Marian Johns' Journal of the Desert
Explorers trip to Peru in 2002
Images by John Page unless otherwise noted
Day 15, September
18, Wednesday
Cuzco to Abancay See Map
Sept. 18, Wednesday – Today, we drove to Abancay. Went up, up, up over a couple a passes and then down, down, down into valleys.
We made another unplanned stop at the site of Rimatambo, better known as Tarawasi, the name of the hacienda on the site. Here, we inspected a tambo (resting place) and ceremonial center – an example of well-made Inca stone work.
There were twelve niches just big enough for one person each to stand in. John Hunt had the caretaker take a photo of us standing in the niches. We also inspected the big, old adobe hacienda buildings next door. We noted about twenty little cuy sitting around on the kitchen floor. I imagine the cook must need to sweep their dropping out occasionally since they do their business right on the kitchen floor. The door was wide open, but they made no effort to escape, despite their pending fate. Several days ago, Reda ordered cuy for dinner, but when it was served whole, with head, eyes and tiny feet, she was taken aback and quickly changed her mind about actually eating the little critter.
Somehow, we in the Mazda got separated from the other two trucks, and thinking they were ahead of us, went charging down the road trying to catch them and reach them on the radio. When we couldn’t do either, we considered the possibility that they were behind us and turned around. Sure enough, they had stopped somewhere back by Tarawasi, but hadn’t told us and we hadn’t seen them.
At some point, we crossed the Rio Apurímac, a large river that flows east into the Amazon basin.
Stopped at the Stones of Saihuite to see the intriguing boulder the Incas playfully carved with houses, animals, figures and water channels; it is supposed to represent an Inca village.
I don’t know its purpose, but I suppose it was ceremonial because there is a temple? foundation adjacent to the boulder. We saw it 36 years ago too. I remember pouring water at the top to see it run down the maze of little channels. There was no fence around it then as there is now. This boulder used to be on the main road, but the current, paved highway by-passes it, so now it is necessary to make a short side trip on the old dirt road. There are other carved boulders nearby and some of our people walked down the hill so see them.
Reached Abancay by 3:00 p.m. Our Hotel Imperial has parking inside their compound which is handy and unusual.
A nicer hotel across the street is where we had an early dinner since we didn’t have a real lunch at noon. I had mushroom soup, trout, potatoes, rice and carrots. Good, but not as good as yesterday’s lunch in Chinchero. We will have an all-day drive tomorrow – from Abancay to Nazca. It’s supposed to take about 12 hours.
