Tiwanaku

Today was a long but fun and interesting day. Started out getting a call from the airport at 7:30 saying my luggage would be there within the hour. It came at 9. I was supposed to get picked up by the tour group 8:45 - 9, and I got picked up at 9:15. That´s Bolivia time, la hora Boliviana, for me, I better get used to it!
It was a 1.5 hour ride to Tiwanaku. Everyone spoke English, which was really nice because I could actually have a full conversation for the first time in several days. Four from Israel, one from England, and four from Pennsylvannia. Part way there, we stopped to take pictures from a viewpoint (the whole drive there was gorgeous). A group of really friendly dogs came up to say hi. One little terrier guy had a huge engorged tick on his head, and of course I couldn´t help but remove it and he was actually really good about it and licked me afterwards.
At Tiwanaku, we started in the museum and got a really good detailed tour from our guide. Way too much to remember, but I´ll try to get down the basics. The tour started with some maps of Bolivia and how it is arranged - highlands, valley, and jungle, and each of those areas into 3 or 4 major areas, more than half of which I will be going to. She then went into the history of the Tiwanaku. The era lasted for almost 3000 years and they aren´t quite sure why it stopped existing, but it was probably because there was a 90 year drought.
We then went into a pretty huge artifacts area of the museum - couldn´t take any pictures there. A huge part of their culture was around animals. The culture that they kind of stemmed from used llama heads as their primary symbolism, and during the Tiwanaku age, they used a motif of a 3 step staircase. This number came from the three levels of their universe - the gods, the layer of the people, and mother earth on the bottom. Another significant number was 7 - they had seven layers on their pyramids, and seven twists of the snake on the big statues of priests and gods. The animals that they used constantly in all of their pieces because they considered them sacred were the puma, condor, fish, and snake. Llamas were also very important in the culture but were not considered sacred. They were used for transportation, wool, meat, and fuel (candles were burned using llama fat surrounded by wool). Their bones were used for music instruments such as flutes and also combined with copper to make flexible arrows. There was also a mummy, with the skull showing and the rest of the body in a fetal position wrapped tightly in rope. It was a priest, which they could tell in that the head was deformed, apparently all priests had a deformed shape to their heads... they must have smushed their heads when they were babies?
After the artifacts (many more than those, but as much as I tried to remember everything, I´m drawing a blank), we went to the portion of ruins that had been moved inside. The most significant was a huge sculpture/statue of a priest. You can tell whether it is a priest or god because the priest holds one scepters and one glass, and the god holds two scepters. Animals are integrated everywhere and the designs are really intricate and perfectly symmetrical. The statue in this room was 7 meters tall! The theory is that the designs are so symmetrical because the artists wove the designs to the exact size and then were able to put them against the stone and use them as a template.
Then on to the ruins we went. After we climbed up a big hill (not fun with altitude higher than La Paz!), we reached the back side of the seven layer pyramid. Only three layers have been excavated so far, the whole site is in progress, as they only began extensive excavation 5 or 10 years ago after being granted UNESCO status. Our guide kept telling us to come back in 5 or 10 years and we would be able to see so much more. Without a guide, it would have just looked like plain old ruins that I´ve seen many times before, but she was amazing about telling us the stories behind everything. At one point, there are these magnetic rocks that confuse a compass. People used to make pilgrammages to that point because they felt a sacred energy coming from the area, which she tried to let us feel by having us rub our hands together and then hold them near the rock with our eyes closed. Didn´t work for me, but interesting nonetheless. There was also this really cool rock several places. At first, it just looked like a rock with a hole in it. But it actually works really well as a sort of megaphone. There is a bigger hole on one end than the other, and the inside is curved in a way to almost mimic the cochlea and the setup of the ear.
Another really interesting area was the 175 heads. It was a patio sort of area, and all four walls were covered in faces carved in stone, each one individual. The faces on the east side were most well defined, and those to the west were pretty worn away - from what we could get out of the guide, it was due to age. Next came another intricate statue of a priest. Apparently, when the Spanish came, they saw it and thought that it was the devil so tried to decapitate it, but the stone was too strong - thus the chipped left shoulder. Instead, they resorted to exorcised it and carved crosses on the statue. Lovely. Also, from the whole site, they stole all of the gold and diamonds that were previously plastered on many of the stones.
Last but not least was the sungod gate, which was cool because it reminded me of the sun god statue at UCSD. There were all these different ideas behind what the different things on it represented (30 men = 30 days, 24 rays coming out of the sungod´s head = 24 hrs/day, etc), but because the calendar year was different, people think that archeologists were just overanalyzing it. After that, we had a decent lunch where they actually had a vegetarian option of quinoa soup and a cheese and veggie omelette with yellow rice and fries and then fruit with yogurt for dessert. Pricier than at a restaurant on the street, but not bad for 4 dollars. :D Had fun speaking in English to everyone at lunch and finding out about other people´s trips. The ride back was fun as well, though a bit bumpy since the driver took a different route than on the way there, and the scenery was amazinggg. It is the beginning of the dry season, so there is still some greenery, but by August, it will all be pretty drab, so we get the best of both worlds, green and no rain. And actually not as cold today as I expected given the altitude, I brought along warmer clothes once I finally got my luggage, but didn´t need them.
Got dropped off down in El Prado with the rest of the group, so decided to wander again. I wandered a bit too much and ended up kind of lost and unable to find the place where the microbuses leave, so ended up taking a taxi up the hill because I had no clue where I was and it was dark. It was again near impossible to find dinner and I got laughed at quite a few times for asking for vegetarian food. Eventually walked down to the bus terminal and found a stall there where I got a fried egg sandwich and a banana milkshake for a dollar. I am going to have to survive off eggs and carbs and fruit juice! Now I will go and crash in my hostel and finally shower (my towel didn´t arrive early enough this morning, boo!) Though I don´t know if there is even hot water, so this will be interesting. My bed is nice and warm, though, so Ill probably burrow under my blankets afterwards and watch CSI or something in Spanish. Okay, time to go and end my saga. Tomorrow will be museum day, and then I´m off on the next leg of my adventure to Copacabana and Lake Titicaca.