INTI RAYMI

Departure date: 24 June 2017

PRICE: US$ 200

Included: All Transfers, Official Tour Guide (English and Spanish speaking guide), Entrance Fees to the Ceremony and Box Lunch

Starting & finishing point: Cusco hotel.

INTI RAYMI or Inca sun feast, was the most important religious ceremony of the Inca Empire in honor of the sun god (INTI – SUN), Inti Raymi is celebrated in the shortest day of the year in terms of the time between sunrise and sunset (Winter solstice). At Inti Raymi the Inca, the priests and all the people pay homage to the sun god.

The Feast of the Sun was the most important feast in time of the Incas. It was celebrated every shortest day of the year with occasion of the beginning of the year, which we considered now the winter solstice. The religious importance, festival ceremonial, social and politics were such that the party was extended in the whole Tahuantinsuyo.

After the Spanish conquest in 1532, the Catholic Church suppressed the ceremony and the Andean society that used to celebrate this festivity to the sun was dismembered, since that the celebration of the catholic saint san James. The Inti Raymi was forgotten then, until half of the XX century when, as expression of a great movement of revaluation of the native culture in Peru, was returned to the scene. In 1944 a group of intellectuals and artists from Cusco headed by Cusco Historian Humberto Vidal Unda decided to recover the Inti Raymi of the History and to present it as a show of theatrical type, dedicated to the whole population of Cusco; From then on, it has been represented every year, getting rich and evolving for the historical investigation.

Several reasons compelled the Inca civilization to make sacrifices and offerings to their king star the sun. One of them was that the Inca, as well as Cusqueñan nobility, were considered to be natural children of the Sun. To him they owed their existence, for which recognition was due with sacrifices and offerings. On the other hand, if the corn harvest was good in the last agricultural year, it was necessary to be thankful, and if the harvest was poor, it was necessary to request that it be compensated with a better one the following year. Finally, in June (winter solstice) as the Sun moved away and temperatures dropped, at dawns water froze, therefore it was necessary to request that the Sun return, that after twilight it should not continue advancing towards the north.

The origins of Cusco get lost in the night of times. Archaeological excavations made us know that primitive residents inhabited the valley of Cusco near three millenniums ago. Toward the XII century, Manco Capac and his sister-wife Mama Ocllo emerged from the waters of the Lake Titicaca, semi Gods daughter and son of Inti (the god Sun), with the mission of the foundation of a new Kingdom that would improve the conditions of life of the towns. Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo would have to walk until finding a place in the earth where the great gold stick that Manco Capac had would submerge, they walked to the north and they arrived to Paqharec Tampu (Pacaritambo) where rested in a small cave; to the dawn they continued to the north arriving to the hill Huanacaure and there the scepter submerged, and there he founded the city of Cusco.