Ecuador: Ingapirca

February 4, 2007

The Cañaris, a strong and proud people, didn’t want to submit to the Incas, as many other civilisations had done when the empire was being expanded into what is now Chile/Argentina and Ecuador/Colombia.

When the Inca armies finally did bring the Cañaris and other peoples from what is now Ecuador under their control they incorporated their cities and religious centres into their own. This is what happened to the formally Cañari ruins at Ingapirca, the heart of Cañari territory.

The Incas built their buildings grander and finer on top of Cañari buildings as a sign of their dominance. The Temple of the Sun, still standing in perfection today, was the grandest of their constructions.

From the nearby town of El Tambo we paid a taxi driver $10 for a total of 1 hour, which would give us 50 minutes at the ruins after travel. It had been pouring with rain for about an hour and we were wasting time beforehand in the market waiting for it to stop, but it didn’t look like it would – so we decided to just go.

The only surviving part of the ruins is the large Temple of the Sun which would have contained the Intihuatana before being destroyed by the Spanish.

The photos attached show the ruins.