Tipón & Pikillaqta

3-20-11

I made it an early night last night because we were going to leave early this morning to go to some more ruins. I should have known better. It was supposed to be me, my host mom, McClain, and her host mom (our neighbors). However, by the time we got ourselves ready to go most of my family decided to come. So in a fairly normal sized car was my host dad, Sebas, Julissa, me, McClain, our two host moms, Iris, and Victor. Whoa! They’re such a good group of people. I think McClain might have been overwhelmed though. We first drove to Tipon, which is a bunch of Incan aqueducts that still function and bring crystalline water from somewhere underground. Very beautiful and tranquil there. Sebas was being mischievous as always, but he’s just so cute with Victor and my host dad. I chased him around a bit too.

From Tipon we headed to Pikillaqta (Piki meaning flea and Llaqta meaning village). Pikillaqta, for some reason, really reminded me of New Mexico and ruins I’ve seen there, although Pikillaqta was much larger. It was, in fact, hugely larger than I expected it to be. It really was just a town in ruins. I have no idea how many people lived here when it was a functional place, but I’d imagine at least several hundred or more. Sebas walked around the whole place but amazingly didn’t get tired, to our surprise. After Pikillaqta we drove through Lucre, which is apparently known for desserts. There was a gastronomic festival going on and we spotted Jake there, but we headed right to an ice cream store instead. Yum!

After some interesting cranberry ice cream, we went to another town to go eat lunch. Along the road to Tipon there seem to be a series of small towns that are known for one specific food each. One town was known for bread, Lucre for desserts, another for cuy, and our town for Chicharron. Chicharron is basically fried pork and quite tasty, but they expect you to eat everything with your hands (En la manera Quechua, so they say)…however, that is difficult to do when everything on your plate is burning hot!

In the afternoon I skyped with a lot of people that I’ve missed and at night I had a really meaningful talk with my girls here, then skyped with Nate. Good day!

xoxo,

Claire