11-25-21 – Day of Leisure and a Bus Tour

We didn’t go out again today until around lunch time.  We found a nice restaurant overlooking Plaza Kusipata near our hotel.  Its menu clearly stated that it was a tourist restaurant.  They had a wide variety of food so we both found something good. 

We then wandered around the streets enjoying the colonial architecture and the street scenes. So much happening here.

We stumble across a small indoor market with lots of shops featuring the vibrant Peru tourist souvenirs. 

We also saw some workmen putting up a rather modern Christmas tree. 

We later decided that walking wasn’t working so well (the altitude was getting to us) so we thought we would try one of the double decker bus tours.  It turned out it was 90% of our previous private tour but that was ok.  We did see a bit more of the city. 

We got some different views of Saqsaywaman…

and a few gates we hadn’t seen up close before.

The one big difference was that we stopped a very large shop…lots of tourist stuff…to see and participate in an Inca ritual.  It was very interesting.  The ritual was performed by a shaman from the village of Q’ero.  The village is populated by ancient people who have preserved their Inca traditions and has been named a cultural heritage of the Peruvian Nation  The ritual involved blowing away our problems (using a large feather).  We were also to think of a good wish and we then blew on some coca leaves (through our masks).  At the end of the ceremony the coca leaves were burned, and the smoke was to carry our wishes to the gods.  And there was much chanting that we didn’t understand.

After the ceremony we all headed over to see the couple of alpaca’s hanging around.  They are so cute.

We browsed though shop and Mary bought a really pretty sweater made of baby alpaca wool.  Baby alpaca is the first cutting of wool from the alpaca, at about 2 years old.  The wool was pretty soft.

We were dropped off near the main square and decided to eat in the area as it was raining and we were hoping it would clear up by the time we finished eating.  Upon entering the restaurant that we selected we were asked to sanitize our hands.  You had to press up on the sanitizer bottle’s nozzle.  Mary got a squirt directly into one eye…amazingly painful and blinding.  After washing it well it felt marginally better.  Hopefully it will be ok by the end of the day.

The dinner itself was fine.  It was still a bit rainy so we headed directly back to the hotel.  We spent the rest of the evening packing up as leave tomorrow for Puno.