PLAZA DE LAS ARMAS

Plaza de Las Armas is the main plaza in Cusco, Peru. It is also where most of Cusco's parades and important gatherings take place. It is thus the location where festivities for Inti Raymi and Corpis Cristi take place. Most photographs and videos that I post this blog in relation to these holidays were shot in La Plaza de las Armas

It is also the most popular plaza for tourists who are getting on and off of buses, going for strolls, taking pictures. In general just doing tourist-like things. Due to the high volume of tourists there are also numerous vendors who stroll circles around the plaza on foot selling various items that can be bought in every street-corner in the touristy part of Cusco (image sunglasses, alpaca hats, hand carved gourds, dolls, sunglasses, cigarettes, people selling their paintings, young boys selling shoe-shines). And somebody every minute stops to ask me to buy because I am obviously a gringo with my beard and light skin and alpaca sweater with a a design of Alpacas knit across it.

There are stray dogs that approach you sitting on a bench to curl around your feet that are a good idea not to touch because of the diseases they carry, so I make a compromise and pet them with the sole of my feet. There is on dog that is grey, missing tufts of hair, with one wayward bobbing eye that I see every day, that travels from person to person like the vendors do.

All that I want to do is sit on a bench and people watch, or read or write. But the persistance of one person after another asking me to buy something I don't need, distracting me from my tasks, seeking me out for my gringo-ness, speaking only in bad English because they assume I don't know a word of Spanish because with a gringo this is likely the case, that some people's persistence leads them to shove their paintings in my face and ask repeatidly why I don't want to buy, telling me that he hasn't had a sale all day and therefore hasn't been able to eat.