A three hour flight from Panama City (and the weirdest airport of all time that doesn´t even have a tourist shop or a coffee bar) took us into Lima, Peru. Initially we were just going to skedaddle down the coast, but Travis discovered while reading the guidebook that October 18th is a holy festival day in Lima and that the center of town would be transformed into a purple mass carrying a floating Mr. Miracles (Jesus). That´s actually the direct translation of the day´s Spanish name, El Señor de los Milagros - Mr. Miracles.
We spent the evening of the 17th sitting in the Plaza Mayor trying to figure out life. We were mildly successful. We took photos of the Cathedral, which just happens to house Pizarro´s body, the president´s house, which has some really silly looking guards and tanks, and the Archbishop´s Palace, which has some seriously sweet carved wooden balconies. Then we went to the grocery store. It was like an American grocery store. So exciting! And they had fresh, hot bread, much to Trav´s delight. It was originally supposed to be for breakfast, but with the warm bread Trav just couldn´t wait, so we sat back in the Plaza and started munching on bread and cheese. BAD IDEA. If you have food in a public place in a country with unemployment so out of control they don´t even bother to count it, you will be accosted by someone wanting your food. We gave the little girl who came to us our wheat roll and she skipped off delightedly. It´s okay, we had about eight other pieces of bread because Trav is a bread pig. But we love him.
The rest of the evening we spent in the hostel. There are really no words to describe this place. It was once a mansion, so it´s really big and has fancy lights and balconies looking to the floors below. It´s also covered in artwork of varying styles and levels of attractiveness. They had two huge David´s heads (as in, Michelangelo´s masterpiece decapitated), and their front office had a glass curio cabinet with Peruvian jars and skulls with hair still on them. Awesome. We initially couldn´t find our room. This was because it was on the roof, on the side of the building without other rooms, and covered in vegetation. And it was COLD. Peru is cold. Anyway, yay for dormitories. Chatting with the other inhabitants we learned that four of the eight of us staying the the room were from the states. Three from MD and one from VA. The world just got smaller from there because we even travelled to MN and found people that we collectively vaguely knew. The other two were backpackers, so they knew Outward Bound people from the Boundary Waters. It was pretty entertaining.
The morning of the festival dawned and we got up early to explore. As we made our way to the grocery store to get more breakfast we saw people preparing the streets for the parade. They make huge drawings on the ground, build them up with some sort of sand-sawdust, and then cover them with flower petals to give the pieces color. They turned into really good drawings, too. One was a huge flying dove and, like, a cowboy (that part wasn´t done, and then before we could get back to it the parade marched over it and destroyed it), and the other was your rather typical bread and wine communion motif. But they took up pretty much the whole street. People were already waiting on the Cathedral steps, even though nothing would happen for another three hours. That should have been our first clue.
The grocery store wasn´t open (yay for holidays), but we managed to find a yummy breakfast, and then we went to see the Monastery of Santo Domingo, famous for its library and catacombs. The entry fee comes with a guided tour, but it was in Spanish, so Travis had to translate for me and this other rather confused English girl, Alice. The monastery boasts the best cupola in South America, which is a replica because the original fell in an earthquake a few hundred years ago. But the corners are real, and the whole thing is still gorgeous because the wood criss-crosses to create a ceiling of stars. The library has about 2500 ancient books in every subject and several languages. Some of the languages are still unidentified because no one can read the books. On display was an illuminated manuscript that was probably as tall as my leg and three times as wide (when closed). The guide was really proud of these windows in the roof that let in light, but not directly, and all I could think was, ´they should really not have these books under natural light.´
Monks are very clever. Because they spent so much time standing during mass they had their seats made into double seats, like folding chairs, so that when upright they created a little stool that made it look like they were standing when they really weren´t. There was also a great deal of artwork, most of it brought from Spain, and it all had a ton of symbolism. The five grooves in the seats at the monks´ dinner hall represented the five wounds of Christ, for example. And there were, as always, the representations of the saints. Martyrs sometimes had ´M´ under their name, and they are always depicted as they died. My favorite is usually Catherine, who just chills next to the spiky wheel that tore her apart. I didn´t see her at the monastery, but one guy was kind of holding on his decapitated head. That was interesting.
Okay, so basically the monastery was really pretty, with tons of art and gardens and carvings to look at for hours. But the best part is in the underbelly of the monastery because who can possibly say no to catacombs? We had to crouch down to make our way down the short staircase, and the minute we entered the catacombs it smelled like old dirt. With a short walk through a narrow hallway we were there, and there were big 4 m deep holes filled with bones. They put the bodies in a little cubby until they decay enough that they can divide the bones up, so the holes were organized into femurs and tibias and other bones that don´t turn into dust. There are 25,000 people down there because when the monastery was originally built the catacombs were the cemetary for the population of the entire city. Now only the monks are buried there. One actually died six months ago, so we passed the room where he´s decaying and the guide had to point out that there was a body in there. You luckily couldn´t see him. No photos allowed except for in one spot that kind of resembles a dungeon where people got thrown to die and now all they are is skulls and bones. But that´s not really what happened. One famous spot is the osuario, which is a fancy bone deposit where they make a circular pattern alternating concentric rings of skulls and femurs. When I asked Travis why they did that he said it was because it looks cool. Which it undeniably does. These guys had a lot of time on their hands.
The catacombs is the end of the tour, so we got postcards (so you can all see the osuario if you like, since we couldn´t take a picture of it ourselves), and made our way to the festival. I think I´ll make that another entry, however, because this one is getting a little long, and because we have to check out of the hostel. Yay for free internet!
Until sometime!
Erin
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