Tickets for the Inti Raymi are running out

Tickets for seats at the provisional stands that will be built in Sacsayhuaman, Cusco, to watch the Inti Raymi are selling faster than ever this year. More than 80% of the 3,756 seats have been reserved already at US$90.00 each. With the purchase of a ticket the audience get a souvenir book, a DVD and portable radios. Thousands of visitors that choose not to pay for a seat on the stands climb and sit at a hill adjacent to the plain where 500 performers stage the ceremony.

The Inti Raymi festival brings the Inca Empire back to life every June 24, on the winter solstice. The remembrance of Pachacuti, first Inca Emperor, haunts during the celebration that honor Inti, the sun god. The Inca presides over the whole ceremony that begins at the Qoricancha, Temple of the Sun; this was the most important building in the empire. The Spaniards built the Santo Domingo church on top of its finest Inca stonework. According to Spanish chroniclers, most of the interior compartments were covered with gold plates. Later on the day, the celebration of the Inti Raymi moves up to Sacsayhuaman where over 30,000 people, mostly Inca descendants, and many tourists from around the world attend a three-hour ritual. Groups perform music and dances from different Andean communities. The rituals include the drinking and offering of chicha, a fermented corn beer, as well as offerings of wood, gold and silver objects depicting the Incas' world, to the Sun. The Inti Raymi reaches its climax when a selected llama is sacrificed and then an Inca priest extirpates its heart to reveal the omens of the future.

Sacsayhuaman, an Inca construction of incredible proportions, where 20,000 men worked for over 30 years shaping and positioning the rocks in a zigzag shape, some rocks weighing more than 100 tons, and some as high as 4 meters, is an impressive site that adds to the feeling of been back in time while watching the Inti Raymi.