Inti Raymi Parte Dos

Inti Raymi, the Festival of the Sun, has been going on nonstop since I got here.  When I would go to the square in the morning, there would be a parade of dancers.  I would leave for hours and come back and there were more groups dancing and marching.  I have been told that there are over 1200 groups of dancers and I believe it.  Apparently every school and government department participates.  If they don't dance, they simply march.  My favorite was the department of engineering.  They wore suits and hardhats.  I was also told that costume rental shops make all of their money in the month of June.

 

 

 

The Inti Raymi festival lasts for ten days and there were always thousands of people in the street watching the parades.  I asked my teacher how there could be so many people there and she said: oh, no one really works in June.

The final day is June 24 which is a national holiday and everything is closed.  There is a cast of over 800 actors who perform the various Inca roles as well as dance.  It starts at 9 in the morning at the Inca temple of Coricancha.  Of course the Spanish built a church on the ruins.  I was told to be at Coricancha at 8 if I wanted to see but I didn't listen.  I got there after 9 and there were rows of people ten deep all around the plaza.  I could barely see anything.

Coricancha

 Then the parade moved to the main square.  I got there nearly and hour before the Incas got there and had to stand in my spot or I would lose it.  By the time the parade arrived, it was ten deep behind me and I couldn't leave if I wanted to.  When the parade finished in the main square, it moved to the Sacsayhuaman, the large Inca ruins on the hills above Cusco.  The thousands of spectators walked up the hill.

 
The natives sat on the hillsides while the tourist bought outrageously expensive tickets to the main event in a grassy area the size of a football field.  At the far end of the Inca ruin is, of course, el Cristo Blanco, the White Christ which overlooks the city and is visible every night.

Then the costumed characters marched in while the religious leaders chanted and symbolically sacrificed a goat's heart.  After two hours of chanting and dancing, there was a final procession as the Inca waved to the crowds.  And apparently there is a Mrs. Inca as well.

 

I do have to say that this was pretty spectacular although I have seen enough Inca dancing to drums and recorders to last me for quite a while.  And now that things have quieted down in Cusco, I can walk around and visit some of the sites.

Inti Raymi

I arrived in Cusco yesterday in time for the biggest celebration of the year:  Inti Raymi.  Inti Raymi means Sun God in Quechua and this festival is held for ten days around the winter solstice, culminating on June 24, which I don't understand since the solstice is today.  In the afternoon yesterday there was parade of floats.  They seem to be made of paper mache and were ... weird.  Oh, well, I liked it better than all those Catholic parades of full of Jesus and Mary.  Apparently the theme was about protecting the environment, but a lot gets lost in translation.  I don't think I understand the Peruvian sense of humor.

The sign says:  Baby Einstein.  My mother ate iron (heavy metal?) when she was pregnant.
I don't get it.

A Monopoly board with the names of foreign companies that are doing business (and ruining the environment?) in Peru

  

After the parade, they set up a huge stage in front of the cathedral in the main square and had a sound and light show:  a big concert followed by fireworks.  I think everyone in Cusco was in the main square.

When I got to the square this morning, there was another big parade but it was already too packed to sit in the front section near the VIP seats.  There were bleachers set up on the side of the square.  I figured the marchers had to go somewhere - they couldn't be like the band in Animal House - so I sat down on the highest bleacher.  Perfect seat.  Men in suits were marching together and ended right in front of me where they took group pictures on their iphones.  Turns out they were alumni classes from various high schools.  I guess this is their homecoming week.

Then it turns out I was wrong:  it was like Animal House.  Bands and groups of dancers started coming from the other direction toward a marching army platoon.  I was curious to see who would win.  Well, I guess if the Incas can change the direction of a river, which like the Chicagoans they have done, changing the direction of a parade is easy.  There were dozens and dozens of dance groups in colorful costumes accompanied by drums and recorders.  It went on for hours.  I left to take a two and a half hour walking tour and when I came back, they were still going.  And they didn't just march.  They stopped and danced on each side of the square, so again, my seat was perfect.  I was facing the sun, so my pictures aren't great.

The musicians resting after the parade

The walking tour I took was interesting mostly for the make-up of the group:  eleven Westerners and I was the only American.  Three young couples from Switzerland, Germany, and Lithuania, and solos from Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Denmark.  We walked around the central area that I had already explored yesterday, but the guide was able to answer a lot of my questions.  Although even he could not make sense of the Baby Einstein float for me.  They have really different street food here, so I needed someone to tell me what it was.

Back to the Costco connection ... It's not perfect because there is no "t" in Cusco, but it is pronounced like coscoh and ... it means navel or center of the universe in Quechua.  The Inca symbol is a three tiered cross, so of course the Spaniards thought they were already Christian.


The cross does not, however, represent an ancient method of execution.  It represents the four corners of the Inca empire - north, east, south, and west, with Cusco in the middle as the navel of the world.  We all knew that Costco was the center of the universe.

Ollantaytambo, Pisac, and Macchu Picchu

Yesterday I visited the two largest Inca ruins in the Sacred Valley and today I went to Macchu Picchu.  The ruins at Ollantaytambo are a short walk from my hotel and they tower over the town.  They consist of rising terraces with a structure on top of six huge stones.






Pisac is quite similar.





Europeans built cities on rivers and ports to facilitate trade and to have easy access to supplies.  The Incas built cities on top of mountains for protection.  An interesting trade-off.  But the Incas were also self-sufficient agriculturally because they terraced the mountains and were thus able to grow sufficient food.  And they developed a sophisticated system of irrigation and water drainage.  Water still flows from the original fountains in Ollantaytambo.  Finally, they built warehouses on the sides of the mountains that stayed cool from the air circulation.  Supposedly the warehouses contained enough food for five years so they could not be defeated by siege.

One common feature of all of the sites is the Temple of the Sun.  In each place there is a room designed for light to shine through certain window or to cast a particular shadow for a few seconds on the winter solstice and the summer solstice.

But of course the most interesting feature of the Inca sites is the stone construction.  Like Roman structures, the stones are placed on each other without mortar.  But the stones are not merely piled on each other; they nest together in both straight and curved lines and are linked on the inside like legos.  You cannot fit a piece of paper or a blade of grass between the stones.  The "ruins" remain in perfect condition because they cannot be knocked down, even in an earthquake.  The Spanish conquistadors destroyed the simpler structures, but even the terraces are so well designed that they remain to this day.

So the big question is:  how did the Incas build these incredibly sophisticated walls and buildings.  Mostly with manual labor.  They used stone and soft metals but did not have iron.  They also neglected to invent the wheel so did not use pulleys for lifting.

And the second big question is:  how do we know any of this?  Well, a lot is speculation.  The Incas also did not invent paper or a system of writing.  They did have a system of mathematics that involved cords and knots, but no one today knows how to "read" it.  Macchu Picchu was deserted by the Incas and never seen by the Spanish.  Our limited knowledge of the Incas comes from Spanish recordings of Inca oral history and traditions, and the Spanish had no reason to be accurate.

But who cares?  This is just one of those things that you have to see.  Here is the piece de resistance:  Macchu Picchu including one bad picture with me to prove that I was there.  I am standing in front of the Sun Gate, the entrance to Macchu Picchu from the Inca Trail.  The site is far below in the distance.

Last interesting fact about the Incas ... There are no such people.  "The Inca" was the king, so there was only one Inca at a time and only a handful during their three century dynasty.  There is a different Quechua word for the people that I can't remember.  Today the natives are called "andinos."

Sacred Valley of the Incas

It took the Spanish Conquistadors four years to overrun the Aztecs in Mexico but the Incas in Peru held out for forty years and won some significant battles because ... there are mountains here.  Riding a horse in full armor at 10,000 feet does not get you very far.  Cusco sits at over 11,000 feet but just below Cusco there is a beautiful valley - el Valle Sagrado de los Incas.  I had decided to come here first to acclimate to the altitude since it is only about 8,000 to 9,000 feet in elevation.
















I got to Lima on Monday night, making a ten minute connection in Newark, but my luggage did not.  On Tuesday I few to Cusco and was driven immediately to Ollantaytambo, a small Inca town of 3,000 people at the far end of the valley.  There are rumors that my bag will catch up with me tomorrow, but I'm not betting on it.  Clean clothes are overrated anyway.  I bought a new shirt today at the local market, although there is not much selection in a town this small.

Today we visited the Inca experimental farm at Moray.  No one is quite sure how they dug out the hillside and terraced it so perfectly.  Each level down is half a degree warmer, so the Incas were able to develop new varieties of plants that could grow at different altitudes.  There are only fourteen varieties of corn here, but ninety five varieties of potatoes.  That does not include sweet potatoes which, of course, are not potatoes at all.  I needed to know all about potatoes.



Then we went to the salt mines.  A very small stream of warm salty water flows out of a certain mountain.  They think there is a sodium deposit in the mountain.  The water is fed into small individually owned sections that are only about ten by twenty feet.  For a month the water evaporates and the salt crystallizes.  Then the owners harvest it and start all over again.  There are only narrow walkways between the pools, so everything has to be carried up and down by hand.  And there are three layers of salt - the flower (top and best), pink salt (middle), and dark salt for medicinal purposes at the bottom.  This was really fascinating.





We also stopped at a shop where women weave clothes and blankets from sheep's wool and alpaca using only natural dying.  They showed us how they used plants and seeds to dye the wool.  Call me a city girl, but it did seem rather magical they way they put nondescript leaves into water, dipped in the wool and it instantly changed colors in front of my very eyes - and not necessarily to the color of the leaves or seeds.

The most interesting thing I learned today:  in the local Quechua language, Cusco is pronounce Costco.  Duh.  Of course.