On Wednesday of the fourth week, my history class took a field trip to a local restaurant to try chicha, a Peruvian beverage made of fermented corn. Chicha comes in both alcoholic and non-alcoholic varieties, and has a distinct fruit flavor to it. The chicha we ordered was served in gigantic glasses that cost less than 50 cents. We made a competition to see who could finish their chicha first. I don't think anyone actually managed to finish it all. That night we went to bed early, because we were going to get up early the next day to participate of the biggest Peruvian festival of the season: Inti Raymi, the Festival of the Sun.
The next morning, we met the group at the Lima Plaza at 7:30 a.m., then walked to Santo Domingo. Santo Domingo houses the foundation of an ancient Incan temple that now holds a Catholic church. In the 1800s, a catastrophic earthquake in Cusco destroyed majority of the Spanish architecture, and only the foundations of the Incans remained standing.
A massive crowd started to form on the plaza in anticipation of the Inti Raymi celebration, which would feature a series of ethnic dances and speeches. Venders moved about the crowd, selling Cusquenian rosettes and flags, and pamphlets on the history of Inti Raymi. Once the ceremony started, we had a limited view of what was happening through the crowd, but what we could see was very impressive. Peruvians danced in colorful native dress and professional actors acted out the beginning of the ancient Incan religious ceremony in honor of the god Inti, one of the main gods in the Incan religion, and celebrating the winter solstice. For years, the Catholic Church prohibited the practice of Inti Raymi, and it wasn't until recently that Inti Raymi became a tradition again, more as a theatrical spectacle verses a religious experience.
The Inti Raymi ceremony is comprised of three parts. Once the first part at Santo Domingo was completed, the crowd stampeded to the Plaza de Armas to witness the second part of the ceremony. As the Plaza de Armas, we had a clear view of more dancing and ritualistic speeches in Qechua, the native Peruvian language. The third and final part of the ceremony took place at the ruins of Sacsayhuaman, where the actors acted out the ritualistic slaughtering of a llama (which was entirely acted out with a human playing the llama).
Friday afternoon, after classes, a small group of us caught a bus to a small town outside of Cusco, famous for its fortune tellers. There we perused the town, looking for an affordable and "reliable" fortune teller. We were turned away from one fortune teller who was doing a "demonic cleansing," so we ended up settling for a fortune teller who lived literally lived in a hole in the wall hut. We went in to see the fortune teller in pairs of two, and paid 15 soles, about 5 dollars, to have our fortunes told. The fortune teller worked with coca tea leaves to read our fortunes. The fortune teller wore a knit hat and was missing a tooth. For each turn, he asked us to place our coins on a pile of coca leaves on the table with our right hand, after breathing on it three times. Then he folded up the table cloth with the coins and coca leaves, a swayed it around while rocking back and forth and mumbling. He then asked our name, country, and age, and then he breathed on the cloth three times. Then he unfolded the cloth and scattered some of the coca leaves, and told us what the leaves meant. I was told that I will have good health throughout my life, that I will have money problems, lead a relatively short life, and travel a lot. Interesting…
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| Waiting for the fortune teller. |
That evening, Jennie and I at a late lunch/early dinner at Cappuccino Café off the Plaza de Armas, where we sat on the balcony and looked over the plaza. It was a beautiful day outside.
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