Day 8: Civil Disobedience, Peruvian Style

June 24 is the day the Incas celebrated Inti Raymi, the Festival of the Sun, at Sacsayhuaman. The city of Cusco has carried on this tradition and we were fortunate enough to be in Cusco to watch the ritual. Unfortunately for us, and for the residents of Cusco, 2008 was the first year the festival was made more about the tourists. This year tickets were expensive - $90 apiece - way more than the locals could afford. In addition, bleachers were set up around the site and hillside viewing would be limited. For these reasons, the guide we hired suggested that we skip the festival in the City of Cusco and go straight to Sacsayhuaman to secure seating.

We started out taking a city bus, much to the surprise of the locals who also caught the bus (Mr. Y and I stood out a bit). We made numerous stops picking up people until the bus was full. In addition to the bus driver, the bu also had a promoter or sorts, a woman who would step to the door of the bus and try to convince people to take that particular bus. Busses in Peru are interesting, in that they stop at random intervals whenever people are standing by the road looking like they might want to take a bus.

The bus took us to a stop outside of the area where Sacsayhuaman was located, then we had to walk quite a distance to get to the actual site. The guide was surprised, and a bit appalled, by how much of the surrounding area was blocked off. Though there are two hillsides overlooking Sacsayhuaman, only one was open to the public. Numerous police were on hand, as were members of the military and locals acting as guards to keep people off the second hillside and also away from a valley area that could also afford a limited view.

We found a seat with a reasonable view, certainly not close but at least unobstructed. And we waited. and waited. and waited. It seems our tour guide had the start time wrong, so while we intended to arrive early, we actually arrived more than 2 hours before the festival began (thank goodness for sunblock!). And it's a good thing we did. The people kept coming and coming. Though Peruvians have no sense of personal space (theirs or anyone elses) and climbed all over everyone to secure a seat, it became quite obvious that there wouldn't be anywhere close to enough seating for everyone.

As time passed, the crowd with no seats got very, very restless. When the ceremony began, a few tried to break through to the hillside that was being guarded, but to no avail--the police quicky ran them down and forced them back across the line. A short time later, however, it became readily apparent that there were way more people wanting to be on that hillside than there were police guarding it. The crowd broke through and flooded the hillside, with what looked like thousands of people breaking through the blockade and running for a better view. Now that's probably just my perception--there could have just been a few hundred--but either way, the police gave up, and the locals were finally able to get seats to enjoy their festival.
The festival itself was full of color and pageantry, with beautiful costumes and hundreds of people participating. It was quite a show! Our guide had to translate for us, as the spoken language was not Spanish but an Incan language, and thankfully we weren't close enough to see how they faked (I hope, anyway, that it was fake) the llama sacrifice.

We left after the main part of the program was over instead of staying for the hours of dances that would follow and walked back to Cusco, where we toured more of the city and had some dinner.