The original plan for this morning was to meet our guide buddy at the Sacsaywaman ruins at 7:30am to get good seats for the festival. However, when we woke up it was pouring rain, and we had also found out that the ceremony at the ruins didn’t start until 1:30pm. We didn’t fancy sitting in the rain for six hours! So we slept in, had a leisurely breakfast at Jack’s, and wandered down to the Plaza to see if we could get the $20 tour which included a ride up to the ruins, a boxed lunch, and seats on the rock close to the action. It was more expensive than if we had just gone up on our own and found seats, but we were feeling lazy and figured the tour would be an easy way to go. Of course, the price had gone up since yesterday when we enquired about it, and it was now $25 per person. What the heck. The bus was leaving just as we were purchasing the tickets, so we were whisked off to join the tour. We arrived at Sacsaywaman around 11:30 and still had two hours to wait until the ceremonies started. I had time to read the program I had bought in the Plaza (in Spanish) so I knew what would be going on during the ceremony (which helped a lot, since the entire ceremony is performed in Quechua). The ceremony actually begins in the Plaza de Armas (we just caught the first part of it before we bought our tour tickets), and the “Incas” then proceed to Sacsaywaman where they continue the ceremonies that worship the sun. “Inti” means “sun” in Quechua, and “Raymi” means “festival”. There was a set of dancers representing each of the four “suyos”, or territories, of the Incan empire, as well as an Incan representative from each of the four territories as well. The representative gave the Incan King a report on what was going on in each of their territories, then there were dances performed by each of the groups, and then offerings made to the sun. Chicha offerings (chicha is a local home-brew), coca offerings, and finally the llama sacrifice. Up until a couple of years ago, they sacrificed a live llama, but now they just pretend to do it – it looked pretty real though! After sacrificing the llama, they rip out its entrails and use them to predict what would happened in the next season (i.e. would there be rain, good crops, etc.).

The ceremony lasted until around 3:30, at which point we had to exit with the masses of people, try to stick with our group, and find the bus. Jess, Phil & Kat decided they wanted to walk back to the hostel to see some more of the city, but Linc and I went on the bus since we had done that walk before, and we wanted to go to the Plaza and ask about bus tickets to Nazca for when we get back from the jungle. There were thousands of people at the ceremony, and many of the locals hung around afterwards in the fields around the ruins, having picnics and playing games. There was a traffic jam, so it took us a long time to get back, and the others who had walked made it back to the hostel before we did. Tonight we went to a vegetarian restaurant for dinner, which was really good and quite cheap.