Inti Raymi

I arrived to Cusco just in time for the biggest Inca festival of the year. Inti Raymi (Fiesta del Sol, or Festival of the Sun) is celebrated on the winter solstice each year and everyone comes from all over the world for the party.

My bus arrived on Saturday afternoon, so I checked into the Loki Hostel (yes, back at party central) and headed down to the Plaza de Armas where the warm up parade was already well underway. Groups of musicians and dancers were all dressed up in their traditional costumes. Many of the groups had bands playing the wind pipes and big drums, with the troups of dancing girls doing some pretty energetic traditional dance moves. Each group had anywhere between 30 and 100 people, and since the parade was already up to group 47 I thought it must be almost finished. Yet they kept coming. By group 75 I was getting freezing and had to call past the hotel to grab the beanies They came up the main street, did a lap of the Plaza de Armas past the local politicians and then all piled into the second square. This is where the party started so I headed uickly back here to join in. Plenty of old ladies had turned up with crates of beer, and with all the musicians busting out some tunes and the dancing girls looking for dancing partners, a great night was had. Needless to say my traditional peruvian dance moves have progressed from nothing to pretty good. At about 2am I called past the main plaza again, and was amazed to see the parade still in full swing. The local polititians were showing the effects of all the drinks and dancing around on their podium, but the musicians and dancers (now up to group 218) were still going strong.
The next day was the actual Inti Raymi festival, so I joined everyone else and walked up to the Inca ruins of Saqsawaman (or ´sexy women´ for us english speakers). Everyone was piled in on the hills surrounding the parade ground between the ruins, so I squeezed in and found a tiny bit of rock to park on from where I could see a bit of the festivities. At 1pm a procession of people all dressed up as Inca warriors arrived from their parade through town. They streamed out from between all the ruins, with the Inca king chilling out on a big pile of rocks in the centre, the 4 Inca armies marched out. They were followed by groups of dancers. After a few hours of different dancers and people moving around the field they decided to sacrifice a llama before a bit more dancing. The whole event was pretty slow and could have taken 20 minutes instead of 4 hours. The tour groups that had front row seats must have agreed and just 10 minutes before the show was over they all walked off through the middle of the performance taking some photos as they went. Everyone else then decided they wanted to take close up photos too, and within a few minutes the whole place was inundated with thousands of locals and tourists.

A few of the Inca armies still marched around the parade ground, while we checked out the ruins and then headed back to Cusco.