Bienvenido a Perú!

Peru!  Oh man, I can already tell that I'm falling in love.   The people are so nice and the food is good.  Granted, I've been here for less than 24 hours so that feeling might change. But I think it will be difficult to change my mind.

On our way...in business class.  Holla!

We landed in Lima last night around 9 o'clock and had someone from our hotel waiting to pick us up.  It was nice to not have to worry about transportation.  After we checked in, Mike and I got into bed, thinking that our flight to Cusco was at 6:00 AM.  I decided to double check and I'm glad I did.  Our flight was actual at 5:20.  So that meant we got about four hours of sleep last night.  Boo.

I've been to my fair share of airports, and I have to say, the airport in Lima is really nice. When we got there at 3:30 (ugh) everything was open.  It was super clean and people felt safe enough to crash on the seats with their backpacks at their feet.  I was afraid it was going to be a bit of a dump like the airport in Rio, so that was a pleasant early morning surprise.

We arrived in Cusco at about 6:00 this morning.  When we got to our hotel, we were greeted with coco leaf tea that's used to help with altitude sickness.  Thankfully, neither Mike nor I have experienced any of that.  We finished our tea, had some breakfast and then headed up to our room to sleep.  I was beyond happy that our room was ready so early.

After we got up, we decided to go out exploring,  We walked over to the Plaza de Armas, which is the main square in town.  There are lots of people trying to sell you something everywhere you turn, but unlike other places I've been, the vendors weren't super pushy. Mike and I got hungry, so we went to a restaurant just off the square and had a late lunch. When we were heading back to the square, we noticed lots and lots of people hanging out around the perimeter.  We were intrigued and decided to check it out.

Turns out today is the end of Corpus Christi, which is celebrated nine weeks after Easter. The Inca had a tradition of parading around ancestral mummies, but when the Spanish invaded, they replaced the mummies with effigies of saints.  The effigies are left inside the cathedral on the Plaza de Armas for eight days.  Then they are then taken back to their churches and accompanied by musicians and firecrackers.

The first effigy we saw.

And the band behind it.  Every effigy had its own band.

This parade was slow.  The men carrying the effigies would march forward, backwards, then stop, put the effigy down on a wooden stand and chill for awhile.  Mike and I got bored with standing around in one place (that and it was chilly and I left my fleece in our room - stupid mistake) so we walked around different parts of the square to get different views.

If you look closely, it says "Viva El Peru" in the mountains.

It seemed like this parade was never going to end.  We weren't bothered by that, but rather impressed that more and more effigies kept coming out of the cathedral.  There were something like fourteen of them.  And since the parade was moving so slowly, it was hard to know when it was going to end.  We started to leave because we thought it was done, but there turned out to be one more.

An effigy coming out of the cathedral.

This was a very cool event to witness.  There were people there of all ages.  I'm glad that we accidentally stumbled upon this.  Tomorrow we're going to go explore Cusco.  I think it's safe to say that we were sidetracked by this.