Festival Corpus Cristi

On Thursday during our trip in Perú, the annual festival of Corpus Cristi started. In Cusco, it is basically a festival celebrating the reunion of 15 saints. The ambiance of the place was ecstatic. There were tons of people walking around in the city's three big plazas and all over the streets in between. This is a picture of me when we first discovered the mobs of people after we left the hostel.

This is a picture of the mass that was happening in  Plaza de Armas, the city's main plaza. There were multiple shiny displays like this one, I don't know exactly what it was. Upon entering, we first thought that it was a parade, for it seemed like the streets were somewhat open and carts and a float seemed to be traveling along the road. However, with time we realized that it was a Catholic mass because we realized that the priest was standing on the stairs in front of the main cathedral. It was hard to see him with all of the Peruvians and tourists standing on the stairs around him. We also heard singing, but it also took us time to realize that it was not a group performing, but the general mass singing hymns. We walked closer to the priest and noticed that more people participated. The farther we walked away from the entrance to the main cathedral, the more people were not obviously participating, but rather onlooking, walking around, or just relaxing. There were many people selling things, like this lady on the right. She was selling some sort of snack with dried corn and (what looked like) fried pork rinds. I really like this picture because you can see her colorful blanket with which she carried everything there on her back. You can see a sombrero behind her that some men wore and a long, dark braid in front of her that many, many peruvian women wore. There were all types of people roaming around on this day. Among my friends and I were many more tourists. It was nice to have a breather and not be some of the only tourists in the area, like my friends and I usually are when we are in Chile. In Peru, there are many more tourists, so the people do not pay as much attention to you. So many native people wore their traditional dress. I remember seeing many women in hats with tassels, brightly colorful floor length dresses with shawls and ribbons in their braids and cowboys decked out in tasseled chaps, ropes and spurs. 

During festivals and holidays in Cusco, street vendors sell a national plate called Chiriuchu. Each vendor looks basically like this picture on the left. These are the women that we bought our Chiriuchu from. Each vendor has a table with a cutting area, a large pile/pyramid of guinea pig and chicken, sacks of peppers, corn, other meat, and maybe some beverages. It took these ladies 2 days to prepare all of their food to make the Chiriuchu plates. There were maybe 200 vendors like these ladies in the plaza, making four rows of Chiriuchu-fantasticness. Behind the vendors were picnic tables full of people feasting on Chiriuchu. Included in the plate was cuy (guinea pig) baked in the oven (picture left). On our plate we got a third of a guinea pig, either the front end (feet included), middle (with all the innards), or back end. It was eery seeing the ladies hack the guinea pigs apart with a big butcher knife. Also included in the plate was a portion of chicken, some sort of sausage, dried beef, seaweed, extra large kernels of dried corn, preservative-free cheese, some 

peppers, and super fried bread. I tried it all. My favorite thing was probably the cheese and bread, which was very, very oily. Everything on the plate was served cold, well outdoor temperature I guess. So how was the guinea pig? Good actually. I was very surprised. It had the texture of white chicken meat, but it had a very salty, different flavor. The worst food on the plate [for me] was the seaweed. Bad texture, bad over saltiness, bad wet, slimy flavor all combined. Ugh. That put aside, the plate was good overall. I ate almost one third of the way through it, and suddenly lost my appetite after I accidentally put a bone from the guinea pig in my mouth. I think that if there were a plate of guinea pig meat in front of me, i could eat it. But having to dissect the small, small amount of meat from the bones and innards (yes, I got the middle part of the guinea pig with the innards) was very difficult and stomach-wrenching. But hey, try everything once right? 

This picture is a photo of my friends and I walking down one of the streets between the plazas. You can see how there were so many people out and about. 

This is a photo of my friend Claire in front of some cow snouts. This day we meandered toward an artesania, but it turned out to be a market and artesania all in one. In the market part, we found all sorts of animal body parts for sale, including these cow snouts, bull horns, intestines, inside-out stomachs, hooves, chicken feet, and many, many unidentifiable red, black, or purple blobs. It seemed that they let nothing of the animal go to waste. I like their let's-not-waste attitude, but the smell of the market got to me. This is just one more unforgettable memory from my trip to Peru.