Thursday, May 26, 2011

Today we visited El Museo Nacional de Arqueologia, Antropologia e Historia del Peru. The museum housed artifacts and ceramics that were from the Chavin Empire to the Incan Empire. I was incredibly excited to tour this museum and was looking forward to our hour and a half walk through. Our guide, however, was the worst in the world. We blew through the museum in 25 minutes. Her tour was miserable, as she seemed incredibly angry that she had a group of Americans. When we first were grouped with her, I saw her roll her eyes and get disgruntled. The tour continued as follows: “This is a statue. These are Chavin ceramics. This is a piece of pottery. Next room, chicos. These are textiles. These are pictures of how they restore the textiles. These are tools. These are some more tools for textile work. Next room. These are models of mummies. Mummification was important. Next room. This is a model of Machu Picchu. The lights don’t work so we’ll skip this. These are ropes with knots. The End. Goodbye.” She spoke so softly and quickly and didn’t wait for our group to fully gather around her before she started explaining things. I found myself falling back and taking it upon myself to read everything. Our guide clearly didn’t give two hoots about our experience so I made my own.