The Dancing Day

Well, let me tell you about this computer I am using. It looks kind of like the computer that my family purchased for our first computer. It´s acting kind of posessed tonight so I´m not sure how far into this marvelous day I will get. We woke up to sunshine. After several days of clouds, this was a wonderful way to start the day. We set out around 8:00 a.m. ready to discover Cusco. We mainly wandered the entire day and I am very lucky that Claire has a good sense of direction because mostly, I have absolutely no idea where we are. We went to see all of the churches, just the outside because you have to pay to go inside. And we saw many fabulous views. I made up for not taking any pictures last week today and am quite happy about it. We struck out up stairs and down narrow alleys and passed men working on the street by hand and open sewers and little children who want to shine your tennis shoes or who want you to pay them to take pictures of them and their llama. We learned the phrase "No gracias" well because so many people want to sell you something. We wandered through alleys that had open doorways that led to beautiful courtyards of merchants and restaurants and stores selling Alpaca which is very soft- and expensive. We did go into one exhibit Qorikancha and the Saint Dominic Priory. It had beautiful gardens and a bathroom- which is very important! And there are remains of an Inca Temple there. And we learned about the Incas. Cusco was the center of the Inca empire.
Claire and I are good travelmates because we both like to take pictures and because we both want to learn about what we´re seeing. Also her sense of direction makes up for my lack of. It´s amazing that there can be a bit of a language barrier when we both speak English but. . . we just use different words sometimes.
We took a little snack midday of coffees and bread and we bought the bread because the place where we had the coffee smelled so amazing. I wish I could bottle it up and keep that smell with me. The bread came with 4 different toppings, a tomato spice herb chutney (that´s what Claire called it, I´m not sure I´ve ever used the word chutney), guacomole (yes the green stuff-for bread), mango orange jelly, and a really soft cream cheese with rosemary. Cereleun step out of the way!

We stepped into the Plaza (our main reference point) to see that there were some more festivities going on. We aren{t sure if they´re for Easter or just for the weekend or what but it was amazing. Dancing galore! Many different types of traditional dress, men dressed up as llamas, all sorts of things and we think that they danced througout the maze of streets all afternoon to live music playing so that you could hear it everywhere. And they were so happy and can you imagine- these heavy customes and it was really sunny and dancing all day! And they were cool dances, sometimes acting out some sort of scene. It was just amazing- you can bet that despite the crowd I took a whole roll of film! There was an instance where a little adorable girl, maybe 4, came up and stood with us, talking to us- in spanish so we didn{t understand her, i think she asked me if i was a mother at one point- and put her arms around us. A little too close for comfort. It´s sad when you´re afraid to trust a 4 year old but. . . we got out of there. We had really great up close seats by the street but we moved on.
We hiked up a mountain- or so it seemed, i´m sure in a few days, it will seem like a small hill- to another church and we saw a rainbow over the city!
Then we made an afternoon stop for some maracuya pie (one of those fruits with the gelatinous seeds, I think it´s a passion fruit) and I had strawberry milk- I{m pretty sure they were fresh strawberries.
In all the places we´ve eaten here we´ve had the privelage of sitting on balconies that overlook the street or the plaza with amazing views. I think our eating clock is a bit off so we eat very early- also so we can get in before dark, but it means that everywhere we´ve eaten has been almost empty. Fine with us, we get the good views! A lot of the restaurants here have a wood stove because the evenings get quite chilly.
One scene that made me think. . . as we were looking down into the plaza, a man jogged by and some change fell out of his pocket. There was a little girl who helped him pick it up and handed it over to him. She was maybe 5 or 6. And I couldn´t tell that he even thanked her. He moved on, still at a jog, but she found some more money on the street. I thought she would keep it because he was several yards away at this point. But no, she runs after him, yelling "me amigo" I mean, she sprints after him to give him this change. I never saw whether or not she caught up with him, but really, I hope he either thanked her well or she didn´t catch him and got to keep the money. She was just so sweet and sincere about getting him his change.
Well it was an amazing day and we wrapped it up with a lite dinner- I had a crepe with potato and cheese. There were tomatoes on my plate and I was dismayed at not being able to eat them because I wasn´t sure that they had been washed and then I noticed that the skin had been removed- so I decided they would be okay- right?
Tomorrow we meet up with the tour so I may not be able to post for awhile. Everyone have a lovely and blessed Easter!