Sunday, May 2, 2010

Sunday in Ecuador

I promise not to blog everyday if it is boring but, I don't have a ton of time during the week because of classes and stuff.

So today, less adventurous but still fun, we went and visited some ruins called Ingapirca. It was really cool, apparently right before the Spanish came, many of the Incan rulers moved to Ecuador. In the Incan culture they believed that their leader was God.
This is the religious center of the ruins.


A view of some of the ruins:



On the way we stopped at this cathedral that had literally been built into the side of the mountain. It was huge and looked over this valley.






Notice that they have arches, but they are filled with the stone from the mountain.


Also, we drove by this enormous statue(we didn't get too close to it), that is a 2 hour hike to get to, of a virgin. The people go and pray to her and recieve inspiration. This statue was so big, hard to describe but really cool.

I don't know why but I love looking at any type of religious art, I feel like you can learn so much about how a culture sees the world by studying how they worship. I think it is something that I can feel an immediate connection with the people.

Tomorrow its back to school to continue learning spanish. We'll be here for another week and a half and then we are going to the Amazon for a few days.
From Cuenca, with no hot water.

1 comment:

  1. Blog every day! Even twice a day! Trust me, whatever you are doing everyday is probably twice as exciting as the most exciting thing I'll do all month (which is probably get my car fixed). Emily even said she thought you were funnier then her when she read your emails and blog.

    It sounds like you are seeing lots of amazing things. I agree with you about the religious art, I think it is particularly interesting when that religion is still practiced so you can see how people of today interpret stuff that is really old.

    ReplyDelete