My trips to Perú!

[This is an entry from my english classes, so it's a copypaste but adding Trujillo XD]

My passion for andean cultures cames from my dad who is from the north, so I always felt close to it. When I went to Perú, it was the best place I went in my life, even more than the U.S. or Japan, places I already went, even, I would rather to go back to Perú.

All I know for now is about Cuzco, Lima, Trujillo and Tacna, but everything is worthy to talk about.

Tacna

Tacna maybe from these places is the less attracting one, but if you want to have cheap fashionable clothing, nails or even jelwery, it's a really good place. Also, because Tacna is in the Atacama Desert, you can go to a tour for looking at the petroglyphs outside the city, there are suspected that the petroglyphs have paintings of UFOs and aliens! Just watch out of scams there, with my mom and granny we almost got scammed twice and we got scammed in one tour.

Do you think this is an alien or just the artstyle of the artist?

Tacna Cathedral

Lima

Lima is the perfect place for urbanist and luxury lovers if you go to Perú, but the city has more to explore, specially in the cultural area. Do you want luxury? Larcomar mall is a very significant one placed in Miraflores , where is seated next to the beachside and its infrastructure is open to see the sea (but plz, better than capitalist places, go to REAL awesome places, it doesn't even have peruvian bussiness). If you want you can go to the most expensive restaurants in the country with the unic taste of peruvian culinary, but personally, it's much better to look around for the daily-life restaurants for most peruvians, those are a lot cheaper and still really high-quality, if you do it you support their small bussiness. Don't worry, you wont get sick, nowadays the sanitary ambit has advanced a lot, just don't ask for tap water or any juice that potencially can have tap water, you we will be safe with filtered or carbonated water.

Larcomar mall, boring!

I met two friends in Lima: Reila and my Internet's best friend. I'm glad to meet them finally, because Reila was one of my inspirations when I entered to Gyaru Fashion (the first south american girl I discovered into Gyaru) and by the side of my other friend, I met him when we were me 11 y/o and him 13 y/o playing Minecraft, when we finally met we were already 19 y/o and 21 y/o, and we made a lot of jokes of YEAAAAAH YOU WEREN'T A KIDNAPPER ALL THIS TIME YOU WERE A REAL FRIEND. I had a great time talking with both of them <3

When I've met @reilaless

In the cultural side of Lima, there are the Pachacamac ruins, a whole prehispanic and even preincaic city where lived the Ichma and Lima cultures (from here cames the name of the capital) and later on came the Incaic culture. There are the Huaca Pucllana ruins too, PREHISPANIC RUINS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CITY placed in Miraflores; Huaca Huallamarca are in the middle of the city too, at San Isidro. If you want a closer place, you can go to the Larco Museum, it can be a relatively small museum but PLZ, it is compacted with all the prehispanic cultures from Perú! I discovered there that even before the comming of the Incas, they already had spoons!! In the museum, they have a special section just about sex in the Moche culture, the ultimate known culture about being the most explicit in this area, where there are a lot of handcraft related to every way of sex possible, even dead corpses with the penis erected masturbating (did you know moche people believed earth was fertil because ancestors had anal sex specifically??).

Huaca Pucllana

There's a hadcraft of a mom breastfeeding while the dad is copuling her lol

I found this vessel in Larco Museum, who made it predicted today's cartoon series aesthetic

Trujillo

Moche culture is originally from Trujillo, where I went these winter vacations. I'm starting to get into Indoamericanism and Anti-Imperialism a lot, so this place was significant, because there was born Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre, one of the intellectuals of the country, sadly his political party didn't end so well today. I'm trying to investigate not only him, I was investigating José Carlos Mariátegui too but later.

Trujillo is the city of two preincaic civilizations: Moche culture and Chimú culture. Moche culture was a preincaic culture that had this curious cosmovision. Not only in sex and fertility, obviously. They had a politheist religion with in the top of all the gods, they had Ai Apaec, a god known for being the decapitator god, but actually, according the workers I met in the musseum of Tumbas Reales de Sipán, this god were actually the maker god. Mohicas had incredible constructions for temples, but sadly, some of them are undiscovered not because we don't know where are them, it's because they are not enough founds and the pandemic stopped the anthropological investigations in these places.

Ai Apaec painting by one of the art faculties near to Trujillo, the golden statues are the Sipán Lord, one of the oly lords we know about this culture.

The BIGGEST preincaic construction I've met was the Temple of The Sun, it was so large that at first I thought it was only a mountain, I was waiting for others to tell me where to look for the temple, until I saw a weird stuff untoached: adobe breaks. Then I thought "nah, they used some hill before building", and no, it was made enterily of adobe breaks. Sadly, there is not so much information of the temple, even anthropologists don't know where is the entry.

In the other side, opposite this temple, there is the Temple of The Moon, where there was find beautiful paintings and they are being restored. These murals have their own symetric pattern with Ai Apaec in the middle of the rhombuses. Also, this was a staggered pyramid and the mochica culture did a great work painting from bottom to top all social and cosmic classes that compossed the society of the time. At the most bottom, the naked prisioners before ejecutation (I need to remark, they are not prisioners by making bad things, instead they were losers from festive battles and that was the reward of losing, because in this culture, if you were a bad people, they just killed you and all your family lol) and at the top of the building, Ai Apaec, but because it's very deteriorated it has almost completly gone, so they are restoraging it.

Mochica'sTemple of The Sun

The staggered wall of the Temple of the Moon

Now, after the fall of the Moche culture, maybe due to El Niño phenomenon, a climate phenomenon originated in the oriental ecuatorial Pacific ocean were it generates abundant and long rains that floods the area, there was born another culture near to the fallen constructions: Chimú culture. Now the moon was their most powerful deidity and they were capable of predicting the El Niño phenomenon, something Mochicas couldn't. They builded an incredible place caled Chan Chan ruins, placed into Trujillo and near to sugar cane cultivations. Looking at it was like to feel you're looking at the egyptian pyramids we see often in TV, but real... and obsviously different because these are not pyramids, instead large walls protecting the fallen civilization buildings. It was a total feeling of fantastic lost and hidden civilizations.

One hall of Chan Chan

The most I recommend? Go to Lambayeque, at the north of Trujillo, were there is the Museum Tumbas Reales de Sipán. This museum is not only beautiful by the building that emulate a moche pyramid, they have El Señor de Sipán too, the second most important mummy in the world after Tutankamon. If you take a tour combo in some agencies, they can bring you to La Dama de Cao, possibly a moche queen, known by having tatooed spiders and snakes in her mummy. Now peruvian people can be sometimes conservative and they putted a paper covering the "genitals" of the mummy because "iT's A wOmAn" but they don't care nothing when it's about male mummies (and worse, considering Moche culture is so open to sex that maybe it really has no sense for the souls of the mummies lol), even the tour guide laugh at that decision, for him was no sense.

Chan Chan ruins

Interior if Chan Chan Ruins

Photo of a peruvian celebration in the Museum Tumbas Reales de Sipán

Dama de Cao, reconstruction of her and her mummy

Cuzco

And last but DEFINITELY not least: Cuzco. ALL I WANT IS TO GO BACK THERE AAAAAAH, YOU JUST WALK AND SUDDENLY, BOOP! A CHOLITA WITH HER BABY ALPACAS ARE THERE, FLUFFY AND SMALL BABY ALPACAS THAT THEY MOVE THEIR TAIL LIKE A DOG WHEN THEY ARE HAPPY, IT'S A MUST UNLESS YOU'RE ALLERGIC. You need to pay the ladies for taking photos with them, it's their job to show to turists those beautiful creatures send by Wiracocha, the god of the Incas. In the backyard of one church (I can't remember what church specifically) there are a therapy sessions called "llama therapy", basically you can hug llamas and alpacas and they are trained to do tricks for you like kissing you and take out your hat.

Me taking a photo with cholitas dressed traditionally and with a baby alpaca and a baby sheep and damn I look like a baby too without makeup

San Blas Square

Oh! talking about alpacas, you need to try alpaca meat too! yeah, it sounds frustrating now, but if you hate the squishy texture of meat, alpaca meat is good for you, because it doesn't have fat, it's dry textured but still soft and it tastes great. One of million reasons to become vegan, right? I really want to repeat these experiences when I go back to Cuzco, yes, even to eat alpaca meat. Don't forget to buy alpaca whool stuff for supporting peruvian small bussiness!

In San Blas square, there is a very curious café called Xapiri café. This café is an amazonic-themed place where they sell hot amazonic cacao drinks and it has a little museum for amazonic art and an exposition of the sound of the jungle. This café is made for supporting the amazonic indigenous people selling their production, so don't think twice and buy the handcraft of them and taste the glorious hot chocolate! Also, at the right of the café, there is the Coca leaf museum, where it talks about the sacred leaf of the Incas and sell everything that includes coca leafs.

The cathedrals and churchs from the Central Plaza has art showered in gold in the most literal way I'm saying it, this is because of spaniards who used the incas' gold, sounds sad but the conquest cannot erase the quechua people, so the religious places have its syncretic part: when I went to them, it was happening a mass were the chorus was singing in quechua and using charangos instead of organs. Far from I was I saw a Jesus statue with an andean poncho, and in other cathedral, there was a painting of the last meal but in the middle of the table was a roasted guinea pig (YES, IT SOUNDS LIKE A XENOPHOBIC MEME, BUT IT'S REAL). Even if you're not christian, you'll love those places and feel great to see how the incaic culture is still alive and seen as a daily-life thing. Sadly, you can't take photos inside.

Syncretic art

And obviously, we can't end talking about Cuzco without talking about the ruins. The Qoricancha, wich means place of gold, was where the Inca lived and the religious ceremonies where made, and today is a mix of the ruins inside a monastery, imagine how contrasting it is! You will learn there about the Inca cosmology. When I was going to Machu Picchu (2 hous in train), getting into the peruvian jungle landscape, I saw in every random place incaic ruins, like, EVERYWHERE YOU GO, THERE IS AN INCAIC CONSTRUCTION IN SOME WAY. Machu Picchu is obviously the biggest one, with all the significance of the second incaic capital when the spaniards conquered Cuzco, and I can't stop replaying in my mind La Poderosa Muerte of Los Jaivas. If you're a spoiled rich brat, you can pay for stay in the hotel next to Machu Picchu (yes, there is a hotel) and the first class in the train to Machu Picchu, where they make two shows inside it: one with a person dressed as a saqra (syncretic version of a demon but being nice and playful with people, dressing with a lot of colors, they wear a mask similar to the ones from La Diablada in Chile) dancing saya and an exposition of peruvian fashion, clothes made of baby alpaca whool (expensive as hell). But personally I really want to go back to look around at Pizaq, a ruins that kinda look like a medieval castle in the highs of the mountains, where the incaic and bosses from other tribes kids had education like if there were a college. In one tour I saw a incredible ingeniery structure from the Inca Empire called Moray, a place that looks like a colliseum but it's a place for agriculture, specially potatoes, that created micro-climates for having all varieties of potatoes. I want to remark two incaic structure that when I went there, my mind exploded: Tambomachay and Ollataitambo. Those ruins, placed far away from each other, look like out of a mysterious and lost civilizations fantasy adventure movie, both of them have water fountains that still work, and with all the nature coexisting in there make them magical.

Macchu Pichu take by my dad

Tambomachay (look at the fountains!!)

Moray

Pizaq

Some random building I took photo of it in the train to Macchu Pichu and it feels mystic

If I want to live in Perú? OBVIOUSLY, I WANT TO WORK FOR THE STATE IN SOCIOLOGY FOR HELPING INDIGENOUS PEOPLE'S LOCAL PRODUCTION. I want to study there? YES.

Random stuff

Before closing my over-done work that was just about describing a place in more than just 160 words (context: it was a blog entry for english classes and it has a minimum of words) but I got too excited and extended irresponsibly, I'll show you my weird images I got when I went there:

Cultured people

No, this is not the pride flag, it's the Tawantinsuyo one

Context: Whole procedure of making cocaine detailed in a sign that occupied all the wall, all this with the purpose for ""concietization""

Si ganan los españoles, nos convertiremos en Inkazuela

Even today I can't get what this handcraft means

HDSVFDSÑSDFSDFHSD CONTEXT, PERÚ IS VERY KNOWN BY THEIR CORRUPTION (english: more works without corruption)

Oh yeah, nazi woman are kids' heroes (english: my little heroes: Coco Chanel, written with only an N)

JSHDSFSDKJFDFSHGJSD ENGLISH LEFT MAGAZINE: CONFIRMED, THE ETS (STDs) ARE THE DEMON WITH IMAGES OF AN ALIEN IN HELL FOR SOME REASON AND NEXT TO IT A BTS ALBUM, IF YOU TAKE YOUR TIME LOOKING AT THIS PHOTO IT BECOMES WORSE WHEN YOU KNOW THE CONTEXT OF THE OTHER NEWS IN THE CAPTURE.

Context of the last two screenshots of my stories: me complaining and laughing about moaning sounds at 2 am in the hotel and a friend replying me it's him all nights but with ghosts screaming and cats fighting instead. 

I wish you like it and save money for me to get back! 💕

Instagrams: @talia_pendeja_pride (drawings)

@molotovist_gyaru (gyaru)

PD: y qué tanta wea, que Perú anexe Chile nomá, tienen más cultura entretenida que nosotros XD