Exploring the Incan Wonderland - Part Two (Machu Picchu, Peru)

Exploring the Incan Wonderland - Part Two (Machu Picchu, Peru) - The sacred district has the foremost important and ma sites of the complicated. Walking from the Temple of the Sun towards Huayna Picchu, you arrive at the Principal Temple (PT on the map). This 3 sided temple boasts some stunning stonework (though some has subsided with earth movement) and a chic stone altar. during this same space is that the equally distinctive 3 Windowed Temple (3W) with characteristic trapezoidal-shaped windows and excellent stonework. Note the rock on the close to aspect as a part of the closest window has 10 sides, nevertheless fits neatly just like the most perfectly fashioned jigsaw.

A little any uphill and up a regally carved stone staircase is that the most exceptional part of Machu Picchu is Intihuatana (IN on the map). Nearly forever surrounded by giant teams, it's a method of ancient sundial. to point out the Incan’s deep understanding of astronomy, calendars and agricultural cycles and their precision stonework, this diamond formed rock casts no shadow solely at 2 time points throughout the year - midday on the 2 equinoxes (March twenty one and September 21) – the sun shining directly onto the rock. Even the guides who tell a similar story daily appear to be moved in describing this beautiful piece of middle age engineering. it's additionally claimed that the four points of the diamond misinform the four main compass points and are directly aligned with four of their most sacred mountains as well as Veronica to the east (photographed in an Inca path post) and Huayna Picchu to the north.

Walking to the tip of the positioning is that the entrance to the climb of Huayna Picchu (Young Mountain). it's a steep, vigorous climb up numerous rough Incan stairs and uneven dirt methods and takes between one and 2 hours (depending on your fitness). it's a well-worthwhile walk (after all, how usually can you be during this majestic location). For the trekkers, encourage those tired legs to bear an added climb. It should be undertaken within the morning (closes within the early afternoon and has daily limits on the quantity of trekkers) and is best suggested for the beginning of Day 2 for those that are visiting for 2 days (strongly suggested approach). The read from the highest offers an excellent understanding of the layout of Machu Picchu, offers an awe-inspiring overall panorama of the Andes and highlights the spectacular terracing of the agricultural sector. elements of this steep-sided mountain are terraced too.

If you aren’t yet tired of walking, a side path takes you to the impressive Temple of the Moon.

Finally, once you are down, I’d suggest you spend time wandering the general urban area (H on the map) where the standard population lived. Many of the houses are still in fine condition, though there are no roofs left as they were made of branches and grasses.

There are numerous other temples, rooms and areas to wander and get lost in this fantasy world of extraordinary stone buildings of the middle ages. Spend time relaxing in the main grassy plaza area and contemplate what a time it must have been, the hub-bub of activity in daily Incan life.

Whether you are mesmerised by the temples, the water-channelling system, the unusual stone sundials, the dry stonework of the walls, the large-scale agriculture or the phenomenal natural mountain setting, the Incan creators have left a remarkable legacy of an awe-inspiring, haunting, mysterious and magical travel wonder in this lost city.

Trekking to the Lost City - Part Two (Inca Trail, Peru)

Trekking to the Lost City - Part Two (Inca Trail, Peru) - Day 3 is that the longest trekking day (around sixteen kilometres or 10 miles) however it's mainly downhill over uneven ground (which is surprisingly onerous on sore legs) and in some ways is that the main highlight of the trek (apart from Machu Picchu itself). The path passes some majestic Incan ruins.

Sayaqmarka (“Inaccessible Town”) perches on atiny low hilltop, formidably protected with cliffs on 3 sides and a slender stairway on the fourth. It options variety of semi-circular buildings, rooms and squares on completely different levels connected with slender ways, ritual baths, flat open areas and canals. Despite the misty morning our cluster incurred, you'll decipher the remainder space it should have provided Incans travelling to Machu Picchu and therefore the strategic oversight it offered over this key pathway. a number of the unequalled precision of the Incan stonework is featured, designed while not mortar, however with such good joins that you simply can’t slide a pocketknife into the gap.

Trekking follows the first Incan path down into the valley and up to the third and gentlest of the 3 passes. It passes through an Incan tunnel with swish walls and carved steps – an improbable engineering feat given the restricted tools offered at the time.

Phuyupatamarca includes a terraced space for crops and 6 Incan baths most likely related to spiritual rituals. The trekking from here on is on the first Incan staircase and follows over a thousand uneven stone stairs (downwards) through a cloud forest of lichen-strewn trees, orchids and ferns in an exceedingly cool refreshing atmosphere.

Late within the day and close to the ultimate camp website, there's a shocking terraced agricultural space in conjunction with a residential advanced at Wiñay Wayna (lead photo and below), that roughly interprets to forever young. A series of fountains run from the highest to all-time low of the slope in an exceedingly good alignment with the terraces. The Urubamba River that we tend to crossed at the beginning of day one continues to flow below.

Day Four tends to start early for a short walk (about an hour and a half) to the Sun Gate (Intipunku) which oversees the entire Machu Picchu site. As if uplifted by a mystical power, people who could barely take another step over the previous two days approach a sprint as the trekkers herd towards the Sun Gate at dawn. Surrounded by magnificent scenery, the peaceful walking of the previous three days is lost in this final undignified crowded surge towards the Incan sanctuary.

The crowd awaits the sunrise. Everyone speaks in excited but hushed tones and there is a huge sense of satisfaction at completing this holy grail of trekking. The hardship of walking the last three days had all been worth it. A few alpaca and llama contentedly graze below, familiar with the daily pre-dawn commotion. The mountain saddle which Machu Picchu is built upon tends to be misty but when the foggy curtains lifts, the truly awe-inspiring and haunting travel wonder of the “lost city” of the Inca unveils before your very eyes.

To establish European thinking and religious beliefs with the indigenous Indian population three hundred years ago, the Spanish built a modest mud-brick and wooden church on the site of an old Incan temple in a small village about forty kilometres south of Cusco. Arriving late in the afternoon in dull light, the church certainly didn’t inspire any wonder, and I wished I’d stayed on the bus to Cusco. However the temptation was too great with descriptions likening this colonial church to the Sistine Chapel.

To open the doors is to unveil a dazzling array of wall paintings and frescoes contrasted by a richly glowing gilded altarpiece carved from wood. The artwork, rich in red and gold paint, tell powerful religious stories. One graphic painting highlights the punishments for going to hell and the rewards for getting to heaven. The ceiling is decorated in floral patterns and glitters with gold leaf.

Near the entrance is a baptismal prayer written in five languages including three local Indian languages revealing the Spaniards attempts to convert the population to Catholicism.

While lofty monikers like “the Sistine Chapel of the Americas” are a gross exaggeration, the modest travel wonder of Andahuaylillas is on the road between Lake Titicaca and Cusco and worth a brief stop.

Other Peru Posts
Pathways to the Gods (Nazca Lines)
Raiders of the Lost Tombs (Chauchilla Tombs)
Exploring the Incan Wonderland (Machu Picchu)
Trekking to the Lost City (Inca Trail)
Potatoes with your Guinea Pig, Sir?
Flight of the Condor (Colca Canyon)
Living in Reeds (Lake Titicaca)
Top Ten Travel Wonders of South America

Photo Credit: Fresco image kindly supplied by Ken at randomtruth

Nazca would remain off the map of all but the most intrepid travellers except for the mystifying Nazca Lines. Once in Nazca, there are two more far less known but still remarkable travel wonders to explore, namely the Nazcan aqueducts and the Chauchilla Cemetery.

Scattered across the arid lunar landscape are thousands of graves, most of which have been recently discovered and looted of pottery, weavings and other treasures leaving the skeletal remains exposed to the harsh elements. Buried in a cotton wrap and coated in a special resin, the dry conditions and sandy soil have acted as natural mummification.

Over a thousand years old, skeletons bleached by the harsh sunlight, many with matted brown dreadlocks, crouch in their tattered robes and blankets creepily grinning back from mud-brick vaults with their icy, silent glare. Shards of pottery and ceramics litter the displayed tombs.

The landscape remains pockmarked by pillagers and scattered with bones and debris, the depressions symbolic of the cultural and archaelogical vandalism (triggered by rich western collectors) that wreaked havoc on this necropolis as recently as fifteen years ago. It is an eerie feeling wandering the marked paths of this stark underworld peeking down at ghostly white skeletons, their braided hair adding a little too much life for comfort.

Though the heat and dryness of the area is unrelenting, reflect on the exceptional culture of the people who carved their lives out of the desert and left remarkable legacies and travel wonders including the wonderous Nazca Lines, a sophisticated water management system and a surreal cemetery.

Other Peru Posts
Top Ten Travel Wonders of South America
Exploring the Incan Wonderland (Machu Picchu)
Trekking to the Lost City (Inca Trail)
Potatoes with your Guinea Pig, Sir?
Flight of the Condor (Colca Canyon)
Living in Reeds (Lake Titicaca)

There is little doubt that Nazca would be little more than a dusty remote Peruvian town were it not for the world-famous mysterious lines and images that cover the desert. If travellers venture this far to explore the Nazca Lines, then there are two more travel wonders to discover.

The advanced culture that etched the lines in the hash desert also constructed an extraordinary aqueduct system that continues to be utilised today by local farmers. Called puquios, the Nazcans constructed a complex of stone-lined canals and reservoirs (partly underground and partly on the surface) run from mountain springs to provide water for living and irrigating crops in the dry desert plains. These canals are S-curved to slow the water flow and contain stone rampways to provide access to the underground streams and an entrance to clean out the canals if blocked. The water is surprisingly warm, fresh-tasting and crystal clear – very refreshing in the unrelenting heat of the Peruvian day.

Some scientists believe that Nazca Lines are drawn to indicate the sources of water in the surrounding mountains with site guides describing this fact. Undoubtedly, water was the source of life in this stark environment and it remains a wonder that the ingenuity to tap the mountain’s water functions so successfully that it outlived the Nazcan culture itself.

The second travel wonder is extraordinary tombs of Chauchilla in the Nazcan desert, but that is a story for another day.

Ever since reading Erich von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods? as a child, I’ve been enchanted by the mysterious travel wonders of the Nazca Lines. Though, even as a child, I have never entertained the notion that this was used as an airport for alien spacecraft, the idea that a past culture etched super-sized motifs of animals, birds and sea-life into this harsh desert landscape struck me as truly bizarre.

Evidence that this ramshackle unattractive town once attracted an advanced culture is not only evident in the world-famous lines but also in a mesmerising aqueduct system that supplied water for farming the parched soils of this unforgiving desolate area.

The geography of this area ensures that the lines created a couple of thousand years ago still exist. Each line and image is created as a single continuous line, clearing the thin layer of darker metallic soil and unveiling the pale coloured sandy ground below. Completely devoid of vegetation and with virtually no recorded rainfall and unchanging windless conditions, these small furrows etched into the soil have survived the ravages of time. Hundreds of lines and trapezoidal shapes, kilometres long, crisscross this huge arid expanse, combined with roughly seventy stylized animal figures or geoglyphs, many over 100 metres across.

The only way to properly appreciate the sight is from the air. Not for those with weak stomachs, light aircraft take visitors on thirty to forty minute morning flights traversing the desert area and tipping the plane from side to side like a carnival ride to offer everyone good views of the most significant figures.

The spider has a special story. One theory is that it is a diagram of the sacred Orion constellation. Another details that it is a particular rare giant spider only found deep in the Amazon valley, many thousand of miles away. The male of this spider has its reproductive organ at the tail end of one of its legs (visible only under microscope) and this appendage is clear in photos of the Nazca image (it is the bottom left leg in the photo).

A monkey with a spiral tail, a hummingbird, a killer whale, a condor, a strange astronaut figure, a huge lizard (cut in two by the highway, built before the figures were apparent), a dog, a spider, a flamingo (which is over 300 metres long) and other animal figures litter the landscape like a whimsical zoo, no geoglyph being repeated.

With the spiral shape being an ancient symbol for water, a commodity more valuable than gold in this dusty parched environment, claims that the area represents a water ceremony for the gods may make more sense than some of the far-fetched theories espoused by supposed scientists. Whether this large Peruvian pampas was an extraterrestrial landing strip, an advanced astronomical and agricultural calendar, exotic ancient art or something completely different, we are unlikely to ever truly know. Being halfway between the capital, Lima, and the stunning colonial city of Arequipa, it is well worth a stop to view and wonder about these unforgettable desert markings, along with the ingenious aqueduct system and ancient burial grounds in the same area.

Other Peru Posts
Potatoes with your Guinea Pig, Sir?
Exploring the Incan Wonderland (Machu Picchu)
Trekking to the Lost City (Inca Trail)
Flight of the Condor (Colca Canyon)
Living in Reeds (Lake Titicaca)
Top Ten Travel Wonders of South America

Between enjoying the Inca Trail, Macchu Picchu, Lake Titicaca, the Nazca Lines, Colca Canyon and other travel wonders of Peru, most travellers are faced with the question whether than can stomach the Peruvian national dish of guinea pig or cuy.

After responding “potato” to the query of “rice or potato with your cuy, sir”, the waitress skipped off with a wry grin on her face. A few minutes later, another of what my country sees as a cute but slightly novel pet was roasting over the red embers of an open barbeque, skewered by a broad flat stick.

The meal is served with the entire guinea pig flattened as if a victim of a road accident. Its charred face with its toothy grin seems to spookily stare at you whichever way you angle the plate.

It is a messy struggle to coax the sinewy meat from the innumerable bones. Though the creatures appear to be quite tubby when alive, hands are required to do an effective job of stripping every meagre morsel away from the tight rib cage and spine. It is certainly not a meal for fine dining. The drumstick is hardly the prized possession that it may be if claimed from the Christmas turkey though it is meant to be the prime pickings of a guinea pig. The flavour has the gentle gamey sense of rabbit and is rather tasty.

It is difficult to escape the fact that it is a traditional and proud part of the Peruvian diet. Most farms and rural properties have a small area reserved to raise guinea pigs, a key source of protein for these typically poor and subsistence-based communities. Some guinea pigs luxuriate in quite ornate mud and straw structures. The often multi-layered setups with tunnels and pathways encourage these naturally inquisitive rodents to explore.

This delicacy has been enjoyed for over two thousand years in Peru with a guide at the famed ruins of Macchu Picchu telling us that there is evidence of domesticated guinea pigs from well before the time of Christ. In local versions of the Last Supper, both Cusco (top photo) and Lima’s (photo to the right) cathedrals contain paintings of this famous religious event with the main dish being that of guinea pig. There are references to Incan sacrificial ceremonies including the prized cuy.

To complete your Peru experience, be bold and sample the national dish. After all, it’s not likely to be on the menu in your home country and is a significant cultural element of Peruvian life.