Sacred Inca Ruins

We stopped at a port on La Isla del Sol, where we saw the reed catamaran Sailboat take off. There were a few residences, a hostel and a few eateries. The beach here was covered with pebbles, more like the cliff walk beach at Newport Rhode Island. The first photo shows the rock staircase that we climbed to the spring. Along the rock steps, the spring ran down in a little stream, and people stopped to drink the water.

The ancient Inca Springs located two thirds of the way up the hill, were used by Inca Priests to purify themselves before rituals. They would come to this place by boat, to purify and prepare themselves for rituals that were held in other locations. Only the most important people were allowed to come here. There were two different springs with different types of water, a mineral water and the other just regular spring water. The priest needed to bathe in both waters and drink from both. springs.



All our Catholic pilgrims did an abbreviated version, a cup of water from both and wetting their heads in both. The cautious missioner that I am, I drank three handfuls directly from the streaming water and passed three drenching handfuls over my head. I must admit that I later got a headache, so I don't know that I recieved a blessing, but maybe I cured something else... People also filled bottles with the water and I wasn't sure if it was to drink or use as a holy water.

As an aside, when people bless themselves with holy water here, they put handfuls on their heads, or sometimes the priest drenches them with holy water. In many churches here, after mass, the people go up to the altar and wait for the priest to bless them with holy water. For some it is not enough to get a sprinkle from afar, they need to get up close for a good dousing!



After the Inca Springs we got back into the boat and passed by the above ruins slowly. I don't think that we had time to unload the boats, explore and reload the boats. I don't have any information about these ruins.

After we stopped by some floating restaurants, where you could choose which trout you wanted slaughtered for your dinner. They were in cages in the water. We only stopped for a short time, but a few people did buy trout dinners. So many people wanted to see them kill and clean the fish, that the area of the float went inches under water, and people needed to move to other parts of the float to adjust. We headed back after to Copacabana, where lunch was waiting for us (5:00pm!!)