Sillustani

Okay, so I have gotten a little behind in the blog updates, which is a damn shame because by now, after being back in the US for about a month, I will have forgotten many of the details that made my final weeks in South America so magical. However, we must proceed.

Mom and I spent our first full day in Puno wandering the streets in some sort of a.m. downpour. Luckily for us, the weather cleared up in the afternoon just in time for our trip out into the surrounding countryside to visit Sillustani, the site of some pre-Inca and Inca funerary towers. The weather, and the site, were beautiful; the hills were green, the sky blue and cloudy, and the towers popped up at odd intervals along the hillsides. We wandered around the site and appreciated the towers in all their states of destruction. The pre-Inca towers were basically piles of rock, and the Inca towers, of course, were masterful works of carefully carved and polished stones forming perfect cylinders.

Part of the site, seen at a distance.
One of the towers had been struck by lightning, and half of it had come crashing down. It was later discovered that the basalt rock used had metallic properties, which made it vulnerable to lightning strikes.

Here is the rubble from the accident with the lightening.

A small lake and some farmland, as seen from the top of the hill where many of the funerary towers still stand.
More remnants.
The best part of my day was when Mom asked the guide why the Inca towers were constructed with ridges near the tops. The guide told her the towers were phallic in nature, in keeping with the belief that the next realm of being was feminine and would descend to collect the souls of the dead. After the guide left, I looked at mom and said, "He basically just told you that the Incas wanted to ejaculate their souls into heaven!" We cracked up, because we love penis jokes!

You can see the phallic ridge in question in this close-up of the tower destroyed by lightening.

The larger basalt rocks were carved to cover an inner layer of smaller stones. In the rubble, you can see how precisely the stones were carved.



Looking out from the other side of the hill on a beautiful lake.

On our way back to Puno from the Sillustani site, our tour group stopped at a local farm to give us some insight into the way of life of the local people. I tend to hate this sort of activity because it makes zoo exhibits out of people's lives, and you don't get a true sense of the local culture in 30 minutes in a setting that has been prepared for your visit. Also, there tends to be a pressure to buy crafts to support the families. It exhausts me. Unfortunately, our options were to take tours to get to most places, and these sorts of events are quite popular with tourist groups. Also, this one won me over because on the farm they gave us tastes of cheese, potatos, and some sort of delicious sauce and really, food is the way to my heart. Also, we got to touch guanacos and alpacas, and they are so cute. The guanacos are huge close-up; I was kind of scared. The whole scene was pretty idyllic and the people were very kind about being put on display. I imagine the whole arrangement is pretty lucrative for them as well.

The main house on the property. People often put small statues of bulls and crosses on their roofs to bring prosperity to their marriages and lives.
More structures on the farm.
We returned to Puno for dinner, and our dinner was interrupted by a cacophany of noise in the form of a marching band and a huge parade of dancing Peruvians. The festival of the Virgin of Candelaria was still in full swing, and we stood on the edge of the parade and enjoyed the festivities.

Music and dancing!