Tiwanaku, or Tihuanaku, pre-inca culture.

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One of the great things of Bolivia is that in general you do meet many travellers and sometimes travel agents who give you a lot of travel tips. One tip, regarding the excavations at Tiwanaku (=Quechua, Tihuanaku os Aymara language, but I might have them mixed up again).

In short, the first Europeans who came here for very poorly executed excavations were looking for fame (not enough gold left for fortune), and described it as an Inca site. By now, everyone knows that it´s a pre-Inca culture, which lasted nearly 3,000 years (as opposed to the Incas, which didn´t last 300 years).

When you look at it, by luck of bad planning, we´ll be going through the next few weeks in a historically correct chronological order.

First the Tiwanaku culture/empire as a day tour, dating from approx 1500BC to 1200AD. In a few weeks, lake Titicaka with the Isla del Sol being the birthplace of the Inca empire. And a few weeks after that, Cusco and a trek to Machu Pichu, this being the end of the Inca empire.

Apparently most tourists, or people in general don´t know much about this site, so we can count ourselves a bit lucky. We were also lucky with a very knowledgeable and very much bi-lingual guide Edwin, who was very informative, not just about the site, but also in the 2 museums we visited. So much even, that his tour had to be done in a chronological order as well !

What else, well, comparing it with pictures of Machu Pichu puts Tiwanaku back to a dwarf like size, but the bolivians seem to be able to talk it up a bit, even mentioning that the surface area of their pyramid is larger than that of Cheops in Egypt! Of course it isn't as high..... Also, it's clear that the Boliviano isn't as strong as the peruvian Sole, as most of the excavations still need to be finished, or started, for that matter.

In the second museum we also saw the 8m high Pachamama statue, closed in in a badly lit room, and for some reason we were not allowed to make pictures (sneaked one in though). Strange, as the statue stood proudly for over 40 years in 2 locations in La Paz, and even got shot at during demonstrations. I'm sure a few flash shots won't hurt it that much more.

Finally, all that distance, and another (yet smaller) replica of Thor Heyerdahl's Kontiki raft. Seen it before in the same named museum in Oslo, so strange to see it here.

Come and see it all!

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