Semana Santa

Easter is supposed to be the most holy Catholic holiday. In the US we celebrate Easter with chocolate eggs and stories of a fake bunny that visits your house to leave you candy. It is a very different holiday in South America. First of all, it is a week long celebration- not just one Sunday in April. Most people go to Mass at least once a day during the week and the holiest days are Thursday and Friday. It is also a week full of repentance and asking for forgiveness instead of gorging yourself on cadbury eggs.


My semana santa started out with the idea that I would start volunteering and start Spanish classes. I had no idea what I was in for. The day before I had met my new Peruvian Family and spent the night there watching movies with the 3 brothers Carlos, Fernando, and Fabrecio along with the 4 other foreigners staying in the house. It's a big house full of people. So Monday I was excited to start doing something productive. I went to the office of my organization totally clueless on what I was going to be doing, where I was going to be working, and when I was going to have spanish classes. Turns out they were totally clueless too. This was my first lesson in the latin american timeline. Things that should take a couple hours to work out in the US take a week to happen here. I feel like I should have been ready for it since I have been traveling in Chile and Argentina, but it seems that Peruvian time is a week behind everyone else.


I didn't get to start volunteering Monday, or on Wednesday when they told me to come back, or even for the rest of the week since Thursday and Friday were national holidays. Anyway, I had an entire idle week of waiting for my program to start to explore the Semana Santa festivities.


Monday of the Holy Week in Cusco is a important day. It is the day that Cusenos celebrate the procession of the man of earthquakes. Sounds weird huh? It is. But it has reason. I guess every 300 years Cusco is destroyed by a massive earthquake. The last time there was a massive earthquake in the 1930s the people ran into the streets praying for it to stop, and it did! So now they celebrate it by carrying a statue of Jesus through the streets. He processes through the streets all day, but when he gets close to the main cathedral at night over 50,00 thousand people come to watch and shower him in red flowers. All morning I saw women selling small red flowers and I could not figure out why until then.



For the rest of the week there were all sorts of processions and masses. But Thursday and Friday were the most interesting for me. My Peruvian parents are very Catholic and observe all the rules of holy week. There is a special dinner/lunch where you are supposed to eat twelve plates "doce platos." Most of the plates are breads and cookies, but it's still a filling meal. Traditionally, after a family eats the 12 plates the father is supposed to take each child into a separate room and beat his child 3 times with his belt! Then the kid is supposed to beg the mother for forgiveness for their sins. Luckily, my family does not observe this this particular ritual!

Since I had some extra time on my hands I decided to get out of the city and head to a town north of Cusco with hot springs called Lares. I went with some housemates. We stopped for the night in Calca where we observed another amazing ritual. It reminded me of the Mandalas of Tibetan monks. The city spent the entire day making beautiful and intricate sand pictures or "rugs" in the street, then once night fell, there was another precession of a statue of Christ in a coffin and Mother Mary over the sand rugs destroying them. It was amazing to watch, and I guess it represents the fleeting beauty of life. But wow, all that work....


Lares is a town almost untouched by tourism. The people all dress in the colorful traditional quechua dress, and very few of them speak much Spanish. Most people just stared at us Gringos, probably wondering what planet we came from. The hot springs were nice and nestled in the mountains. A great way to pass some time!

Peru

Ok, I have been really really bad and I have not told you guys anything about the last month of my trip. To summarize since I last blogged, I went to the self proclaimed ¨end of the world¨ in Ushuaia, Argentina in Tierra del Fuego for a few days, then I headed back to Puerto Natales, Chile to catch a flight up to Lima.

In Lima I met up with Chris and we traveled around in Lima, Huaraz (the center of Peruvian Andies) and in Cusco. We both had bad altitude sickness in Huaraz because it is at about 4,000 meters and we were overly ambitious trying to hike up to almost 4,800 meters the second day we were there. Just as future reference, that´s not a good idea. Spend a couple days laying low, then attempt a hike. Otherwise it´s not pretty.

We then traveled to Cusco and did most of the touristy things in the city, like hiking up to the nearby ruins saqusiwahman (sounds like sexy-woman), visiting the plaza de armas, seeing the 12 sided stone and pretty much all the major sites in Cusco. We were planning on doing an alternative to the Inca Trail - a 4 day hike to Machu Picchu- but it turned out to be very expensive and not very direct. So, we decided to make our own way there through the mountains of the Sacred Valley. Chris and I packed up our backpacks for an overnight adventure and walked from the city into the mountains. This was the first mountaineering experience I have ever had. It was full on map and compass reading. But, it was probably one of the most rewarding and challenging experiences I have had in nature. First of all, you are never sure where you are going so all the time you are slightly scared you´re headed the wrong way, but when you end up where you are supposed to be it´s like a miracle! One of the coolest things for me was interacting the the campesinos (the mountain farmers) who are some of the most friendly people I have met here. They were always willing to point us in the right direction and share what little they had with us.



We arrived in a small mountain town North of Cusco called Calca and took a couple crowed minibuses (colectivos) to the jump off town for Machu Picchu called Ollantaytambo. Ollantaytambo is a neat little city. The entire city is built on Incan foundations and the layout of the town is exactly as it was 500 years ago. Many of the Incan walls still support the city. We spent the night there, then headed to Aguas Calientes- the town outside of Machu Picchu. Aguas Calientes is the ugliest town I have been to during my entire time traveling. It has grown uncontrollably in the last 10 years because of tourism to the ruins with no city planning and everything is geared towards tourists. There are very few real inhabitants of the town and they are the ones who own the cheap souvenir shops.

Anyway, we woke up at 5am to catch the 5:30 bus up to Machu Picchu to see the sunrise. I was astounded by the line of people waiting for the 5:30am bus. I have very rarely seen so many people awake before 6. There was no sunrise over the mountain because it was too foggy, but when the sun did come up it burned holes in the fog and started to reveal the beauty of the ruins to us one part at a time. Wow, this is an amazing place. It is in such great shape. I can´t use enough words to explane how amazing this place is... you will just have to visit it for yourselves. You can get lost here exploring for days. We spent the whole day there and headed back to Cusco that night.

A few days later Chris left to go back to the real world and I was getting ready to start my volunteering. This entry is getting pretty long so I will put the volunteering entry separately. But those weeks were amazing with all sorts of new experiences and adventures.