One day we made our way to the Southern Valley of Cusco (where few go actually) on our way to my primary goal--the grass bridge Q'eswachaka. Along the way we stopped at the San Pedro Apóstal de Andahuaylillas Church which is know as the Sistine Chapel of the Andes. Honestly I wasn't expecting much and both Leo and I had already had our fill of Catholic art but we were both pleasantly surprised. It was quite impressive. I really liked how it looked very folk-art-ish.
Here's an article about it from the Smithsonian. It talks about how much Inkan religious symbolism is in the church.
Another place we went that day was to Pikillarqta, a Wari (Pre-Inkan) city or religious site or something (they're not very clear) that was used from 550 to 1100 AD. A lot of the site has been looted extensively--hence why it's not well understood. It's over 34 sq kilometers in size and the whole thing is enclosed by a double wall that's 2 to three stories high. I really liked that it was so empty of people--we were the only ones there besides archaeologists, and it was just so very, very different from the Inkan sites.
They did find these there, which again are so un-Inkan like (the cultures didn't overlap at all so really that's no surprise but when you're looking at Inka, Inka, Inka stuff it stands out as very different) that it was just neat to see. We kind of rushed through it though and the museum because really I wanted to get to the grass bridge.
See the double walls are just really cool. Felt very biblical, like walls of Jericho or something.
Pretty amazing that plaster from over a thousand years ago is still on the steps.
And then we came to my favorite site of the day and actually one of my favorites all together--Tipon. It's thought to be a place where the Inka worshipped water and held water ceremonies. According to Wikipedia " It contains enclosures, terraces and an intact canal. The upper complex is crossed by the Inca Trail with an irrigation canal. It was put on the List of Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks.
I loved this place! I mean Machu Picchu is incredible but Tipon is so elegant and artistic and fascinating because it's asymetrical yet so balanced. I loved the cascading waterfalls everywhere and it just was lovely. I'm sad now because in writing this I read that you could take a trail up and walk on one of the original Inkan roads (like on the Machu Picchu trek) that still has an aqueduct running in the middle of it. But we didn't do that because when we saw the trail up we didn't know where it led and again we were trying to make it to the grass bridge so we didn't want to spend to long. Anyway that's sad we missed it. I would have liked to have gone up there.
My pictures really do not do the place justice.
And this I just snapped while we were stopped on a street for a bit. After visiting all those places we made it within 40 mins of my grass bridge but it was getting dark and starting to rain, and our taxi driver was worried that his 1980's car wouldn't make it on a gravel road going over an Andean mountain in the dark in the middle of nowhere. And then once we got there I wouldn't be able to see it in the dark anyway. I may have cried a bit. But we turned around and headed back to Cusco. I guess I have to go back to Peru now.
This was Cesar, our taxi driver that drove us around almost the whole time. He was so, so nice. As we spent over 8 hours driving around with him we got to know him pretty well. If anyone is heading to Peru we have his number.
1 comment:
I'm sad you didn't get to the grass bridge too!! I looked it up and I would 100% love to go over it!
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