughing at the sight. Sitting between the male and female adolescents, I got a kiss from the horny male while Ash looked at him suspiciously. We also got the chance to feed them some corn husks before the male alpaca walked over to the tip jar prompting payment for his time.
Around another corner in the city, you’ll encounter upscale shops along Plaza Nazarenas containing alpaca goods, handicrafts, artwork, and tons of silver jewelry. Not to be outdone by the Pre-Colombian Art Museum though, where ancient artwork and handcrafts provided the basis for today’s modern goods. I did my best to emulate pre-Colombian wooden statues and admire their pottery while these dense, gold Incan hoop earrings donned by Incan royalty would give J.Lo a run for her money! Even one of our hotels had a pre-Colombian abacus on display. The pre-Incan artifacts at the museum will amaze anthropology nerds and enthrall history buffs alike.
You’ll find that cusqueños are very proud to share their heritage. We encountered tour groups as young as preschoolers visiting the Inca Museum while we saw those in their later years of elementary school venture off to Machu Picchu. They took their reverence for their heritage to another different level by speaking the ancient Incan language of Quechua. We learned quite a bit of it ourselves during a chocolate-making class at the Choco Museum. It was one of the funnest experience we’ve had on our entire trip!
Jil was our chocolatier for a group of five making up his Oompa Loompa troupe for the two-hour class. We started out learning about cacao beans. As it turns out, if you want high-quality beans you source them from South America. But, if you want a lot of quantity, but low quality beans, including those with chemical pesticides, you source them from western African countries. South American cacao beans are fertilized with nature pesticides and have distinct flavors depending on the soil in the region they’re grown.
We had more than our fill of chocolate for a lifetime because even before the class started, we did a tour of the museum where we got a bunch of free samples from an hyped-up helper who may have sampled a bit too much chocolate that day. Did you know you can pretty much make anything from cacao? We tried cacao tea, chocolate liquor, and chocolate paste. We also sampled 10 different kinds of chocolate from distinct regions in Perú where the differences in the soil and fertilizer change the flavor of the final product. And, there were many more chocolate novelties for sale, including body butter, chocolate soap, etc.
During the class we were roasted whole cacao beans and ground them into cacao paste using a mocajete. With the fruits of our labor, we then had the first ingredients of a very special Peruvian drink called cuy-quistador (formerly called conquistador). For this drink, Jil poured us a mixture of ground cinnamon, cloves, cacao, and mixed it in with honey. It seemed pretty innocuous until he mentioned the last two ingredients. Second-to-last to be included was guinea pig milk. Apparently, you can milk guinea pigs, and about 40 mama cuys contributed to today’s drink. But, he also needed a volunteer because the Incas added the last ingredient to their sacred drink: sacrificial blood from their strongest warriors! Jil pulled off a pretty convincing act, pulling out a sharp kitchen knife and large alcohol bottle. Our male Hungarian companion was the first sacrifice with Ash next in line getting paler by the minute. We seriously thought Jil was going to slit his wrist! He was super committed to the act of scaring the crap out of all of us as the knife’s edge was flesh against the Hungarian’s wrist. Only at the last moment did he relax the joke without drawing any blood while the Hungarian took it all in stride without flinching. Holy cuy — that was a close-call!
After the hysterics subsided, we had a great time creating our dark chocolate bars. Ash opted for a soccer-themed mold complete with ball and jersey while I went for a mold with more traditional symbols of Perú. I had 6 medallions with 6 different flavors, including whole almonds, cacao nibs, whole coffee beans, quinoa kernels, ground Brazil nuts with coconut flakes, and pure coconut flakes. Of course, taste-testing was a very necessary part of the process!
The Spanish heritage was alive and well throughout Cusco, too. Once a temple of many gods, the Cathedral of Santo Domingo now stands in the Plaza de Armas as one the largest Catholic churches in Cusco. Its golden adornments would be the envy of any Castilian, so it’s no wonder why Francisco Pizarro and the rest of the Spanish forces targeted this wealthy Incan city. The legacy of the Spanish is just as much as part of the culture in Cusco as the Incan culture. Stroll around the hilly San Blas neighborhood, and you’ll see tight cobblestone streets reminiscent of Spanish towns like Sevilla and Córdoba. The royal blue doors add to the Spanish flair of the area.
And, thank goodness for their Spanish! It was so hard to understand castellano in Spain that I was worried I’d have more trouble understanding the dialects of other Spanish-speaking countries like Perú. But, just like Mexican-Spanish, it was perfectly paced and pronounced, which was music to my ears!
When venturing outside the city center, the reality of everyday living in the developing world became evident. Abandoned dogs rummaged through the ample garbage bags littering the streets. Children played on the train tracks running like veins throughout the city. Dilapidated buildings served as housing and business storefronts. Some of the most common indicators of poverty we’ve seen across continents were also present in Cusco: missing sidewalks, abandoned street dogs, and inadequate sanitation.
But, even living within the confines of poverty, the fortitude of the people was incomparable. Just by their sheer ability to thrive at 11,152 feet for generations was impressive enough. The air is so incredibly thin at this altitude that we were getting winded walking short city blocks. Even having taken altitude-sickness pills as a preventative measure, we couldn’t escape the changes in our bodies, including fatigue, low-grade headaches, and labored breathing.
To keep our strength up, we had to increase our water intake, take regular siestas, and eat to our heart’s content. The latter was easy to do because comida peruana was phenomenal! We knew it would be good, but after traipsing through Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Oceania, this is exactly the type of food we had been missing over these past 5 months. Two of our 4 nights we dined at a highly recommended restaurant called Barrio Ceviche tucked in a corner around the Plaza de Armas.
Let’s start with the most popular Peruvian dish: ceviche. An array of mixed seafood and fish cooked in the acidity of lime along with the local vegetables (corn, squash, sweet potato, and plantains) combined to create the tasty flavors you would expect of this popular dish. New dishes like causa, which consisted of pureed potato with an assortment of seafood or meat on top, added so much to our experience as well. We also tried mariscos anticucheros, mixed seafood grilled and seasoned in a similar manner to fajitas. We also enjoyed staples like lomo saltado (the second most widely-known dish abroad), choclo (large Incan corn kernels practically in every dish), and Inka Cola (a bubble gum tasting soda which wasn’t quite to our liking). Avoiding Disney characters like llama, alpaca, and cuy (guinea pig) was a must, since we’re both not that adventurous with our precious stomachs. All in all though, the food must have been sent down from Hanan Pacha (Quechua for “the heavens” or “upper world”). The view of the plaza at night added to the ambiance and our overall enjoyment of this unique city.
