Peru - Lonely Planet Publications [263]
To reach the battlefield, turn left behind the church and head up out of the village along Jirón Sucre, which, after 10 minutes’ walk rejoins the main road. As you walk, notice the red-tiled roofs elaborately decorated with ceramic model churches. Quinua is famous as a handicraft center and these model churches are typical of the area. Local stores sell these and other crafts.
The white obelisk, intermittently visible for several kilometers as you approach Quinua, now lies five minutes’ walk above you up clearly marked steps. The impressive monument is 40m high and features carvings commemorating the Battle of Ayacucho, fought here on December 9, 1824. You can climb the obelisk (S1) and continue half an hour by horseback (S8 there and back) to waterfalls where swimming is possible. The whole area is protected as the 300-hectare Santuario Histórico Pampas de Ayacucho.
Accommodations in Quinua are limited but you’ll pass a couple of places en route to the obelisk from the museum charging S15 per person for beds in basic rooms. There is a small market on Sunday.
Return to beginning of chapter
VILCASHUAMÁN & VISCHONGO
Vilcashuamán (Sacred Falcon) was considered the geographical center of the Inca empire. Here the Inca road between Cuzco and the coast crossed the road running the length of the Andes. Little remains of the city’s earlier magnificence; Vilcashuamán has fallen prey to looters, and many of its blocks have been used to build modern buildings. The once-magnificent Temple of the Sun now has a church on top of it! The only Inca structure still reasonably in tact is a five-tiered pyramid called an usnu, topped by a huge stone-carved double throne.
* * *
THE WARI
Before the Incas ruled the roost in the Peruvian Highlands, the Wari were top dogs. Their empire extended north beyond Chiclayo and south as far Lake Titicaca, with its capital on the pampa above Ayacucho. The heyday was from AD 600 to AD 1100, during which time the Wari took control over many settlements previously occupied by the Moche people in northern Peru, had dealings with the Tiwanaku culture to the south and established a power base in Cuzco.
The Wari rose to dominance through developing a series of key administrative centers in topographically contrasting regions: Moquegua on Peru’s southern coast, Pikllaqta near Cuzco and Viracochapampa in the northern highlands. This maximized trade in resources including coca, cotton and corn. At its zenith, the empire enjoyed wealth then-unprecedented in Peruvian civilizations.
The capital, now a swathe of ruins 22km northeast of Ayacucho, once housed some 50,000 people and was well-organized into sectors for agriculture, workshops and a grandiose area reserved for burial of dignitaries (the Cheqowasi sector of the site shows this). The Wari certainly had grand plans. Their architectural style placed an emphasis on a display of power with public spaces, possibly for nobles to interact in, and platforms to promote rank seniority, as well as distinctive ceramics which indicate sophisticated trade interaction with neighboring cultures like the Tiwanaku.
However, by AD 1000, for unknown reasons, the empire had entered a period of decline. It has been speculated that because defense had never been a priority, Wari buildings were vulnerable to attack. Significantly, however, the civilization left behind a legacy of roads and settlements so important that they were still in use by the Inca empire almost 500 years later.
* * *
Several direct daily buses for the rough, scenic 115km run to Vilcashuamán (S14, five hours), leave from Ayacucho’s Terminal Terrestre del Sur. At a