Mon June 20 - 21 Welcoming the new year

So I took the resin/detox medicine back to Inti Ayllu, and with the requisite freshly squeezed orange juice at the ready, I took the tea with resin in one big gulp, and then downed the orange juice straight after. I'd already drunk a gooey liquid, in the form of a cactus (I think it was called Tonno, or Tunno), which reminded me of Aloe Vera, so not wanting to think about it too much, I just downed the liquid, and let the OJ wash away the taste. It seems I didn't have long to wait for the effects to take effect...
Within minutes, I was in the toilet, vomiting everything I'd had so far, and I'm sure a bit more.

Then I had to wait the 4 hours, before the diarrohea like symptoms were to set in, and start to relieve my body of anything that could be left in my digestive system. We were told we had to continue to drink hot tea, so that our insides wouldn't get messed up, and that we had to keep moving, to try to keep our bowels moving...

I tried the walking up the mountain, behind Inti Ayllu, but the thought that I may need a toilet, and the steepness of the slope made me choose the simpler path of walking along the main road.

After about an hours walking, and no significant change in my bodys willingness to give up anymore of its contents, I got back to the house, to find that Susan had eaten some food, and her body had started purging. I thought I'll try that approach... and so ate a full plate full of food. No luck. After spending an hour lying with crystals over my tummy to also help... no luck... It turns out, that by the evening, when we started to get ready to go to the temple for the all night fire, my body hadn't responded to the cleansing process.

Perhaps I had nothing left to cleanse, or perhaps I needed more resin... In any case, I decided that my body wasn't going to give me trouble, and headed with the group to the temple.

Once our 'group' had assembled outside the entrance to Oyllantaytambo, one of the guardians of this 'tourist' site, let us in, so that we could continue the sacred tradition of keeping a fire burning all night, before welcoming the sun in the new year.

After climbing up all the stairs to the top of the temple (and we stopped a few times on the way up), we began by gathering where the fire had been burnt in the past, and gave thanks to the space, before finding a new location, that we would be able to cover up, and where we would be able to hide the fact that we had burnt a fire. It seems that whilst the guardian was more than willing to allow us access to this sacred site, it was 'unofficial', and so we had to make sure that we cleared away all signs of our fire before the tourists started visiting in the morning. It felt a shame that Tourists had priority over the 'traditions' that the place had been built to maintain. It's almost like going into a mosque or a church as a tourist, whilst worshippers of that holy place have to perform their prayers in secret. Such is the way of governments that try to catch up financially with what little they have.


Anyhow, we have a wonderful evening, started by each person placing a log into the pile from which the fire will burn. Each person placing those things from the past year that they are ready to let go of, or have transformed.

Then, once the fire is lit, one of our group (a New Yorker, called Michael) is chosen to keep the fire burning. He's already familiar with the practice, having kept fires alive in the US, during native american ceremonies, and so it seems the perfect choice!

Through the evening, offerings are made, with k'intus (coca leaves) despachos (sacred bundles), and we keep tending the fire until about 3 or 4am in the morning. This is when we put a huge offering into the fire, for the Apus (the mountain spirits), from all the circle, for all of humanity. Wanting the Apus to consume the offering in private, we leave the fire, and walk away, allowing it to burn, unattended.

We then open a 'talking' circle, where everyone is invited to share anything that moved them, or touched them, or to even just talk, with the group, about their experience. We even get a few songs shared by people. Some traditional, quechua songs, some in spanish... Eventually, after everyone had shared.. people started to huddle under the blankets, and fall asleep. I had thought that it was a good time to return to the fire, as it would heat us, and as it felt like we should stay awake to honour that which we were doing. The fire, reduced to embers, was nothing more than glowing ash, but with some wood, and some fanning, we were able to bring the fire back into flames. And then kept it alive, until it was time to 'tidy up'.

Tidying up, we kept a small amount of the fire burning on a plate sized slate of rock, whilst the remaining ash, and embers were put out, and hidden behind big rocks, out of site, in the grass.

Then with our remaining fire, smoking away, we moved to a more prominent position, from where we would be able to see the sun, as it hit the first 'gateway' that had been built with the temple, to be able to see the progression of the sun through the sky.