inti Raymi aka Fiesta Del Sol

10:30pm Sunday.

  A long and tiring day is behind us. We arrived at the main square just before 9am, in time to get a good seat (we actually stood) for the Inti Raymi festivities. Held annually on the 24th of June,as a celebration of the Winter equinox it has become more of a tourist attraction with some loss of its original religious overtones. 

   Like everything else around here the 9am performance commenced promptly at 10:20am. For an hour and a half we watched a series of costumed dancers parading through the square, interspersed with speeches, in the local Inca based language from key characters in historic costume.

(Sort of like watching an opera without the sur-titles.)

  Once that part of the festivities ended we returned to the hotel for a fast break before joining a massed assembly of thousands walking towards the historic site of Saqsaywaman, an Inca settlement and fortress 2km out of town (mostly just ruins) with walls comprised of massive blocks weighing several tons.

Here, the second part of the ceremony took place. While we were told that admission to this area was by paid ticket only, we could, in retrospect have sat on the neighbouring hills with the locals. The view would not have been as good, nor the seating, on stony ground, as comfortable.

Inti Raymi 2012_ Ritual Sacrifice

Dancers at Inti Raymi 2012

 The ceremony, lasting close to 2 hours was a re-enactment of the Inca Ceremony to the Sun God asking for support for the community and blessing for the harvest and the season to come. Grossly accurate in detail, it featured the ritual sacrifice of a llama, complete with removal of its heart and lungs. [I would assume from close up photos and conversations with people that the llama had already been killed and bled prior to the ceremony]

 It was conducted entirely in Inca but a supplied guidebook offered translations of the speeches into Spanish and English. Highly elaborate and involving upwards of 1,000 actors and dancers, it was, to say the least, spectacular.

Ceremonial Knife and bleeding cup_Larco Museum

 The walk back to down, was, again, a mob scene, but fortunately it was downhill, so less tiring than the road there.  The plan for tomorrow is to do a lot less than we did today, hopefully we stick to plan!