On Thanksgiving Day, we took a ride through the altiplano to Sillustani. We met an Indian family. And gave the woman and her young child the food we had with us—it felt like a real “Thanksgiving”.
Sillustani is a pre-Incan burial ground on the shores of Lake Umayo near Puno. The tombs, which are built above ground in tower-like structures called chillpas, are the vestiges of the Aymara people who were conquered by the Inca in the 1400s. The structures housed the remains of complete family groups.
Ancestor worship and kinship were integral parts of Aymara culture, and the chullpas were built to emphasize the connection between life and death. The insides of the tombs were shaped like a woman's uterus, and corpses were mummified in a fetal position to recreate their birth. Some of the tombs also had lizards carved into the stone. Because they could re-grow their tails, lizards were considered a symbol of life. The only openings to the buildings face east, where it was believed the sun was reborn by Mother Earth each day
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