La Paz, Tiwanaku - Week 37

23rd - 25th May

Tiwanaku is an important Pre-Columbian archaeological site, and one of the most important precursors to the Inca Empire. It flourished as the ritual and administrative capital of the Andes for 27 centuries from 1500BC to 1200AD. It is thought that the city only reached a maximum population of 40,000 but the empire it controlled had 1,200,000 people at its height. Tiwanaku started to collapse around 1000AD, possibly due to environmental reasons, from an invasion of new people from the south, a loss of faith in the Tiwanaku religion, or a combination of all three. As a result many separate tribes evolved from the Tiwanaku culture, one of these would then evolve into the Inca empire in the 13th century.

Bolivian Archeologists, from what we saw they spend most of their time throwing mud at each other!

In the museam we saw many deformed skulls that they have excavated at the site. It was a common practice in the Tiwanaku culture. They applied rope and wood to children´s skulls between the ages of 2 (YES TWO?!) and 14 creating the strange shape below. It was thought that they would be more intellegent for this mishaping of the skull and therefore the brain.

In the evening we met up with Alex & Matt again for a few drinks and a chat. That would all have been well if only we weren´t sharing a table with a group of Ozzies. Drinking games followed. Not such a agood idea as James had signed up for downhill singletrack mountain biking the next day. Luckily James got away with drinking Coke in disguise for Cubre Libres so not too much damage done. Katie on the the other hand (never one to be out done by the boys) got stuck in with the result of being stuck in bed all the following day...

The mountain biking was in a word, amazing. Much more difficult than the stuff back home. The morning and afternoon trails both dropped from 4000m to 1700m and took 2.5 hours - so knackering, especially after pretending to play drinking games till 2am! The scenery was awesome though, the bike fan-bloody-tastic, and the guide a top bloke. The body armour was pretty cool too!

Me this time bricking myself, taken from another angle

'Twas good!

After an exhausting day there was just time for a bit of a itinery plan before Andrew & Irene (Katie´s parents) flew into La Paz Saturday morning. We´ll pick up the story there next time...