What I Learned Today

Boy, we had another long day today. Just got back at 9:30 pm after an 8:30 am start. Gotta say we're getting our money's worth. Today we hit the Archeological Museum, sorta, but because there was a power outage we did not see much of it. Instead we went to the Larco Museum, where we saw beautiful gardens and the most amazing private collection of pottery along with some truly special Incan burial adornments.

The room above is just one of many of the storage areas for pottery not on display. It's all sorted by subject matter; falcons, fish, monkeys, jaguars, men, women, children, foods like corn, beans, snakes, potatoes, etc, etc. If it was part of Incan life, it is probably represented here.

Here is just a small sample of the pottery which actually is on display.

These are some of the golden headpieces and adornments worn by the Sapa Inca; which is the head cocky-doodle of all Incans. The title was passed from father to son, and was considered to be a demi-god. You piss him off, you were the next day's sacrifice.

If you look at the above pottery closely, you will notice the fish shaped boat is carrying an Incan warrior with a vanquished enemy tied up on the tail of the fish. The pottery itself has a narrow spout on top, which was used to collect the blood of the actual vanquished warrior when they slit his jugular, and then they placed the body on the boat and set him off to sea. Yep, that kind of sacrifice.

Next we attempted to learn the Inca concept of time. Unlike our time, with a past, present and future occuring in linear order, the Inca time consisted of parallel past, present and future. And you could travel from the corresponding point of your present to the same point of your past (or future) when you wanted. So, we tried really hard to grasp this and then decided it was probably just chewing too many coca leaves.

We next traveled across the city to the main cathedral, whcih unfortunately does not allow photos, somall you get is the exterior and a few shots of demonstrators, sidewalk vendors and a kapok tree. Yes, the same stuff they used to put in life jackets and pillows.

The ladies are selling fruits, which the older woman is cutting up and then the two daughters carry the trays around on the streets selling to the cars. The man is selling roasted corn from his cart.

Last but not least, we head off to Ollantaytambo early tomorrow. I don't know if I will have wifi or cell service or not, so may have to do limited posts or maybe nothing at all for the next three or four days. But I will be taking notes and pictures to post when I can.

p.s. We think Barbara and Gigi were right that the black seeded fruit was a relative of a dragon fruit. But yellow, so Fredy thinks it was perhaps also related to a passion fruit. It was very sweet.