Bless this Jesus
Topic: Peru
Christmas Day was great fun full of cheesy gifts, good food (guinea pig for David, chicken for me), good company and too many pisco sours!

We walked up the hill to San Cristobal church in the morning. People from the local parish gathered outside. A brass band played and the poor queued up for tea, bread, panetone and donated toys for the children while their snooty-looking llamas waited for them in the nearby courtyard. Inside the dark church was a wonderful belen built on mountain terraces giving it an Andean feel.

The cathedral was the place to be on Christmas morning however. It was the first time that we had seen the front doors wide open. People were milling in and out even though the sermon was in full swing. Some people were in fancy dress. Many brought little little baskets containing a baby Jesus or two to be blessed by the priest. there were hundreds of them all over the steps in front of the pulpit. They were carefully dressed and resting on a silk bed. What's that all about? Well, our theory is that the catholics introduced this custom to the Incas in order to wean them off child sacrifices. This way, the Incas kept a sense of ritual and ceremony and no one got hurt.

Outside, after mass had finished, the people in fancy dress paraded and danced and sang their way through the streets of Cusco. At one point I was so excited about getting a perfect full on picture with no tourists in the way, that I tripped over the curb, landing on my camera and then sending it skidding along the pavement towards a bench where an old man sat in the sun. David tried to help me up but I just spluttered "my camera, my camera". I was hoping that the damage would be minimum but it is VERY badly damaged. I need to find somewhere to repair it. Ah well, at least I brought a back up camera with me but it isn't digital.