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I decided to arrive to Cuzco early, four days ahead of my scheduled departure for the Inca Trail, to take a rest before the trip and to soak in the atmosphere of the city. This former capital of Incas was, not surprisingly, said to offer a variety of culture, restaurants, and nightlife, all in a stunning setting of mountains and lush forests; enough to substantiate a longer stop in my journey. Already views from my bus window, as we passed through fertile valleys on the way from Puno to Cuzco, confirmed what I had read in my guide: Incas, their predecessors, and their followers were extremely skilled agriculturists and masons, integrating their dwellings with the natural environment around them. I was lucky to arrive here at the time of harvest. Steep mountain slopes were covered in golden, lush green, and purple fields of maize, potatoes, and quinoa (if you haven’t tried this cereal, do! It is said to be the most nutritious of the many Andean cereals; enough to produce communities of giant people in the mountains who rely on it in their daily diet.) The fields are cleverly designed and irrigated, often with water coming from mountains kilometers away,
and many placed on the terraces deeply cut in the mountain slopes. Cuzco, however, is a stone kingdom, with narrow, curvy streets, and unfortunately lacking trees or any other obvious connection to the nature. This must have been different under the Incas. Even the aerial view of the city at the Inca time resembled an animal - their sacred symbol of puma!
Just as I was looking for a hotel to stay in, I ran into Sue, a friend that I had previously met in Copacabana in Bolivia. She was here with her family, also doing the Inca Trail later on. After a dinner at Jacks (a cool Gringo hangout on Ave San Blas), we ventured on a mission to find a movie Borrat. I had wanted to see the movie since it came out (now a long time ago) and Sue loved it. Imagine, they don’t have Blockbusters here! Out of all places (and possibly the only one in Cuzco at that hour) we found it at a dance club right on Plaza de Armas. By pure coincidence, they were playing the movie in one of their bars. For 7 soles (just over $2), the DVD was mine!
I still can’t believe what a strange luck this was. The DVD will be perhaps my strangest souvenir to bring home…
The third day in the morning I left for the airport to meet with my friend Laura who came to join me (or rather I was joining her since she planned the whole trip!) on the famous Inca Trail leading to Machu Picchu. Albeit having flown from Lima, she was doing surprisingly well with the altitude, and so we went exploring the local sites. We took a cab to Tambo Machay, the most remote of the four significant archeological sites near Cuzco, and walked back to the city, passing through lovely valleys abundant with meadows, sheep, and eucalyptus trees. Laura would probably tell you that one of her most vivid memories of me on the trip would be my looking for berries and eating anything that even remotely looked addible. Here I was munching on the Eucalyptus leaves. They were surprisingly refreshing (tasted just like Halls mints), but made my mouth painfully numb. I never admitted to Laura but the juices anesthetized my tongue almost depriving me of ability to talk, fortunately just for a short while. We
passed through number of archeological sites, including an ancient spa where the nobles would purify, a natural school, ritual caves with carvings of snakes and llamas, likely serving as the place of sacrifices, and the most famous out of all, the Sacsayhuaman (or how most gringos pronounce it: “Sexy Woman”). The last one of the sites boasts some of the finest Inca architecture and also the largest and most ornamental of stones to be found in Peru. The biggest stone to be found here weights over 100 tones and according to one legend it cost 3,000 lives as it was transported to the site. The stones fit perfectly. Typically, small stones are used as the base so the whole construction is more flexible in the event of an earthquake, and large stones, cut in various shapes and polished to perfection, are used to make the body of the wall, without use of cement or any other glue. These structures have lasted for centuries, surviving several earthquakes and often over-living the younger colonial constructions by Spaniards. However, were they worth the blood of the slaves and the lives lost? I think of these sites, including some of the most beautiful churches
and castles in Europe, as monuments to people who died building them. They have their soles forever imprinted in the stone, not the ones of the kings who ordered them.
Quite like in the architecture in today’s Cuzco, the Spanish influence was also quite apparent in people’s appearance here, much more so than in Bolivia or Southern Peru. Most Cuzcenos appeared quite obviously of a mixed blood. However, the sentiment was definitely pro-Inca, not pro-European here (quite remarkably different from Argentineans). The vast majority of people in this region still speak Qechua, the old Inca language, and they are proud to be descendents of the Incas. Ironically, most of them probably aren’t as there were just few hundred thousand of pure blooded Incas at their peak in contrast to millions of the people conquered by and subjugated to them. While it is true that the Incas, with a brutal force and clever economic tools and incentives, expanded their territory all the way from Columbia to northern Chile and thus technically millions people could be considered to be part of the Inca society, their empire lasted less than 100 years, ending with a civil war and the Spanish invasion in
the 16th century. Likely, the local cultures prevailed over the dominant Inca one and the imposed Quechua language and core religious believes were the only components uniting these very distinct tribes and cultures. Furthermore, whole villages were moved around by the Incas to prevent rebellions and to develop remote regions of their empire and thus cross-insemination was inevitable. How can then a local indigenous relate herself to the bloodthirsty Incas that most likely ruled over and killed many of her ancestors? An analogy could be found in my own home land where over 30% of the populus now vote for the communists, previously ruling them. There is a certain appeal in sentiment, legends, and also rebellion against the current regime that makes the old one more attractive. The Inca regime is the last most powerful regime in the peoples’ collective memory here and thus it is romanticized.
Sadly, most Peruvians, while they have their basic human rights guaranteed, are still being abused the same way as at the Inca and Colonial time, now by the rich oligarchs, the corrupt government, the guerillas, and the multinational companies. The Amazon, the cloud forest, and numerous mountainous and jungle tribes are disappearing
as the modern conquistadores are taking and abusing the land for oil, wood mining, and short-term agricultural exploitation. There is a law in Peru enabling a company to take over a land that hasn’t been utilized for 2 years. How can this work with much of the territory pertaining to the nomadic tribes that move around frequently to prevent overexploitation of their land? Those who know me would probably agree that I am certainly not a communist or even a socialist. Mostly a pragmatic realist, but often a romantic idealist. But the experience here (and in Bolivia) certainly made me think deeply about my core values and believes and made me understand why some people would choose to vote for far left-wingers.
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