Necropolis & Museum Kawsay Wasy, Potosi Department, Bolivia

5worldnomad_01 5:00 PM Oct 7, 2016

A place not to miss if you pass by the village of San Juan de Rosario
Our visit here was part of a 3 three days private tour from Uyuni to San Pedro de Atacama, impeccably organized by "Ruta Verde". We were the only tourists in the otherwise totally unremarkable little village of San Juan de Rosario, but the visit to the necropolis was an amazing and unexpected surprise. The place is on a little hill a bit outside the village and contains dozens of burial places, looking like wholes in the volcanic rock of the hill. According to the tradition of the time, the bodies were entombed clothed, most of them in the fetal position and the hot and dry desert climate did a good job in preserving some of the remains. We have never seen anything like that, there was nobody else there, and we found the place to be a bit spooky, strange and extremely interesting.... There's also a minuscule museum at the entrance, describing the burial and the skull shaping rituals of the time, about 800 years ago...

5Sus1952 5:00 PM Aug 24, 2018

Truly amazing
This site is one of the many areas in Bolivia that is fascinating but hardly visited. The small museum explains the people who used the tombs and it is worth visiting this first to appreciate the tombs. These are incredible. Each tomb is a naturally occuring piece of coral rock. Inside the structure in a hollow accessed by a small opening. Some of these still have the skeleton left inside, always in foetal position. Certainly worth a visit. Not far away is a whole town from the same period (pre-Inca), that our driver took us to. This has masses of buildings and storage buildings. We were told that the people who lived in this town used the necropolis at St Juan.