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Published: September 7th 2008
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Airplane View of Andes
Corderilla Negra Range on way to Cuzco The Mami Panchita driver deposits me at Lima airport. I´m quickly through the expedited Lan.com check-in lane, and Lan Peru 71 bound for Cuzco lifts off the tarmack on time. In a window seat, I have views of the Andes, the Cordilla Blanca and Cordilla Negra. They are majestic, stark, remote in contours of brown, white, and distant grey. At the Cuzco airport, Alan from my tour operator for the Inca Trail meets me. We are at Los Ninos I Hotel by noon. On the way we chat in mixed English and Spanish, and I´m booked on a Cuzco City tour at 2.
Los Ninos I is a hotel founded in 1998 as part of a project that Dutch woman Jolanda van den Berg founded to support the homeless children of Cuzco. The project know has five kitchens for street kids and three hotels. All net profits from the hotel operations go to the project:
Ninos I, the original, is situated in a casa built in the Spanish style, the courtyard in the middle. The noises and diesel fums from the street are fairly muted and blocked by the thick bolted door. You push the ringer switch and Los Ninos I Courtyard
Los Ninos Courtyard. A sunny place to eat and recup from the altitude. someone comes to let you in to the reception.
The Cuzco City tour starts at the Cathedral. What tour doesn´t in a large city shaped by Spain or any other European state? Our guide quickly herds us around the dark Cathedral, and then over to the church were there´s a shrine to Inca Garcilaso De La Vega, the first historian of the Inca. The main point here is that the Catholicism here is imbued with Inca myths and traditions such as Pachumama, and this blend appears either blatantly or surrepetitiously in the paintings hanging in the Cathedral.
From here we go to the Inca temples of the Sun and Moon, where our group gets the first experience in the tour of the amazing Inca stone work. The sun temple is in volcanic basalt of dark grey. Peru is in the earthquake zone, and the Inca stonemasons knew that using trapezoidally shaped blocks of decreasing size for succeeding courses could withstand the tremors. We learn that the Inca stone artisans used hematite as chisels as they worked basalt and sandstone. The stones fit like jigsaw puzzle pieces, and some are fashioned into right angle corner reinforcements. We learn that
At Sacsayhuaman
Before the 80 plus ton stone they made models of their buildings, including models of each stone, and shaped them at the quarries.
The sun and moon temples, a complex called Qorikancha, if I understood correctly, became part of a convent after the Spanish arrived. We see examples of the Inca's ability to use the sun, moon and stars to tell time or inform there structured sense of the cosmos. They had a fascination with the Milky Way, the Lactia Via.
We go on to other points of Inca architectural interest in Cuzco, and Eduard describes several aspects of the Inca mythology, and their focus on the three levels of the cosmos: under, on, and above. Somewhere I´ve written these down. Then namely we arrive at Sacsayhuaman. Eduard makes sure we understand the distinction between this complex of huge stones and any ¨sexy wooman.¨ They are pronounced about the same. One stone is 80 tons. There´s a large flat area, larger than a soccer field, where the Inca held ceremonies and games. This area is used for festivals today, including Inti Raymi, the sun festival held on June 24, relative to the summer solstice. The view of Cuzco near Sacsayhuaman is panoramic.
Nearby,
Sacsayhuaman Parque
View of the ceremonial area and stone structure we see the Qenco, also above the city, and examples of Inca stone carving. This is a temple and ampitheater.
Then on to Tambo Machay. A tambo is a gathering place, and this one involves water and is opposite the two Qenco complexes. Many Indigenas (locales) are in the area, peddling anything from tamales wrapped and grilled in in corn husks to woven goods, though much of questionable authenticity. Our last stop is here at Tambo Machay, which might mean rest cave, or bath. The water has run here for many hundred years through hidden channels until it exits the hillside into a small fountain and then down the steep hill. We were off the bus and up the hill, a challenge to my flatland lungs at this point to a a what we hear is an Inca Water Temple, named something like Tumbapai (?). It is here, returning to the bus in the twilight, that I succumb to a grandmotherly Andegina woman hustline fake baby alpaca sweaters. ¨Senor, please ... Amigo, please.¨ Her palms join in supplication. She tries to get me to go for a two for the cost of three special. No way. Before getting on the bus, I buy a roasted tamali wrapped in a cornhusk, a much better and tastier deal than the sweater--and about all I want to eat for dinner.
What is really notable is how these complexes seem to fit into the natural landscape, on the hillsides.
After the tour, I´m back at Los Ninos, and by now, 7:30 p.m., my head and body are reacting in earnest to having been carted to over 11,000 feet from near sea level earlier in the day. I assume the Coca tea has helped, but there´s some nausea during the night. I´m glad I sprang for the room with a private bathroom.
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