Tiwanaku

Check it out!  Figured out how to change the date published!  Now it looks like I've been on top of blogging and you all can feel lame for not reading all my posts.  Mwahahaha.

So on Sunday I left for La Paz, the capital of Bolivia.  The flight was at 6:45, which was still too early for me even though Bolivia doesn't have the arrive-2-hours-early rule.  (I got to the airport at 5:15, in a taxi.  Poor driver.)  I INSTANTLY fell asleep on the plane, and woke up to eat the little cake they gave me, and then fell asleep again.  (The flight was 30 minutes long.)

So we landed and hopped on the bus, and drove around for a while.  Then we stopped in a little town, where there just happened to be a cute little parade (maybe our program directors knew, I don't know.)

Check out the layered skirts!

There was also a stone church but it’s not interesting enough to be worth loading a photo.  Use your imaginations!

Then we drove to Tiwanaku!  Tiwanaku is an ancient city, whose people lived from 2000 BC to 1200 AD.  They were really advanced and even though they didn’t conquer any groups, everyone copied their way of life.  They also lived in the altiplano, aka high plains, of Bolivia.  (So think COLD.  And then think about farming in the cold.)  They grew potatoes, and the potato is their legacy today.  They also had a cool irrigation system made out of stone.  One thing that totally struck me was how empty and middle-of-nowhere these ruins were.  Usually stuff like this draws tons of tourists, but we didn’t see very many others.  (Also the Incas were around for WAY less time than the people of Tiwanaku, but which group is in all the history books?  Something interesting to chew on…)

Our guide told us that the city of Tiwanaku was not residential; it was only a religious city.  All the buildings are exactly aligned to the compass, with the east entrance being only for the sun and a few very important people.  Everyone else entered through side doors.  There was a big wall with 11 giant pillars, each representing a month of the year, with the middle one being used twice because of the equinox.

Here’s me with a statue!  These statues were too big/hard/inconvenient for the Spaniards to break, so they just broke their noses off to make them look ugly.

And here we have la Puerta del Sol (door of the sun).  The little dude at the top represents the sun.  He has rays going out from his head in all directions, since the sun shines everywhere equally.  He’s standing on a 3-tiered platform, which represents the Earth.  Inside the platform is the moon, since the moon is hidden when the sun is out.  Along the bottom of the top part, there are 11 little figures to represent each month (sharing the middle month again).

Tiwanaku is at 12,000ish feet above sea level, so while absorbing all this cool info I was also feeling a little woozy.  But se la vie, eh?  So when we got to the hotel in La Paz, I crashed.  I went right to bed at 7 or 8pm, without dinner or anything. 

P.S. Almost forgot--we stopped at an overlook on our way to the hotel.  Here’s La Paz—pretty stunning, eh?  I have panorama pictures but I can't put them in row on my blog as far as I know.

Check out the mountains in the background!

 More to come....