Day 27 – Tiwanaku
Sidetripped to Tiwanaku, a pre-Inca city that was center to an immense society lasting from 1500BC to 1200AD. They continued to conquer other cities until they occupied parts of Peru, Argentina, and Chile. Their territorial gains were evidenced in their art and ceramics as they added monkeys (when taking over peoples of the jjungle)and sea horses (people near the sea). They built huge monoliths 7 meters in height and many tons from stones which came from Lake Titicaca and they believe were tranported by reed boats. This city was the ceremonial centre of a highly advanced society with irrigation canal and medical knowledge. They built a flat topped pyramid, in honor of the world above, a middle temple to represent the earth, and a subterranean one to represent to world below, water etc. The spanish discovered the above ground temples in the 1500s and destroyed most to it in a hunt for gold and silver which they did not find. Also destroying references to the sun since it was contrary to the churchs doctrine. Fortunetly they did not find the underground temples so they remained in good shape and are still being excavated
Their monoliths and figures have etching representing the numbers of days of the year, weeks, hours and the doors are exactly aligned to correspond with particular solar and lunar events. Remarkable. While we were exploring, a nasty cold driving hail and thunder shower ensued and we were able to see in action, the intelligent drainage shoots and channels which still function today.
Throughly drenched, we went to a nearby town for lunch. My tourmates were argentine, brasilian and dutch. I attempted amix of portugueses and spanish and it worked well enough to communicate with my new brasilian friends. We headed back to La Paz and I retreated to my room for some mudfree clothes. One fortunate things about travelling in super uv protected, thousand pockets, zip off into shorts travel clothing is they are quick dry so you are not wet long but they still gather mud…
Ventured back out in the evening for a bite and ran into my border crossing bus friends, an american and a dutchman. We chatted and german giel who had met the dutchman in peru accidentally reunited and she had 2 canadians tagging along. So we made one happy intl group and headed further downtown to check out some live music at Mongos. I started chatting with the Canadian and lo and behold she was a R44 helo pilot up in the canadian bush! yeah, got to talk shop for a few hours and discuss why safety reporting systems really are not effective if you require 4 days worth of paperwork. Very excited about this and told her if I ever get back to my female pilot research, I was coming up to interview haha. I headed back in a cab with the two guys in the hostal nearest me. I told them I would walk from their dropoff to my place and they insisted on dropping me off instead. As we exited the cab, the guy told me one of the people in his hostel, maybe 4 blocks from me was mugged at knifepoint this week by 4 guys and they cut the straps and ripped the pack from him. He said there were other people on the street and noone stepped in, not that I blame them. He got up and ran after them, bad move. But it put me back on alert and I was glad they were considerate enough to risk walking home so I got dropped off doorside, Thanks guys!
Tags: Travel
dunlewey
Leave a Reply