Having resolved our conflict with last night’s lemonade by 3 p.m., we finally could proceed to our first archaeological site in the Andes – el Fuerte de Samaipata, a large sculptured rock, which, according to UNESCO “has no parallel anywhere in the Americas.”

The rock carvings feature a UFO landing strip (alternatively explained as channels for sacrificial beverages), carvings of a puma and a leopard (which take a lot of imagination to discern), and plenty of “Inca seats” – door-shaped indentations in the walls, where the Inca nobility would sit in front of the masses. The site was started before Inca occupation, we were told, but flourished under the Incas. In a typical pattern, the Spanish later abandoned the site, moving the town down into the valley to present Samaipata. El Fuerte is now a World Herritage Site and so there are ramps around it that allow the visitors to view the rock without stepping on it. Before that, we were told, kids from Santa Cruz used to go have picnics on the rock, including making fires.