La Vida de una gringa

Hey all. So I NEED to do a lil post about the trip we went on yesterday (Sunday). We went to Chinchero, Ollantaytambo, and Pisac. All three are Inca ruin sites...DUH! Jk...but what I have been surprised to find out is that many places in these parts have foundations that are Inca ruins. Pretty sweet.

So the first place we went was Chinchero. It was so damn cool! The tour guide like zoomed through this so I don't have a super lot of info about it cause he was in such a rush to get us everywhere he didnt really tell us much. WHICH I'm gonna take a second to vent about. Our tour guide was so sassy to us about hurrying and I wanted to say to him I know YOU'VE been here a million times but this might be the only time I go so let me take my damn time! I was so annoyed and I don't think he liked me by the end of the day because I was always the last one on the bus but I have no regrets!
 

Natural & Gray-hair-Preventative Shampoo!

 Anyway, here's Chinchero. It's a very quaint and beautiful town. We started out by going to a little market where the native ladies showed us how they spun, dyed, and knitted/weaved alpaca wool. The wool was so soft and they have different types of colors and the black wool vs. the white wool feels different. As one of my friends said: "I just wanna bathe in it!" They use bugs, flowers, leaves, and many other things to dye their wool. They also use all natural shampoo to prevent grey hair! How cool! I wanted some but it wasn't for sale...too bad.

Yarn, and the things they use to dye each color!

To the left is a pic of all the colors they can dye the yarn. Most importantly the red one. See how its sitting on a bunch of whitish/gray looking things? Those are lil bugs. When you smush the bugs they it's seriously the brightest of red colors! They use that to achieve the red color of their yarn. Think about THAT next time you're knitting red alpaca-wool yarn! But then again, don't worry too much cause they wash it with that natural shampoo. Anyway, you can see the leaves, herbs, flours, and other types of things they use to dye stuff. Prettyyyyy kewl.
 

Weaving - they weave this 6 hrs a day til its finished!

Just chillen with some Inca ruins and cloudy mountains NBD

Me, just doin some awk posin' at Ollantaytambo

 Next up: Ollantaytambo! This, dare I say it, was my favorite site. I think...It's really difficult to pic a fave but this is the one I wanted to see. There is a cool background to this one. So...there was a Inca King. His name was Pachacuteq. This King had a daughter, I forget her name, and one of Pachacuteq's Generals was in love with Pachacuteq's beautiful daughter. So the General was all "Bro, lemme marry your daughter." And Pachacuteq was all "Sorry dude, you don't have the sun in your blood like us Royals." (Remember Incas loooooveeedd the Sun. Ollantaytambo's main attraction is the unfinished Sun Temple! The Royals believed themselves descendants of the Sun and therefore regular peeps, even Generals, couldn't marry in.) So the General was like "Man, screw yew." Kidnapped the daughter, and took her to Ollantaytambo. They faught and I think the General was captured and imprisoned for 10 years or something until Pachacuteq died. When the new King rolled up he was DGAF and allowed them to marry. Pachacuteq is probs rolling in is grave at that terrible rendition of that story I just told. Either way, you get the gist.

Now, if you zoom in on this pic, you can see the storehouses in the mountain. You can also see the profile of a god carved into the mountain. If you can't see it, sorry....I don't really know how to tell you to look for him except for his big nose and furrowed brow. Anyway if the architecture isn't breathtaking enough, the mountains sure are. I would never want to leave if I were an Inca and lived in a bad ass place such as Ollantaytambo! I just wish I could go back in time and watch the Incas live there for ONE day.

Six monoliths of the Sun Temple

These are the monoliths on the unfinished sun temple. The temple on this hill was built solely for religious reasons. It never got finished and historians and archaeologists are still wondering WHY. Now, our crabby tour guide told us that they used logs and ramps to get the monoliths up here. I don't believe them. Those are seriously just too huge to have been rolled up. It would've taken eons. True, it probably wasn't Ancient Aliens either, but those rocks are too big and too perfectly fit together to be CHISELED. But that's just my opinion...and I'm always right so...

  Okay this is one of the fallen over big ass rocks. Those grooves there on the edge were used for something, I forget the name. I think it was horizontal locking or something. But it was so they knew exactly how the boulders fit together and shows just how much thought went into building things like this. Very, very cool. I say that a lot...but it is! I wish I could bring everyone here to show them just how perfectly these rocks fit together, but alas, I can only take pix. The one below this little paragraph is an example of how well these were built. You can't fit a human hair between those cracks. Keep in mind that these rocks weighed tons and weren't from around the area. Cray-zee. Also that little nub was used to monitor the direction of the sun. These dudes were OBSESSED with the sun/sky. And for good reason! The Incas and the Mayans knew the celestial world better than we do today. I think it's funny some people call them a 'primitive culture' they probs would've laughed in OUR astronomers faces!

I just like captions but I don't have one for this one

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last, but certainly not least is Pisac. This
is another ancient Inca city. The most important thing here, to me, was their terraces. Each little terrace has 0.1 degree difference in temperature. This was obviously deliberate, and allowed the Incas to hybridize and grow crops at altitudes they normally couldn't. What smart little devils. I really am jealous of them. I wanna know how they did it and what tools they used because obviously it wasn't just shovels and pick-axes. I tried to ask the tour guide how the Incas could tell the 0.1 degree difference because that's too perfect but I didn't get a solid answer. Ah, well. After we saw Pisac, we went to a market and I got some sweet kicks and a back pack. I probably paid to much for them but I've spent like no money here so far so at this point I'm dgaf. To the right you can see me epically failing at trying to look really sweet. Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I have been tired and lazy and busy and a wee bit homesick. I will get my patooty into gear and start updating again regularly. Anyway. Love ya, miss ya, wanna kiss ya.
XOXOXO,
Lizzy

P.S! I EXPERIENCED MY VERY FIRST EARTHQUAKE TONIGHT WHILE SKYPING WITH MY PARENTS. IT WAS TERRIFYING AND CRAZY AND REALLY COOL. It wasn't so much of an earthquake it was more of a tremor. A 3.8 on the Richter scale. But I am a drama queen so I hyped it up and of course told FB and 8 million people liked my status about it. And by 8 million I mean like 11.