Old friend, is it snow? ❄🌻🌻❄

Sacred garden of the Coricancha temple. Spanish chroniclers describe it as a garden of golden plants with leaves of beaten gold, stems of silver, solid gold corn-cobs and 20 life-size llamas and their herders all in solid gold. Also many other animals like colibris, snakes, butterflies and even spiders formed a detailed garden of gold and silver. Gold was considered the "sweat pearls of the sun" and silver the "tears of the moon".🌞🌚

Coricancha "The Golden Temple" with Convent of Santo Domingo above. The Coricancha was the most important temple in the Inca Empire. It was destroyed during the Conquista. It must have been very impressive with lots of gold decorations. The remains form the foundation of the convent. There is a museum inside which also includes art collections (Cusco School and contemporary art). The green area is the sacred garden. The man in the white shirt is just leaving a small archaelogical museum, which is located directly under the garden.

That's on my way from Santa Teresa (Machu Picchu) to Cusco (capital of the Inca Empire). I traveled with a colectivo, that's what the collective buses are called in South America. The whole trip was an adventure. A little later, when it was already dark, we stopped in the middle of a winding road somewhere in the mountains. We had to push the bus for it to start again. Most of the other passengers, although native, hardly spoke Spanish. Not every Peruvian speaks Spanish as a mother tongue. Quechua is the most spoken language in some regions. When we finally arrived in Cusco, it was after midnight. I remember how excited I was when I finally got to the hostel.😁

Just a bark-eating zophoba beetle. In addition to isopods and springtails, they take care of the cleanliness of my corn snake terrarium. They cope better with the conditions in the terrarium than isopods and springtails. In the nature of their Central and South American homeland, they feed on guano from fruit-eating bats. In my terrarium they eat undiscovered remains of my snake. However, you should make sure that the zophobas don't take over. They could become a stress factor and life risk for the main residents. The larvae also like to eat styrofoam, from which many back walls are made. They eat almost everything! That's why it's important to keep an eye on it. Since zophobas pupate only in isolation, there is only a small risk of overpopulation (depending on the interior). Also, the larvae from the terrarium shouldn't be fed to other animals because this could spread diseases. If you notice that they become too many, you can put wet pieces of bark in the terrarium. An hour later you collect the bark together with the larvae and kill them friendly in the freezer. The easiest way is to collect the adult beetles and allow only a few to lay eggs. Because of these peculiarities, I cannot fully recommend it, but I have had good experiences myself. We're all pioneers with different experiences.

Berenike and nachos🔥🔥

Arsinoë 🙃

The "Trip Trap Layer Cake", created by the moths of my fur.

Today I sent another cheek swab to the DKMS ( German Bone Marrow Donor File, @dkms_de ).🤗 I was asked to do because they need to know if I was infected with the cytomegalovirus. This is a herpes virus, harmless to healthy people, but quite dangerous for weakened people, such as leukemia patients.
I registered as a stem cell donor 14 years ago. At that time, it already worked very simply with cheek swabs. You could easily order a set at home. The tissue characteristics are stored in a database and compared with patients who are waiting for a transplant. So far there hasn't been a sufficient match, so I haven't yet been asked to donate cells. If someone needs my help, I'm there!🙃✌ ⠀ ⠀
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(You aren't a bad person just because you don't! Tissue characteristics are sensitive data. I just want to raise awareness.)

I disturbed their sleep. 😶🐌🗯