A Salute to the Sun - A Fiesta Del Sol - Inti Raymi!

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June 26th 2010

Published: June 29th 2010

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Mark copolo

Inti Raymi Parade!

Trying desperately to catch up on this blog before my next big adventure (in the jungle!) ... Here we go:

23/06 (continued..)
The colectivo from Ollantaytambo dropped us off in Plaza San Fransisco (a bit off of the tourist part of Cuzco and filled with ice cream and other food vendors) and we made our way toward our hostel. Our path was blocked by a parade that would make the thanksgiving day parade look like a funeral procession - it was the day before Inti Raymi, which takes place on June 24th.

In case you are a bit rusty on your international pagan festivals, I´ll fill you in. Inti Raymi is officially a reenactment of the Inca ritual worship of the sun god. It takes place on the winter solstice (the Incas put the winter solstice on June 24th, while modern scientists put it on June 21st... but how can you blame them? They didn´t exactly have google to search on.), the day when the sun is the furthest from the earth and the focus of the festival is to ask the sun god to return to earth once again. The festival is Peru´s biggest and attracts 200,000 people

Inti Raymi Parade!

from all over Peru and the world.

The festival is unofficially a week long, culminating on the 24th, and the parades, parties and llamas are endless! Well, one llama is not endless - the festival ends with a sacrafice of a llama to the sun god - these days replaced by a convicing fake llsms. The parade is made up of many indiginous groups from all over Peru, sporting their local colors, traditional clothing and sometimes favorite pet llama or sheep.

We wandered around wide-eyed, trying to get through the crowd towards our hostel but our path was blocked by thousands of parading peruvians. Another great part of this festival was the myriad of street food available - from the usual ice cream, bread and fruit to the unusual purple-corn-juice, empanadas, and popcorn. Later we would discover these are only the snacks, during meal times certain areas are chosen as open-air-cafaterias and DIY-entrepreneurs set up double burners attached to gas canisters and cook up their favorite dishes to serve to people walking by who come to sit down on their little stools. These meals include roasted meat and potatos, corn and cheese, rice/egg/potato combinations, and lots more -

Inti Raymi Parade!

the drinks include the afformentioned chicha (corn jjuice), this great corn-based drink that I don´t know the name of, and juices like fresh pressed orange or sugar cane juice.

We eventually found our hostel, checked in and soon ventured out on a quest. This quest was to find a specific cuzco ingredient for Roxana, who asked that I find and pick up for her - the ingredient is called Machica de Habas and is something like corn meal and used to make the delicious drink that I mentioned above. To find this we went, as instructed, toward the local fresh market - fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, cheese, etc - the market also had sections for dried goods, TVs and haircuts. I got gutsy enough to ask a few vendors to photograph their booths and so you´ve got a few photos here to see for yourself. We found the machica without too much trouble and made sure to sample some local fruit - Sara got to try some of them for the first time and they were delicious.

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I wrote that a few days because its hard to spend lots of time on blogging, so I've decided to