Ingapirca

Before any serious sightseeing and certainly after a Shaman Tune-Up, a good traveler needs to take on provisions.  Since we were in the market anyway, we grabbed a little bite of Wilber from the tray, typically served with the large white maize that looks like hominy.  I was still buzzing from my Shaman treatment and now well fed.   As arranged by my distinnguished host, our driver met us outside the market for a road trip to Ingapirca, the site of some ruins to the North of Cuenca.  Ah, the luxury of traveling by private car!!  

We headed North on the Panamerican until we reached the town of Biblian and thence branched onto a two lane road that climbed into the high Andean countryside.  The same incredibly steep fields of potatos, pasture land and wind whipped hamlets perched on improbable slopes.  An hour and a half from Cuenca we arrived at the Archeological site of Ingapirca.

Ingapirca is an series of Incan ruins which were built on top of Canari ruins.  The Canari culture existed from about 500 CA until the culture was finally engulfed by the Inca culture just prior to the fall of the Inca at the hands of the Spanish conquistadores.  The last uprising of the Inca was finally put down py the Spanish in 1572.  

The Canari were known for their effective resistance to the Inca, both culturally and militarily.  The Canari eventually succumbed to the growing Inca empire and the Inca appropriated Canari villages and structures as there own.  The Inca added to or modified the Canari structures to suit themselves, and thus there are sites such as Ingapirca 

While wandering around ancient ruins is educational and interesting,  I have to admit that after visiting archeological sites in many parts of the world, ruins are ruins.  At least as much fun as walking the grounds was our interaction with some of the members of a local school field trip.  The girls just had to have their pictures taken with the big Gringos.  

El Gringo in munchkin land.  No, this is not trick photography.

Some things just don't change that much.

The closer set stonework identifies this as later inca craftsmanship.

After an hour of wandering the grounds, it was back to the car and the return trip.  Our driver detoured over the old unpaved route, with occasional stops for traffic jams.

Bad traffic on the backroads.

The clouds were building in the afternoon sky as we dropped back down to Biblian and a stop at the large church set high above the townsite.  The church is built into a rock face with the backwall of the church being the cliff itself.  Walking up the endless stairs to the top of the rock, we started seeing large beetles laying on their backs.  We  figured out that the halogen lights used to illuminate the church at night were also incapacitating the beetles.  They were all dead or dying, including the large rhinocheros-type beetle that Señor Hansen insisted on aiding.  After numerous tries to flick the giant insect right-side-up, he picked the thing up to set it on it's feet.  For his good intentions he was promptly  rewarded with a good solid pinch from the thing, which produced a fine bit of arm waving and curses.  Not from the bug, from the man.  

La Inglesia

The reward for the climb.  Beetle pinches were a bonus.

Our sight-seeing day had come to and end and our relaxing day was about to begin.  Returning to Casa Luxurious, we spent the late siesta on the balcony watching the world go by.  Evening brought hunger and this was sated with a carnivore's fiesta at a local grill place just across the river.  Meat, meat and more meat, enough to cause a healthy hombre's colon to shudder.  I may be forced to adopt a militant Seattle veganism as penance for all of the critter consumption I have engaged in on this trip.

I received another sound thrashing or two on the cribbage board before we gave up in favor of camaraderie and cigars.  I can only take so much humiliation in one day, Lady Luck having spit in my eye with the vigor of an Ecuadoran Shaman Woman.