Day 143 - Naughty Nuns
After a sleep in from a big three days, today we visited the Santa Catalina Monastery. This huge place dating from 1580 occupies an entire city block. There is still a closed section for nuns on one side of the block, but the rest of the old section has been opened to tourists as a way of generating revenue (except for a couple of sections that are still considered dangerous due to earthquake damage). For about the first three centuries of the monasteries existence pretty much only the richest families could afford to send their daughters here due to the extensive entry requirements, including a huge list of items that must arrive with the aspiring nun, for example candelabras, statues, paintings and rugs.
Each nun had between one and four servants (or slaves) and it sounds like along their Godly duties, they mostly partied! That was until 1871, when the Pope sent a strict nun from the Vatican to send all the riches back to Europe and free the servants, giving the nuns the option of returning to the outside world or staying on as nuns - proper nuns.
A nun’s kitchen in her cell.
A typical cell.
The ‘Clay Pot Laundry’, where the nun’s servants wash clothes.
A typical narrow street within the monastery complex.
Restoration works in the chapel to peel back the plaster and reveal the intricate paint and gold leaf work underneath.
Although there was a nice little cafe inside the monastery, we opted for the Moroccan restaurant we had spotted in one of the surrounding streets.
Big tasty Moroccan lunch ready for our night bus to Cusco.
Some souvenir shopping – a lady intricately carving patterns into a dried and painted piece of fruit. Hmmm… don’t tell customs!
Boarding the bus was quite an experience, first they took video of each passenger in line, then checked our passports and tickets before finally fingerprinting each passenger!! At least we felt safe as we tried to get some sleep.
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