Incas

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We´ve been living amongst the Incas now for about 10 days here at the centre of their mighty empire. On Friday we will set off for the Manu Reserve - the deepest, darkest, steamiest, primevalest jungle we´ve been able to find in Peru. If this is the last blog you receive, assume we have been chewed to pieces by the mosquitos or perhaps pounced on by a man-eating anteater in the night. With luck, the trip could be as great as our visit to the Galapagos Islands. If nothing else, it´s jaw-clenchingly expensive, albeit nowhere near as expensive as the aforementioned Galapagos.

After Manu, it´s off to Arequipa, then Puno, and onward to Bolivia.

Meanwhile, some thoughts on the Incas:

As everyone knows, they built their amazing mountain-top fortresses without the aid of the wheel. Gigantic dressed stones were fitted together with such amazing skill, they had no need for mortar, and the irregularity of the stones ensured that the buildings could survive earthquakes, unlike the flashier but less stable efforts constructed by the Spaniards. In fact, whenever they have earthquakes (which is very often) everything collapses except the Inca foundations on top of which all the more recent buildings have been erected.

Modern Incas (i.e. Peruvians) prefer wonky efforts made of mud bricks, with liquid mud slapped between them by hand. A breath of wind would blow them down.

Other interesting facts about Peruvians:

They barge old ladies off the pavement.

They never smile, or say please or thank you.

They let off fireworks at 1.30am and 5.00am. (Like everything else they do, this activity is designed only to make a loud and frightening noise.)

They do some kind of sinister bird-whistling in the night.

They rob you in the street by gobbing in your face to create a distraction (more unpleasant details some other time).

A lot of them are beggars.

Somewhere in between are the touts who rush up to you at all hours of the day and night offering restaurant menus, shoe-shines, postcards, trays of cigarettes, articles of clothing and of course taxi journeys.

It was interesting to note, in the Museo Nacional in Lima, how relatively little space was devoted to the achievements of the Inca, compared to the Wari, the Moche, the Chimu and other cultures which preceded them. Perhaps this is because it was the Inca who were careless enough to get beaten by Pizarro and his handful of merry men.

The famous anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss seems to share this rather dim view. He points out that the Inca civilisation lasted only three centuries, and that the Spaniards found it in an advanced state of decay. Like the Aztecs, the Incas produced "totalitarian art, striving for a kind of hugeness in the harsh and the stark, and expressive of a state anxious to assert its power by concentrating its resources ... on war or government. Even the Maya monuments seem like the gaudy decadence of an art which had reached its peak a thousand years previously."

Mind you, Machu Picchu was kinda awesome, dude.

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Photos

Who´d be a llama?
These rock channels once ran with the blood of sacrificed llamas. If the blood ran down one channel, good fortune was assured; if it ran the other way, oh dear ...

Meeeow!
Stone puss at Chavin

Tourist
One of the hordes who trample through Machu Picchu every day

Sinister
I mean, look at them - it´s not normal, is it?

Comments

[the dutch party!]

great!
Sounds great again, although we already heard your stories on the Christmasdinner...;-) Have a great time in Manu, and we will meet again in Bolivia!! Lots of love, and save travels! The Dutchies

[suenmike]

Robbed by a soygringo
G'day! It took us an 8 hour plane ride from Darkest Africa to the snowy depths of Kent to discover that you weren't still in Ecuador after all. Please tell soygringo!