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Published: June 27th 2009
Qoricancha
Groups of performers and tourists getting ready for the first part of the ceremony.Wednesday's event was an all-day thing for us. We left the hotel around 8 and met up with a group at Qoricancha (pronounced coricancha) for the first part of the Inti Raymi festival. We were lucky and ended up with our tour guide from Sunday, which included both of the archaeological sites we would be at for the festival.
Inti Raymi was a religious ceremony of the Inca Empire in honor of the god Inti. It also marked the winter solstice and a new year in the Andes. For many years, locals have been producing the festival which is a huge tourist attraction. It starts at Qoricancha, then moves through the streets to the main square, Plaza de Armas, then heads up to Sacsaywaman.
The celebration has basically been going on since we got here. There have been daily parades and fun things to watch going on since we've been here, but it actually started before we got here. Now that the 9 day Inti Raymi celebration is done, it's quite quiet here in Cusco.
The majority of our time was spent up at Sacsaywaman for the theatrical ceremony. They erected a stage to look similar to what
it would have been during ancient times, but it was done with modern materials like Styrofoam painted to look like the rocks at the time. The king in the ceremony is played by a different person every year, and he must be Incan. Last year, it was some hot actor. This year it was a civil engineer. I'm not sure why we didn't get the hot actor.
During the ceremony, they have a staged Llama sacrifice to mimic what they would have done during ancient times, but without freaking out thousands of tourists. From what I understand, they carry a Llama up on stage, who is not pleased, then he squeals a bit, then they tranq him. Then they mimic the actions that the priest would have done, which is basically a cut down the right side of the Llama's chest, and they pull out organs to burn. Since Llama is regularly consumed here, I believe they went to the market in the morning and picked up the heart, intestines, etc. Good thing, although still kind of icky.
After the ceremony is complete, each of the groups performs dances from their regions. Quite cool to watch. And the
music (mainly wooden flutes/recorders and drums) has changed from the beginning of the ceremony.
After all is said and done, our group (and many thousands of others) tried to head back to Cusco. It took forever. Almost 2 hours, I think. We could have walked it faster. But on the way, our guide told us stories, so we enjoyed. We came across an area where locals were camping and celebrating Inti Raymi, and it was a great sight. And the smells from the camp fires were delicious! Pork, corn and potato, as far as I could tell.
The next day started our trek to Machu Picchu. More to come...
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