You sound like a drooling semi-verbal mental patient trying to check out of a hotel, but you understand every word of Mass.

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I was sitting on a bench in the little churchyard near my hostel, following Paul Theroux’s never-ending progress towards Patagonia, when I heard a brass band in the distance.  “Ah, Cusco.  So much character!” I thought, turning back to my book.  Theroux is in Buenos Aires, eating steak with Borges. 

The band was coming closer; they were right up the block now.  I closed The Old Patagonian Express and waited to see whether they’d come out into the square or turn a corner, out of earshot again. 

A second later a religious procession spat itself out of teensy little Cuesta San Blas and into the church square.  In addition to the brass band, several men carried a gilded altar covered with roses and topped with three crosses draped with heavily embroidered golden cloth.  An ornate doorway opened behind them, right across from where I was sitting, and the procession filed in. 

I couldn’t see what was in there, but the door stayed open.  A choir picked up where the horns had left off.  The door was still open.  What was in there?  I saw two backpackers with short shorts and dirty hair wander in, which I decided meant that it was OK to go inside.  Everyone knows backpackers are heathens.

It was a tiny chapel, painted from floor to ceiling and covered in mirrors (they say that Andean colonial churches were decorated with mirrors to impress the indigenous people and tempt them into the sanctuaries where they could be converted).  There were dainty statues of Jesus, Mary, and the saints, dressed in velvet and ringlets, looking like a morbid collection of Madame Alexandre dolls.  Nothing  much seemed to be going on, and the backpackers were still in there (along with the rest of the procession, now a congregation), so I grabbed a pew.  I was pretty sure some sort of church service was going to happen, but there was no priest in sight, and it was Monday morning.  I was glad for all the Catholic iconography - clearly it wasn’t going to be some kind of born again recruitment session. 

I was still gaping at Suffering China Doll Jesus bleeding on the cross when the priest arrived and everyone stood and started singing hymns.  So it was a church service.  And I was trapped in this pew by a large indígena woman and her voluminous skirts.  It would be disrespectful to flee, as the other backpackers were now doing.

So, Mass.  En Español.  Apparently I can totally do this.  I understood everything, and even remembered the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish.  It occurred to me how much of my language learning, I mean the first time around, when I was a toddler, happened in church.  A church service is a perfect language lesson.  About an hour long, repetitious, pertaining to a single somewhat obvious topic, and with lots of opportunities to throw in weird new words your parents probably don’t use at home, like “salvation”, “psalm”, and “hallowed be thy name”.  

I sat through the rest of my lesson, and then after Mass I dashed to the cafe on the other side of the square for a Coca Leaf tea.  Which felt wonderfully rebellious, even though Coca (in unprocessed leaf form) is not considered a drug here at all and is totally legal.  Hallowed be its name.