Perú, my dream country to visit (again)

 My passion for andean cultures cames from my dad who is from the north, so I always felt close to it. When I went to Perú, it was the best place I went in my life, even more than the U.S. or Japan, places I already went, even, I would rather to go back to Cuzco, Lima, Tacna or explore the rest of the country.

All I know for now is about Cuzco, Lima and Tacna, but everything is worthy to talk about.

Tacna maybe from these places is the less attracting one, but if you want to have cheap fashionable clothing, nails or even jelwery, it's a really good place. Also, because Tacna is in the Atacama Desert, you can go to a tour for looking at the petroglyphs outside the city, there are suspected that the petroglyphs have paintings of UFOs and aliens! Just watch out of scams there, with my mom and granny we almost got scammed twice and we got scammed in one tour.

Do you think this is an alien or just the artstyle of the artist?

Lima is the perfect place for urbanist and luxury lovers if you go to Perú, but the city has more to explore, specially in the cultural area. Do you want luxury? Larcomar mall is a very significant one placed in Miraflores , where is seated next to the beachside and its infrastructure is open to see the sea (but plz, better than capitalist places, go to REAL awesome places, it doesn't even have peruvian bussiness). If you want you can go to the most expensive restaurants in the country with the unic taste of peruvian culinary, but personally, it's much better to look around for the daily-life restaurants for most peruvians, those are a lot cheaper and still really high-quality, if you do it you support their small bussiness. Don't worry, you wont get sick, nowadays the sanitary ambit has advanced a lot, just don't ask for tap water or any juice that potencially can have tap water, you we will be safe with filtered or carbonated water.

Larcomar mall, boring!

In the cultural side of Lima, there are the Pachacamac ruins, a whole prehispanic and even preincaic city where lived the Ichma and Lima cultures (from here cames the name of the capital) and later on came the Incaic culture. There are the Huaca Pucllana ruins too, PREHISPANIC RUINS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CITY placed in Miraflores; Huaca Huallamarca are in the middle of the city too, at San Isidro. If you want a closer place, you can go to the Larco Museum, it can be a relatively small museum but PLZ, it is compacted with all the prehispanic cultures from Perú! I discovered there that even before the comming of the Incas, they already had spoons!! In the museum, they have a special section just about sex in the moche culture, the ultimate known culture about being the most explicit in this area, where there are a lot of handcraft related to every way of sex possible, even dead corpses with the penis erected masturbating (did you know moche people believed earth was fertil because ancestors had anal sex specifically??).

There's a hadcraft of a mom breastfeeding while the dad is copuling her lol

And last but DEFINITELY not least: Cuzco. ALL I WANT IS TO GO BACK THERE AAAAAAH, YOU JUST WALK AND SUDDENLY, BOOP! A CHOLITA WITH HER BABY ALPACAS ARE THERE, FLUFFY AND SMALL BABY ALPACAS THAT THEY MOVE THEIR TAIL LIKE A DOG WHEN THEY ARE HAPPY, IT'S A MUST UNLESS YOU'RE ALLERGIC. You need to pay the ladies for taking photos with them, it's their job to show to turists those beautiful creatures send by Wiracocha, the god of the Incas. In the backyard of one church (I can't remember what church specifically) there are a therapy sessions called "llama therapy", basically you can hug llamas and alpacas and they are trained to do tricks for you like kissing you and take out your hat. Oh! talking about alpacas, you need to try alpaca meat too! yeah, it sounds frustrating now, but if you hate the squishy texture of meat, alpaca meat is good for you, because it doesn't have fat, it's dry textured but still soft and it tastes great. One of million reasons to become vegan, or not? I really want to repeat these experiences when I go back to Cuzco, yes, even to eat alpaca meat. Don't forget to buy alpaca whool stuff for supporting peruvian small bussiness!

In San Blas square, there is a very curious café called Xapiri café. This café is an amazonic-themed place where they sell hot amazonic cacao drinks and it has a little museum for amazonic art and an exposition of the sound of the jungle. This café is made for supporting the amazonic indigenous people selling their production, so don't think twice and buy the handcraft of them and taste the glorious hot chocolate! Also, at the right of the café, there is the Coca leaf museum, where it talks about the sacred leaf of the Incas and sell everything that includes coca leafs.

The cathedrals and churchs from the Central Plaza has art showered in gold in the most literal way I'm saying it, this is because of spaniards who used the incas' gold, sounds sad but the conquest cannot erase the quechua people, so the religious places have its syncretic part: when I went to them, it was happening a mass were the chorus was singing in quechua and using charangos instead of organs. Far from I was I saw a Jesus statue with an andean poncho, and in other cathedral, there was a painting of the last meal but in the middle of the table was a roasted guinea pig (YES, IT SOUNDS LIKE A XENOPHOBIC MEME, BUT IT'S REAL). Even if you're not christian, you'll love those places and feel great to see how the incaic culture is still alive and seen as a daily-life thing. Sadly, you can't take photos inside.

Syncretic art

And obviously, we can't end talking about Cuzco without talking about the ruins. The Qoricancha, wich means place of gold, was where the Inca lived and the religious ceremonies where made, and today is a mix of the ruins inside a monastery, imagine how contrasting it is! You will learn there about the Inca cosmology. When I was going to Machu Picchu (2 hous in train), getting into the peruvian jungle landscape, I saw in every random place incaic ruins, like, EVERYWHERE YOU GO, THERE IS AN INCAIC CONSTRUCTION IN SOME WAY. Machu Picchu is obviously the biggest one, with all the significance of the second incaic capital when the spaniards conquered Cuzco, and I can't stop replaying in my mind La Poderosa Muerte of Los Jaivas. If you're a spoiled rich brat, you can pay for stay in the hotel next to Machu Picchu (yes, there is a hotel) and the first class in the train to Machu Picchu, where they make two shows inside it: one with a person dressed as a saqra (syncretic version of a demon but being nice and playful with people, dressing with a lot of colors, they wear a mask similar to the ones from La Diablada in Chile) dancing saya and an exposition of peruvian fashion, clothes made of baby alpaca whool (expensive as hell). But personally I really want to go back to look around at Pizaq, a ruins that kinda look like a medieval castle in the highs of the mountains, where the incaic and bosses from other tribes kids had education like if there were a college. In one tour I saw a incredible ingeniery structure from the Inca Empire called Moray, a place that looks like a colliseum but it's a place for agriculture, specially potatoes, that created micro-climates for having all varieties of potatoes. I want to remark two incaic structure that when I went there, my mind exploded: Tambomachay and Ollataitambo. Those ruins, placed far away from each other, look like out of a mysterious and lost civilizations fantasy adventure movie, both of them have water fountains that still work, and with all the nature coexisting in there make them magical.

Tambomachay (look at the fountains!!)

Moray

Pizaq

If I want to live in Perú? OBVIOUSLY, I WANT TO WORK FOR THE STATE IN SOCIOLOGY FOR HELPING INDIGENOUS PEOPLE'S LOCAL PRODUCTION. I want to study there? YES.

Before closing my over-done work that was just about describing a place in more than just 160 words but I got too excited and extended irresponsibly, I'll show you my weird images I got when I went there:

Cultured people

No, this is not the pride flag, it's the Tawantinsuyo one

Context: Whole procedure of making cocaine detailed in a sign that occupied all the wall, all this with the purpose for ""concietization""

Si ganan los españoles, nos convertiremos en Inkazuela

Even today I can't get what this handcraft means

I wish you like it and save money for me to get back! 💕