Sillustani Burial Grounds

In the evening we went on a tour to Sillustani. Sillustani has some ancient burial grounds of Inca and pre-Inca civilizations. A mini van picked us up from the hotel and then we drove to pick up our guide. We met a couple of women from the states. As we were about to pick up our guide, the younger of the two Americans exploded saying "OH NO!" We all asked what's wrong and then in a billion words a minute she described that that's the guide they had on the Titicaca island trip and that he speaks to you like you're a child. I was thinking that in her case I could understand… We drove away and stopped shortly and our guide described a section of Titicaca Lake. As the guide started talking our young friend the American brat broke in in flawless Spanish and an annoyed tone asking rudely for us to all to get out of the van for this because she was dying of heat. The guide looked annoyed but agreed for us to get out. He then described the area, all in Spanish. Sophie and a couple of Britons were looking confused as they expected a guide in English. I translated as best I could. The guide was speaking to us like we were four years old so he was clear enough to me. He then asked everyone where they're from and if we all spoke Spanish. When he found out some of us don't he pretended like he only spoke Spanish. We figured out later that he just wanted to stick to speaking Spanish because the mother of the American brat didn't speak any and they pissed him off the previous days on the tour of the islands. We got back in the car and the brat kept going on and on about how he's just pretending not to speak English and that he spoke flawless English the previous day with them. We also chatted a bit about the islands and told them we stayed at Amantani with a family and the only question the brat asked us was: "Did you have any bites?" I didn't know what she meant…Sophie understood. She was talking about bed bug bites… Needless to say we did my best to ignore the two the rest of the trip. Once we got to Sillustani our guide started speaking in English as soon as the two Americans left us to go on their own. The guide had to speak in both Spanish and English as some of the tourists didn't speak any English. Since the guide spoke very very slowly I got bored out of my mind listening to him say the same thing twice every time. While the guide had very little of interest to say, I was extremely impressed with the area. It had a creepy feel to it. These big stone pillars on top of a hill overlooking a beautiful lake. A thunderstorm was also developing in the distance and as the sun was going down it made for some spectacular scenery.

My throat was getting a little worse however and since we had to go up a bunch of small hills (at over 4000m) I had a hard time breathing at some points. I took a bunch of pictures and was quite impressed with the mystical feel of the place. The guide explained that they added a lightning rod on the hills there because all the funeral towers were blown apart by lightning a few years earlier. The rocks they were built with were volcanic and magnetic and they attracted the lighting. What I found curious was that they had survived for 500 years intact only to be blown apart a few years ago…On our way back we watched a beautiful sunset over the mountains.

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