Dinner at "Passion Fruit" with Gladys and Wilfredo

Gladys, my colleague and Fulbright contact at UTA, and her husband Wilfredo have been so kind to me since my arrival. Mom and Gordon took us all to dinner at the restuarant Maracuya, which sits right on the ocean in Arica. Maracuya means "passion fruit," and the dessert I ordered allowed me to experience for the first time what a cut-open passion fruit actually looks like (see photo on left). It's very unusual! It almost looks like a kind of fruit salad inside, but that's the way the fruit comes in nature. It's really tart, but I've come to like it a lot.

Mom and Gordon Go Back to School!

On Thursday of their visit, I took Mom and Gordon to my undergrad class at la Universidad. We joined with my colleague Monica's class to play Apples to Apples. It was new for these students, and Mom and Gordon knew how to play and were a big help with their native English speaker knowledge. Gordon got right to work explaining things in a clear way. Pilar's card said "shoplifting," and he explained to her that "it's when you steal something from a store." (My students later said how nice they were!) I enjoyed seeing them in my school setting, and they liked seeing me in my teacher role.

Back to Arica!

It was exciting to bring Mom and Gordon back to my Chilean home of Arica. First things first: I took them to DiMango, my cafe/restaurant hang-out on the beach, where they serve amazing ice cream creations. Mom and I shared a "Copa Potrich," which is manjar (dulce de leche/caramel) ice cream and lucuma (a fruit we don't have in the U.S.) ice cream with manjar and chocolate sauces, topped with whipped cream and wafer cookies. (You can see my spoon making its way toward Mom's bowl.) Gordon had a yummy combination of coconut and lemon ice cream.

City of Cusco

We took a private tour of the city of Cusco the morning of our departure. Cusco was once the capital of the Incan empire but was proclaimed Spanish territory by Francisco Pizarro in 1532. He made this proclamation in what he named the Plaza de Armas (formerly called ‘Huacaypata’ by the Incas), which is home to the beautiful Catedral de Cusco you see in the photo taken at night. Cusco is marked by a mix of Incan and Spanish architecture. I like the picture on the right because you can see remains of an Incan structure with colonial walls and roofing on top of it, and a cross in the distance. Today, Cusco is a very busy tourist city (95% of its residents have work that relies on tourists). Side streets are narrow and are often filled with people like those you see in the photo of one of the small street markets. Our tour ended with a visit to the walled complex of Sacsayhuamán, described in the next post.

Sacsayhuamán

Sacsayhuamán (pronounced very much like "sexy woman") is a walled Incan complex near Cusco. Had it been untouched, it would have been a site nearly as impressive as Machu Picchu; but the Spanish used many of the rocks from the structure to build their churches. The complex was a religious center for the Incans, the "sun's house," but the Spanish thought it was a fortress. Again, the precision of Incan stonework is present, and this has kept the stucture from being destroyed during various earthquakes in Cusco. You can even see the cougar paw they put in the stonework in the photo! A llama and a guinea pig can be found elsewhere in the complex. Amazing!

More Machu Picchu

There is so much to discuss and describe, but I have chosen two things that I really liked. One photo shows a temple with three windows. The number three is very important in Incan culture because of the three worlds in which they believed: the upper world of the stars and gods; the middle world of life on Earth; and the lower world of death. These worlds are also represented by animals: the condor, puma, snake, respectively. The other photo shows an open area that the Incas may have used for speeches, celebrations, or even sports. What is amazing is that from the spot the photo was taken, the Incan ruler could speak and be heard by the whole community. Our guide demonstrated this, and it was as if his voice was carried right into the mountains. The stone structures you see in that photo made up the "residential" area of Machu Picchu, which is separate from the worship area comprised of temples.

Inside Machu Picchu

One of the interesting things to note is that the people who lived at Machu Picchu were of the higher class and were not the ones who built it; workers were brought in. Having made the trip in a bus and climbed just a tiny portion of Inca ruins myself, I cannot even imagine how people were able to get from place to place in these mountains; but they did. The photo on the left shows the "gate" through which the rulers and nobility entered the community.