Corpus Christi Celebrations start in Cusco

Yesterday was a long day but surprisingly, we are up and awake quite early. Ready to tackle the day.

Today is the first day of celebration of Corpus Christi. It means during the day all the statues of the saints will be displayed and paraded in Cusco. The parades all end on the main plaza and the statues will be inside the Cathedral.

Nilo ( our guide from the Sacred Valley Tour ) had warned us that this celebration was a perfect example of syncretism where all the dancers and music will be local indigenous customs and the statues catholic.

The official celebration starts at 1pm. In the morning, we decide to visit the Inca Museum. It takes us about 1hour and is quite interesting. We get to learn more about the various communities and civilization that the Inca had absorbed or subdued. 

As we go back towards the main square, we can see that it’s getting increasingly crowed. Since it’s a little before lunch, we had spotted some tents being set up in a nearby plaza. We decide to check them out.

It’s great that we did because the plaza is where the food stalls are set up. The traditional fare of the day is a mixed platter of cold meat. There are: sausage, roasted guinea pig filled with herbs, roasted chicken, roasted corn, seaweed, fish eggs, fried corn bread and some lamb. We ordered a platter to share and sat down at a table. It was very salty and fairly strange, not our favorite food – certainly worth a try. It’s called Chiriuchu.

We finish our meal that the parade starts and we can hear the marking bands playing. We get our first crowd bath and see the beginning of the parade. When we had enough – we decide to visit the regional museum of Cusco which is a few streets away.

This museum is nicely done – with again more information about the Inca and pre-Columbian cultures but narrowed down to the area of Cusco. Some information overlaps with the Inca Museum, but they mostly complement each-other.

This takes about 1h to visit and is part of the Buleto General. 

We are close to 3pm – time for another crowd bath to see more of the saints being brought in. It’s good fun and we spend a good hour listening to the music and enjoying the show. 

It’s still quite tiring all this noise and moving around a packed crowd. We call it a day fairly early. Tomorrow we are going to hike Palcoyo mountain and the pick up is at 4am.