Thursday, May 29th, Continued:
Our afternoon was spent touring two different Incan ruins, Sacsayhuaman and Q’endo.
Sacsayhuaman (pronounced similar to “sexy woman”) is a large site of ruins that continues to baffle visitors, in the same way it baffled the Spanish conquistadors. The early Spaniards couldn’t believe how the walled complex came to be, and thus suspected it to be the work of the devil. This site is truly incredible because it consists of GIGANTIC stones, carved perfectly to fit together. The shapes of the stones are similar to the stones of Qorikancha, and were designed to withstand earthquakes. Researchers have proposed that it took over 100 Incas to move the larger stones (boulders, if you will), and that an intricate process of transportation was created and utilized in order to place stones on top of one another. That process, however, is still debated and discussed among scholars and town fo
(A large view of the site from above. Spectacular!!)
(We had to continue the tradition of group “jumping” pictures!!)
(For reference, the stones stood approximately 25-40 ft hight in the air!)
Each stone was carefully crafted to work with gravity and the shifting of the earth, in order to stay stable. Despite experiencing rather frequent earthquakes, the Incan sites remain sturdy and undisturbed. This site is at an altitude of 12,136 ft, and the stairs were still hard to hike! Needless to say our guide Carlos was always far ahead of us, pushing us to hike faster!
(This rock formation is Sacsayhuaman, and now acts as a slide for tourists. Our guide Carlos demonstrated how to slide down the rock. We then each took turns racing down the rock on our bottoms!)
We then huddled down and crawled through a small tunnel in the mountain in order to reach the other side of the mountain. We linked arms, and trusted one another as we crawled in file through the pitch black tunnel for approximately 200 feet. It was an oddly long crawl in the dark!!
This tunnel took us to the path to Q’endo, a giant stone formation that was used to help predict future events through the positioning of the sun. Behind this rock was a large slab of rock, under an overhang of cliff and mountain. Carlos instructed us to feel the difference in temperature between the wall of the cliff, and the slab of rock. The rock was noticeably cooler, despite having the sun shining on it. Carlos then explained that the slab was used to mummify important Incas. What a wonderful fact to learn after having touched the slab…!
Between these two main sites, we had a very long and exhausting day! Although we had hiked through the desert countless times before, we had not yet experienced the amount of stairs featured at each Cusco site. This was only the beginning!!
A Summer in Peru 