My Little Life Adventures: Famous Rock

07-08 Sep 2010

One thing that a traveler typically ends up doing is visiting historic sites in the countries she’s visiting. One walks around or drives around, either independently or following a tour guide, to see cathedrals, temples, monuments, statues, plazas, buildings, museums and ruins. Wandering around looking at tons of famous rock.

Peru is definitely a country where one can admire various sites of famous rock. The most well-known ones are the ruins of the former Inca cities and Inca sites of worship. Although the Spanish conquistadors did a good job at eliminating most important Inca sites and signs of Inca culture in particular in the area around the Inca capital of Cusco, they also used the sites to build their own buildings and religious sites. The cathedral in Cusco, for example, has been built on the site where Wiracocha’s (the last Inca) palace was at the time the Spanish won over the Incas and killed Wiracocha on the main square by attaching a horse to each of his arms and legs and pulling them off his body. The Spanish tore down most of the strong, earthquake proof stone walls designed and built by the Inca architects and used the finely carved stones as materials for new buildings. To reinforce the new culture, where old stone walls were left in place to serve part of a new building the walls were often plastered over to reinforce the new culture through common objects, artefacts, churches (new sites of worship) and buildings.

Cusco Cathedral

The Cusco cathedral was one of the most interesting places I visited. It has got a curious mix of local Peruvian and traditional Spanish catholic elements. For example, in the fresco of the last supper the food on the table is – a cuy (guinea pig) ! There are also some local fruit trees in the painting that do not grow either in Middle East nor in Spain.

Last Supper

In the centre of the cathedral, in the choir which was probably mostly used as the “meeting room” for the priests and bishops, there are beautifully carved cedar wood chairs. Some of the decorations on the seats are women with Peruvian facial features – and bare breasts and big bellies with clear belly buttons. This symbolism is probably referring to “Pachamama” (Mother earth), the most important god in Peru for the 4,000 years before the arrival of the conquistadors.

Choir in Cusco Cathedral

In another chapel in the cathedral there is a black statue of Jesus Christ known as “El Señor de los Temblores” (The Lord of Tremors/Earthquakes). He received the name in 1650 when Cusco was hit by a strong earthquake followed by numerous aftershakes. The story claims that when the aftershakes would not stop, the church organised a big procession on town carrying this particular statue of Jesus in the procession. This made the earth calm down and hence the statue has since then been called “The Lord of Earthquakes” and has a special place in the hearts of the citizens of Cusco.

As Incas also worshipped the sun, converting them to Catholics was not all straightforward. One of the elements that is seen in the altars of all catholic churches in Peru that I visited was mirrors placed around the altar. This was done to give the newly converted Catholics a representation of the sun. Often the altars even had a sun and stars constellation made of gold high on top of the altar, in addition to the mirrors.

The Inca citadels and temples – or their ruins – Qorikancha (The temple of the Sun) in Cusco and the two citadels in Pisac and Ollantaytambo also served as a good introduction to Inca architecture, way of life and how Incas cultivated vegetables and fruits on terraced lands on the hills around the citadels. The terraces on both sites are well preserved and restored. We also got a good understanding of how Incas made their most important buildings stand against earthquakes by the way they carved the stones, made the walls incline inwards at a carefully set angle, inserted tall, narrow vertical pieces of rock in between the bigger rocks to absorb shocks from earthquakes, used temperature changes (contraction when weather cooled down at night) to make pieces fall in place perfectly and carved them to fit each other - just like legos! Rocks were also carved and organized in place to depict the important Inca symbolism: Miniatures of surrounding mountains since mountains were considered gods, snakes such as Urubamba river in the sacred valley (snake was the guardian of the underworld), pumas (the guardian of “here” world), condors (the guardian of the above world) and for example llamas were still found in the ruins.

Pisac terraces

Legos! Ok, no, theyr are not legos, they're display pieces of rock at Qorikancha to show how Incas carved the rocks they used to construct the important buildings and sites

I was very impressed by all this famous rock that I was introduced to over the two days tours in Cusco. I cannot wait to get to Machu Picchu now that I’ve received a basic education to Inca culture, architecture and important symbols of the Inca religion!

(PS - the pictures of Cusco cathedral inside and outside are not mine - I've stolen them form the web since no pictures are allowed inside the cathedral haha!)