Ingapirca Ruins

I found out today that I gave an incorrect name of the volcanoes in the pics yesterday. One of the volcanoes was Chimborazo which, according to Condé Nast Traveler, is the highest point on earth. It is actually higher than Mount Everest, and the reason is that the earth is actually an oblate ellipsoid, and is slightly flatter at the poles and bulkier at the equator. So if you measure from the center of the earth, Chimborazo sticks more than 7,000 feet farther into space than any of the Himalayas. But from sea level, Mount Everest measures 29,029 feet, and Chimborazo measures 20,702 feet. I thought that is kind of interesting.

This is actually Cotopaxi, and we did see it from Quito.

So today we decided to take a bus trip to Ingapirca, which was discovered buried under some farmland. A major restoration of the site was done by the Ecuadorian government in the 1970’s.  It was originally settled by the Cañari people when the Incans came in the 15th century and tried to conquer them. Long story short, they couldn’t and Incan nobles ended up marrying Cañari princesses.   The site was ransacked by Spanish conquistadors. What is left today are remains of the Incan Temple of the Sun and Cañari Temple of the Moon, amongst other archaeological treasures.

Incan Temple of the Sun

We got to enjoy a nice meal while we were there. I got fried trout, trucha, and I wasn’t expecting it to be looking back at me 👀, and Anthony got the almuerzos, which means lunch, which again consisted of a soup and a big plate of food, which we both enjoyed.

We also enjoyed the bus ride and people watching. We started in Cuenca and the bus stopped and picked up locals at various points along the way . We watched people put huge bags and boxes of produce under the bus where the luggage might normally be, travel a ways, and then when they got off, they would grab their stuff and walk off, sometimes toward a town or down a dirt road. I don’t know if they were going to try to sell the produce or use it for themselves, but they were the biggest bags of produce I have seen, much bigger than Costco bags. And some were women carrying the bags on their backs. We also saw a man carry a rolled up rug on the bus, and he placed it long ways in the overhead storage.

Here are a few pics of the mountains we got to see.

On our bus ride, we noticed there were a lot of steep, long climbs. Out of curiosity, this made us start watching the altitude reading on Anthony’s GPS watch. We went over 11,000 feet in elevation during  our bus ride. The elevation of the ruins site was about 10,000 feet, and we could really tell when walking up steps at the site. The routine was walk 5 or 6 steps, take a break, try to suck in some oxygen, and then repeat the process.

On the way back we started talking to the only other light skinned people on the bus, and they were from Germany interning at a hospital as medical students in Guayaquil. Every weekend they go on an adventure and this was the day they chose to go to Ingapirca. Tomorrow they are hiking in Cajas National Park (which we are planning to do one day). I showed them my pictures of what we thought were of Cotopaxi volcano, and since they actually hiked some of those volcanoes, they were able to help me get the correct names for them. One of the girls spoke four languages pretty fluently, and they took the Spanish speaking tour at Ingapirca. I do enjoy hearing the Spanish people speak, but it was nice to speak English to someone other than Anthony.

So a few things that we have found interesting are the coins we are accumulating. Like I said, they mainly use US Dollars, and I had read to expect Sacagawea dollar coins, but did you know there are James Polk and George Washington dollar coins too? So when we get change back, we never know what to expect. There are a few Ecuadorian coins thrown in there also. I guess they are interchangeable??

Another curious thing is how valuable toilet paper seems. I had read that you can get charged about ten cents to use the bathroom, but then you may have to pay five cents more to get some toilet paper. When we checked into our room, the lady who showed us around our apartment said that they provide the first roll but we are responsible for getting what we need afterwards. Anthony said that when he was at the airport in Quito, he saw a man folding up some toilet paper, which there is one pretty big roll outside the stalls, and put it in his pocket. I haven’t seen one single public restroom with the toilet paper in the stalls. Before this trip is over, I might end up like Elaine on Seinfeld asking the person in the next stall, “can you spare a square?”