Cusco, Peru

Sun Temple in Cusco (Spanish Church on top of Inca Temple)
We're in Cuzco, the Inca capital city at 10,700 feet. Today we visited the fortress on top of the city, where most of the bottom wall (out of 3) is still intact. All the workmanship is beautiful, these huge blocks, some 120 tons in weight all closely matched and placed without mortar. This fortress was built to protect the Inca capital from the Chunka, another tribe. We climbed to the top to get a beautiful view of the city and the 20,000 foot peak off in the distance.

From there, we had a medicine man perform a ritual cleansing ceremony. He is a shaman from a small village in the mountains. (It took him an hour walking and an hour by bus to join us.) He took many herbs, and various foods (candies, cereal, alphabet soup with our initials, animal crackers and coca leaves) to create a package. He then wrapped this all up blew on it several times and swiped it around our bodies and asked us to blow 3 times (to give it our spirits). It was then burnt to cleanse us of our problems. Very interesting.

After that we had lunch at the home of a middle class family, Grandmother, Father, Mother, Sister, and all their children. They had a 4 bedroom home (with beautiful ceramic and parquet floors). And yes, we had guinea pig as part of our main entry - a real treat here. We also had a local juice made from a purple corn. And of course, other vegetables that were in season. An interesting time.

Finally, the day ended with a trip to the Temple of the Sun. At one time, this was the main temple for the Incas covered with 700 sheets of gold (which the Spaniards looted). Once again the stone work was amazing. While the Spaniards built a church on the foundation, they actually couldn't dismantle the lower part of the temple. And it has now withstood 3 major earthquakes (the last in 1950 which was 7.0 on the Richter scale). Most of the stone have a tongue and groove fit and those that don't are joined by bronze - no masonry again.