Friday, 5 September 2014
After passing La Raya, the landscape changed from plain mountainous regions to more green mountainous regions. The "green" are Eucalyptus trees, brought by the Australians to Peru in the first half of the 19th century. As the wood from the Eucalyptus trees are hard, Peruvian people use the wood for all sorts of construction purposes.
After this we stopped in the village of Marangani for lunch. The principal activity of the people in this village is agriculture, and they plant mainly corn, quinoa and potatoes. There are lost of potatoes in Peru, 3,000 different kinds and almost every dish you order comes with potatoes.
From here, we went to Raqchi, where there was a very important temple built by the Incas for their most important God, Wira Kocha. Unfortunately it started to rain heavily, and I wasn't even sure whether my camera was water proof but I managed to take some pictures anyway. But it made walking around the temple very difficult due to the mud, yuck! About 600 people used to live in this temple, believed to be built in 1410, which is even older than Machu Picchu. The temple is divided in the centre, which depicts the Incas' belief in duality - sun and moon, night and day, black and white, man and woman etc. The temple is made of volcanic stone with bricks made of clay, water, human hair and alpaca wool. What is amazing about this temple is that it has a street in the centre, and during the summer solstice every year on 21 December, the sun shines through this street. This was evidence that the Incas were pioneers of astronomy, and often followed the path of the sun.
From the ruins of the temple of Wira Kocha, we went to St. John's Baptist Church. This church was built in the 1st half of the 17th century by the Jesuits. The Jesuits were very important in South America, because even though other Christian orders such as the Dominicans came to South America even before the Jesuits, the Jesuits were given the task of evangelisizing the locals. They began by building 3 important churches around this area, one being the St. John's Baptist Church. However, they were not conversant in the local languages spoken at that time which was Quecha, Pukina and Aymara, so they used paintings to tell the stories in the bible. The church walls are filled with beautiful paintings, but unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside the church. As far as possible, the Jesuits tried to infuse Christianity with the local beliefs, such as the 3 realms (sky, earth and underworld) were depicted as the Holy Trinity, and Mother Mary was depicted with a sun like ornament around her head, because the sun was important to the local people. Also, her skirt was always shaped as a mountain, again trying to incorporate the importance of the mountains (Apu) to the locals, within Christianity. The altar was made of wood covered in 24 carat gold leaf, which had to be brought from Porta See, Bolivia as Peru did not have 24 carat gold, only 18, 20 and 22. This church also has an original organ in it.
After passing La Raya, the landscape changed from plain mountainous regions to more green mountainous regions. The "green" are Eucalyptus trees, brought by the Australians to Peru in the first half of the 19th century. As the wood from the Eucalyptus trees are hard, Peruvian people use the wood for all sorts of construction purposes.
After this we stopped in the village of Marangani for lunch. The principal activity of the people in this village is agriculture, and they plant mainly corn, quinoa and potatoes. There are lost of potatoes in Peru, 3,000 different kinds and almost every dish you order comes with potatoes.
From here, we went to Raqchi, where there was a very important temple built by the Incas for their most important God, Wira Kocha. Unfortunately it started to rain heavily, and I wasn't even sure whether my camera was water proof but I managed to take some pictures anyway. But it made walking around the temple very difficult due to the mud, yuck! About 600 people used to live in this temple, believed to be built in 1410, which is even older than Machu Picchu. The temple is divided in the centre, which depicts the Incas' belief in duality - sun and moon, night and day, black and white, man and woman etc. The temple is made of volcanic stone with bricks made of clay, water, human hair and alpaca wool. What is amazing about this temple is that it has a street in the centre, and during the summer solstice every year on 21 December, the sun shines through this street. This was evidence that the Incas were pioneers of astronomy, and often followed the path of the sun.
From the ruins of the temple of Wira Kocha, we went to St. John's Baptist Church. This church was built in the 1st half of the 17th century by the Jesuits. The Jesuits were very important in South America, because even though other Christian orders such as the Dominicans came to South America even before the Jesuits, the Jesuits were given the task of evangelisizing the locals. They began by building 3 important churches around this area, one being the St. John's Baptist Church. However, they were not conversant in the local languages spoken at that time which was Quecha, Pukina and Aymara, so they used paintings to tell the stories in the bible. The church walls are filled with beautiful paintings, but unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside the church. As far as possible, the Jesuits tried to infuse Christianity with the local beliefs, such as the 3 realms (sky, earth and underworld) were depicted as the Holy Trinity, and Mother Mary was depicted with a sun like ornament around her head, because the sun was important to the local people. Also, her skirt was always shaped as a mountain, again trying to incorporate the importance of the mountains (Apu) to the locals, within Christianity. The altar was made of wood covered in 24 carat gold leaf, which had to be brought from Porta See, Bolivia as Peru did not have 24 carat gold, only 18, 20 and 22. This church also has an original organ in it.
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