Living among the Incas

Soooo… I live in Cusco. What??! The other day I was walking down a street near the plaza and it just hit me: This isn’t some place that I have to take a million pictures of all at once because I’m leaving in two weeks. This is my home for four months. I can relax, take my time, and do my best to be part of it instead of just observing it.

Terraces built by the Incas on the side of the mountain:
 Still strong after all of these years.

And to convince me even further that this is more than a temporary living arrangement, mis clases have begun. And all of them in Spanish. So pretty much what usually happens for me in class in the United States is that I zone in and out, casually doodle, whatever, but still get the general gist of what’s happening. Yeah, that doesn’t work so well here. If I don’t actively listen to every single word that my professor says, I have absolutely  no idea what’s going on. No more of that zoning in and out crap. Nope, every second of every class I have to be actively listening. Now starting to realize how spoiled I’ve been…

So yeah. That’s a blast!

Now moving away from the whining and onto how damn cool this place is…

An Inca sized doorway

Sometimes I look around myself and I’m struck by how absolutely ancient everything here is. Never in my life have I been surrounded by the intact remnants of such an early time. Even in the city of Cusco where you’d think that everything would have been covered over or torn down, I walk down streets on a daily basis that were paved by the Incas. Though the Spanish tried their best to make this city theirs, the big earthquake of 1950 revealed just how intelligent Incan architecture was when the colonial Spanish buildings all crumbled to the ground, revealing their ancient foundations.

Our guide demonstrating how smoothly
 the Incas were able to cut their stones.

Yesterday we all did the tourist thing and took a tour of the Sacred Valley (check facebook for more photos soon, I’d like to think some of them are pretty neat). As we went from ruin to ruin, I couldn’t help but be continuously amazed by how intricate and sturdy the work of the ancient people was. Nothing they did was a mistake. Every stone was carved with unrivaled precision so that the walls could withstand earthquakes and landslides and still stand thousands of years later. They believed that if they lived a respectable life, they would one day be reincarnated and given the chance to live in their magnificent cities once again, and so everything was made to last. Like really last. We still might not understand how it’s possible that such an ancient people had so much wisdom, but that doesn’t mean that every single act wasn’t done completely intentionally with a larger purpose in mind. Not many generations ago, parents told their children that these ruins were left here by extraterrestrials. Even the people who’ve been around these places their entire lives have a hard time understanding the integrity of these prehistoric cities.

The sun shines directly on this point during
both Summer and Winter solstices.

What I came to realize is that with all of our technology and modern trappings, I had assumed that we were somehow more evolved, more intelligent, more aware than our ancient counterparts. But as I looked closely at the remnants of their civilization, I realized that I had made a huge mistake. Stupid people don’t build Machu Picchu. Sometimes we think that older generations, or people who don’t speak our language, or
people of different ethnicities are somehow less than us. That they don’t understand the same level that we do. Seeing what these ancient people were capable of was a very healthy slap to the face: They’re just older, not dumber.

And then we went to a bar and I taught my Peruvian host brother how to play beer pong... Cultural diffusion at its finest.

Many more adventures to come!

Chau,

Hannah