Sanguine Tenacious Tidings

The Condors of Machu Piccu

August 27,
We’re spending more time exploring ruins, we’re definitely getting out exercise before leaving Cusco.
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g294314-d6825394-Reviews-Peru_Inka...
dinner is at our hotel, You can join everyone in the restaurant or have room service.

Simon & Garfunkel

A city in the valley below Machu Piccu is still being excavated. There is a theory that this city is the place that supplied all the needs of the spiritual city above it. After reading about the lower city I wondered if it was a slave city or a willing city because of spiritual belief?

At Machu Piccu you can join a group that are climbing the stairs of death. This stairway climbs up Wanya Picchu, which is a small mountain that over looks the valley below. It is a stairway that is 600 years old and looks like it, in the videos. At the summit above you can see all of Machu Piccu and the valley below.

Once you are up high you have entered the Pass of the condors. Now you are in the place where the flight and nesting area of condors is supreme. One brush of the eleven foot wingspan can push you to your doom. There are You tube videos, which allow you to watch this climb. If you are vertigo inclined you might just fall off your chair from watching one.

Condors are on the endangered list. They only have a chick or two every other year. The large impressive birds weigh about 26 lbs. Their feet are designed to handle prey as large as a llama or a sheep. They are the object of prophecy: http://www.labyrinthina.com/prophecy-the-eagle-and-the-condor.html.

The Inca shaman double as morticians. They participate in rituals that take place high in the Andeas mountains. A person who has died is delivered to the shaman who prays over the body and performs a ritualistic dismembering. Then a group of mourners and Priest deliver the flesh and bones to a high mountain where the condors wait. When the groups withdraw the condors feast. This lasts until the bones are clean. When the bones are clean, the condors withdraw and allow the priests return to claim the bones, which are then interred in a spot for the purpose. This is a ritual designed to signify the symbolic life and death cycle. It shows the submission of man that results in a renewing of the earth. Similar to the song in "The Lion King."