Vilcashuaman - Inca Ruins

Today we got up at the crack of dawn. Said goodbye to one of our housemates, Patti, as she went back to the states and we went to visit Inca ruins in the town of Vilcashuaman. This city was second in command for the Incan Empire. It is three hours south of Ayacucho. We got in our tour bus at 6am and drove 3 hours to our first stop at Largo Pumacocha.

Largo Pumacocha is home to Inca ruins. The largest were of bathing sites and different areas around the lake that were used for different ceremonies by the Incas. After walking around there we boarded Tio Pancho's row boat. He paddled me and 4 of my friends and a Peruvian woman back to the other end of the lake where the car was waiting to take us to

our next site.

Our next stop was the city of Vilcashuaman. During the time when the spanish invaded Peru they destroyed most Incan ruins, as they prayed to their sun gods, which isn't what they wanted, as they wanted to spread Catholicism. So it was quite surprising that the town still has as much ruins as it does. In fact its the second biggest site of Incan Ruins, after Macchu Picchu, and the only reason Macchu Picchu is still around is due to the fact that the Spanish didn't know it was there! Vilcashuaman was strategically placed in the conjunction between the Cusco-Costal road that ran east and west and the main Andes road that ran north and south.

We were very luckily our tour guide, Carlos, speaks english, because we got so much information and history about the Incan times and also about the influence the Spanish have had. This picture is of a catholic church that was literally built straight on top of the Inca sun temple. We were not able to go inside the church to see how, if any, meshing of the old Inca spiritual beliefs mixed with the Christian beliefs.

On the way home we stopped at a forest of Puya Raimondi tree forest. This cactus like tree

only grows in the mountains of Peru and Bolivia. The tree has a life span of 100 years and can grow up to 10 meters (32 feet) high. When the tree does flower it can have up to 1,700 flowers, a world record. The plant only flowers once in its life span then releases it seeds and dies. The trees are like nothing I have ever seen before! It would have been nice to see one in bloom and see where all the flowers fit, but unfortunately I was not able too.

All in all, it was a wonderful day, very long, but fantastic as the Incan times are so interesting. I think the worst part was driving there, as it was long and windy around the Andean mountain ranges.

The most adventurous part of the day was the driving around the itty bitty dirt roads. We were very precariously driving along cliff edges. At one point we drove over a little bridge made of wooden planks laid on the ground. Very scary when you're thousands of meters high!! Some of the girls had their seatbelts on...but i thought if we fell down that cliff, there would be no hope, regardless of whether we're wearing them or not! I have figured out this might be part of the reason the so many people are so devout to their spirituality here... it's out of necessity when you are driving or even walking around the streets of Peru :)