Day 3: Cusco
Today the group will be starting their day by shopping at a local market with a professional chef with a cooking class following the shopping trip! After enjoying their home-cooked cuisine, the group will have trip orientation and gear check with our local guides.
Cusco is a lovely town. The locals are very hospitable. Peruvians may be short in stature but they are gigantic in culture, spirit and kindness. We visited the Plaza de Armas and the cathedral. This week is the festival of Corpus Christi. The celebration begins with the arrival of statues of the most important Saints to the churches and neighborhoods of Cusco.
Each has a unique identity and devout followers.
The large statues are gorgeously decorated, dressed in a gown of a traditional color, bedecked with flowers, with adornments of gold, silver, cloths and wood carvings.
The statues are realistic, and they seem almost alive. They are paraded to the cathedral where they will be displayed for the festival week. We were able to see them and it was fantastic.
-Angie
Day 4 was a culinary adventure. Our Belmond host chefs escorted us to the local market for an excursion to purchase some of what we would use in our cooking class. We were introduced to many delights including exotic fruits and vegetables, potatoes that looked like big maggots and corn bigger than a tooth!
We wandered around on the streets and could hardly take in all the options. But then we entered the inside market and the surprises ahead had us curious and revolted at the same time! Horse heads. Snouts. Hooves. Intestines. The differences between our cultural tastebuds were on full display. How fascinating it was to see all the ways the Peruvians use every square inch of an animal in their diets. We saw families gathered at the different lunch counters enjoying soups and stews made from all the hanging things over in the butcher section. The best part was seeing their love of food and families gathered together. Although we were divided into two groups to make it easier to hear our chef guides, we somehow couldn’t keep from getting back together along the way. At one point a weird dude in a wig tried to terrorize Angie and Becky. You never know what you’ll find in aisle 3!! When the weird dude turned out to be Wayne Parker, the belly laughing could not be stopped for minutes. It’s true that some of us in the group are now having nightmares involving tall guys and wigs!
After all the fun at the market it was time to make our way back to the Belmond Monasterio Hotel to begin the creative part of our culinary adventure. Everyone knows that chef hats make your cooking better, so the staff adorned each of us with our own tall, round, white, starched and pleated chef “toques” and our class began. How could anything go wrong when we looked so good?? Julie Scott was promoted to head chef among us and was placed front and center, hand on skillet before a gas burner. Before we knew it flames were flying higher than her toque and the crowd was ewwwing and ahhhing and looking for the nearest fire extinguisher!! The hotel chefs guided the amateurs as each layer of food and flavor was added to each dish to create a menu to die for. Julie completed a Trout Ceviche from the fresh ingredients brought back from the market adventure and we all sat down to taste the market to table menu. The food just kept coming. The culinary camaraderie just got us all the more fired up for our introduction to the Green Machine, our expedition guides for the next part of our adventure, our high altitude hike to Machu Pichu. Our meeting in the Chapel went well and we were soon off to our rooms to prepare for our gear check. With that complete we packed it all up in preparation for an early departure the next morning to higher altitude with adventure attitudes!! Machu Pichu here we come.
-Becky Topp