The Natural Rodadero Slides Cusco, Peru

There is a huge rock formation across from the impressive Inca citadel of Sacsayhuamán which the Incas carved benches, altars, steps, and many other ceremonial features. It is a sparkling diorite rock outcrop, situated directly across from the Cyclopean in the northeastern Suchuna sector of the archaeological park. It is built by the Killke culture served as both a military and ceremonial complex massive zigzagging walls and you’ll come to the Rodadero, also known as the Suchuna.

These are manmade natural slides that undulate their way down the hill. Geographically, it is the formation of diorite igneous rock that emerged by modulating its surface with bulges and stretch marks in the shape of slides. The children of the Inca, and their descendants have played for hundreds of years.

This natural hillside playground, which looks like a massive glittering greenish white oyster shell, visitors scamper up the sides to slide down the glass-smooth ruts. The well-polished slides are an odd, incongruous sight among the straight lines of monumental Inca architecture. However, erratic with Sacsay huamán’s general vibe of military power and somber ceremony.

The Rodadero was documented by a few innovative archaeologists of the 19th century. It is said that the Inca youth entertained themselves in coursing through these polished grooves on festival days. That was custom which the youth of Cuzco have not allowed to fall into disuse.  In Spanish and Quechua respectively, Rodadero and Suchuna mean “slide.” The names bring up to a series of smooth rock channels that run down one section of the hill.

A smooth rolling stone, served for diversion to the inhabitants, by rolling like a garden roller, having a sort of hollow formed in the middle through friction. So, be sure to wear long jeans/pants and enjoy the smooth stone slide of the Inca. Moreover, according to Moores and Wahl in The Art of Geology, there are three theories have been advanced to explain the formation of the “toboggan slide” glacial, volcanic, and structural. 

Most likely, the grooves shaped when blocks of rock moved past each other along a fault. The hill maybe is the polished surface of an almost flat fault. That polishing expected continued for at least the last few centuries, humankind’s propensity for sliding down things.