Peru: the Andes

Peru:  the Andes

How many trips of a lifetime is one person allowed?  Peru is another one that expands your mind and understanding of the world. My sister Carol and I traveled together for the first time last year to China, a phenomenal look at that place on the other side of the world that was just a fantasy to me as a child. Peru was not even on my radar when I was young.  As we flew home from China, Carol said, “Jean, this actually worked!  We got along great. We could travel together again.”  Instantly I answered, “Machu Picchu.”  So here we are. Don prefers more civilized countries with reliable toilets and smooth walkways, so he refused China and Peru.  We are on a Road Scholar trip with only 14 people and our wonderful guide Juan Carlos from Cusco.

We landed in Lima on the coast for a day of touring some historical sites and wandering the old city center. Lima was chosen as the Spanish Capitol by Francisco Pizzaro, the Spanish conquistador who brutally conquered the Inca and devastated the land.

Our fantastic guide for the whole trip, Juan Carlos.  He took care of us, taught us, inspired us, made us laugh and nearly cry.  We all loved him.

Larger houses have screened alcoves protruding from the upper floors.  Lovely.

The Larco Museum houses the unmatched collection of Don Rafael Larco Herrera.  He was an archeology aficionado who amassed a vast quantity of pre-Columbian pottery, statuary, and textiles, 45,000 items. The pieces are in nearly perfect condition because of the dry desert near the coast in Peru. Many pottery vessels are designed with two necks coming together in one spout with the space between serving as a handle. Others were intended for ceremonial pouring something onto the earth.

Gold jewelry including large ear ornaments.

Peru’s erotic pottery is well-known as talismans for fertility. The Inca were renowned for their complex weaving of Peruvian Pima cotton and the wool of alpaca, vicuña and bat wings. Some weavings had up to 380 threads per square inch—amazingly fine work.

The Inca buried their dead curled into a fetal position and encased in ornate wrappings.

Lunch  featured our first pisco sour cocktail. Pisco is a strong liquor distilled from grapes.  It is the national alcoholic drink. Divine! Tender slices of stir-fried beef over a fabulous rice pilaf delighted us for one of many authentic Peruvian meals.  We loved the food.

The Monastery of San Francisco venerating St. Jude is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  It was built in 1672, but earthquake damage has required extensive renovations. About 85 monks still live and work there, but they are no longer cloistered.

The catacombs under the Monastery church contain the bones of around 25,000 people of the lower classes wrapped in cloths and deposited atop each other in open vaults two to three meters deep. Eventually the bones were removed to pits to make room for more burials.

The world has about 120 ecosystems; Peru has 85 of them with the elevations from the coast to mountains of 20,000 feet, temperature averages from hot jungle to glacial mountains, yearly rainfall differences from ½ inch to 150 inches.  This varied land subsists on mining, fishing, tourism, and farming.

We flew to Cusco, elevation 11,000 feet, and met our Andes guide, Edwardo, who told us about the Inca, the Spaniards, the ruins, the mountains, the people.  He was great.

The people who became the Inca (later called the Quechua) likely came from the Lake Titicaca region and settled in the Cusco area.  The Incas defeated and absorbed many peoples up and down the Pacific coast of South America.  Inca properly was the title of the ruler, the first being Manco Capac who was the son of the sun and considered a god.  At its height the Inca Empire stretched 3000 miles from central Chile north to Ecuador and 200 miles wide including the entire Andes range.  Cusco was the capital and the center of the earth. During the 1400’s the empire was attacked and defeated by the Canchas tribe.

Pachacutec was not in line for the throne, but he was the one who mobilized the resistance and led the warriors to defeat the invaders and restore the empire. Pachacutec then declared himself the Inca and proceeded to build a number of cities and religious complexes, including Ollantaytambo on the Urubamba River, Machu Picchu, and the enormous Sacsayhuaman near Cusco.  The area north of Cusco became known as the Sacred Valley.  The Andes are full of trails used by the Incas, terraces used for centuries by farmers, and massive ruins that archeologists still wonder about.

We wandered about the Sacred Valley, named for the many Inca ruins and people who still preserve the old ways.  We stayed at a convent, turned Spanish hacienda, turned hotel, the Sonesta Posadas in Yucay.  What a serene, lovely place.

A common talisman on the roofs of farmers' homes had bulls for the farming, the ladder for rising prosperity, and the cross for their spirituality.

Potatoes originated in Peru and later spread to the rest of the world.  Peru has hundreds of varieties.  We had them often, and they were delicious.  

Corn and quinoa are also native to the Andes and varieties abound.

This is still a common way to farm the small plots that make up most of the agriculture.

Granaries perched high on the mountainsides during Inca times to keep the foods dry and safe.

The Inca were incredibly organized and advanced.  They ruled from 1200 to 1572 when the Spanish killed the last Inca. During those years they absorbed the various tribes living there, many peacefully.  They developed a sophisticated system of accounting and record-keeping using strings with knots, a vast network of trails and roads, and perfect stone buildings. The Incas did not use slave labor.  All people had to pay yearly duty to the empire: either goods from their farms or other endeavors or several months of labor on the empire’s projects such as building the big shrines, palaces, and worship centers.  It seems hard to believe that the Spanish explorers could annihilate them so savagely.

The Inca trails still crisscross the country, often lined by agave.

Moray was thought to be used by the Inca to experiment with different crops at different levels.

Sacsayhuaman took 50 years to build outside Cusco in the 1400’s. The city probably had 20,000 inhabitants.  The huge shrine was complete when the Spanish came in 1532. Sacsayhuaman, or sexy woman as the tour guides like to call it to help foreigners pronounce it, has the largest stones of any Inca ruin, many weighing 100 tons or more. Some were moved on stone rollers from 13 kilometers away. 

Sacsayhuaman was built in three concentric circles with the largest at the lowest level and towers for ceremonial purposes at the top. Only 10 to 15% remains. These huge rocks fit together just as tightly and cleanly as in other important Inca palaces or temples. The Inca workers used several methods and different styles of finished walls. Sometimes they carved pegs on one rock and matching holes on the next, so they could not slide apart. Another technique was to cut channels in adjacent rocks and pour in molten metal, sometimes even gold, which would harden into metal rings inside the walls.  The surface of the wall would be polished with a stone, water and sand.

The stones fit so tightly together without mortar that you cannot slip a piece of paper between them.

Walls for agricultural terraces and common people’s homes were built with rougher stone and mortar. Many terraces still exist, often used by present day farmers.  No one can quite figure out how they were built to last so well.  These are at Ollantaytambo on the Urubamba River.

Chinchero in the Sacred Valley has a large Sunday market where natives buy and trade for goods they need and also sell their produce and handicrafts. It is a favorite for foreign visitors.

Back in the 1960’s many hippies lived for a time in the Sacred Valley.  One unknown songwriter and singer in Chinchero for a few years was Paul Simon.  He was apparently inspired by the name of the town which means sound of silence. He also was taken with the Quechua patriotic song called El Condor Pasa and wrote an English version of the song that we all have heard. 

Chinchero was known for centuries as a center for fine weaving.  The sheep, llama, alpaca, and vicuna wool was dyed with plants.

Francisco Pizzaro led an expedition to search for legendary gold and silver in some South American lands.  The Incas probably could have annihilated him, but they allowed him to enter and explore as they watched his troop curiously.  Soon the group of Spaniards looted, raped and trapped the Incas to kill them.  The Inca used vast amounts of gold and silver to decorate and make statues, but to them the fine weavings of alpaca and batwings were more important and valuable.  The Spaniards stole all the gold and silver statues and ornamentation they could find, melted the exquisite pieces, and sent the ingots to Spain.

During the defensive wars with the Spaniards, the Inca fled to some of their higher and more remote villages.  Legends of the fabulous site of the last stronghold that the Spanish never found have intrigued people through the years.  Yale professor Hiram Bingham was determined to find it.  He researched it thoroughly and enlisted the help of local people to follow up the legends.  When he found Machu Picchu in 1910, he was sure this large mystical place was it, but the last refuge was probably Vilicamba in a near-by group of mountains, more destroyed than Machu Picchu which the Spaniards never reached.  Bingham violated agreements made with the Peruvian government regarding artifacts.  Instead of allowing them to stay, he shipped vast amounts to the Yale library and museums.

We took the train to Machu Picchu winding through the wild Urubamba River canyon with the Inca trail on the other side of the river before it rises into the mountains   A few huts are gathered in spots where people can eke out a few crops. The mountains are green here as opposed to the brown we saw in the Sacred Valley.  We are entering the high jungle--lush, humid and hot when it is sunny, but cold at night. Disembarking at the little town of Aguas Calientes, we boarded a bus for another half hour of switchbacks and worries when meeting another bus.  Occasionally a path with steps crosses the road for those hiking up from Aguas Calientes.  The trail to the right of the bridge here is the famous Inca Trail up and over the mountains to the legendary, mostly unspoiled stronghold.

Machu Picchu, the Sacred Mountain, has been on my bucket list for years.  As we went through the entrance, I asked, "When can I start jumping up and down?"  As we came on the terraces cascading down into the Machu Picchu valley and saw the many stone houses surrounding the central green, we knew we had arrived in a very special place.

We wandered in awe among the perfect stone walls of the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Three Windows honoring the creation myth of the Inca.

I wondered how they kept the grass trimmed among all the ruins.  Then we saw the llama mowers.

The Inca Bridge trail hugs the mountainside offering expansive views of the valley below Machu Picchu.  

The gap in the trail had a bridge that the Incas would lower to the far side when they wanted to use it.  The bridge was raised to prevent invaders from approaching.

Cusco is a fascinating, vibrant city.

The Spaniards destroyed all Inca religious buildings and replaced them with Catholic churches. Frequent earthquakes have repeatedly destroyed the Spanish buildings, just down to the Inca foundations which still stand solid.

Gustavo “Tito” Leon is an expert in traditional Quechua musical instruments.  He showed us many beautiful reproduction wind and string instruments created after extensive research and study of old ones.  The quena is a flute type instrument which has different ranges depending on the diameter of the bamboo or clay tube used.  He had drums, pottery, cha cha rattles made of seeds or sheep’s hooves on strings and on leather bands to wear on the leg while dancing or playing another instrument.  The guitar-like charango has 20 strings, giving it a wide range and full sound.  The music he played with each instrument was haunting, chirping, mellow, or melodic depending on which he had in his hand.  A wonderfully talented man.  

Tito's mission is to preserve and promote the Quechua heritage that has taken such a beating in Peru.  Juan Carlos told us sadly that the Spanish for centuries convinced the Quechua native people that they were inferior and that nothing of their language, traditions or way of life was worth keeping.

Peru is one of those trips that changes you--sensitivity, awareness, perspective on life and humanity.  I told Juan Carlos that I was feeling the collective guilt for the horrendous deeds done over the centuries to native peoples in the name of colonialism.  Our country has done it too.  I simply cannot understand what makes people treat other groups as non-persons or inferior.  It has happened throughout history. My German roots are part of the nation that produced Nazism. We smug, rich (compared to much of the world) Americans say, “Well, I personally did not have slaves or massacre the Indians or put Jews in concentration camps.”  True, we didn't, but our ancestors did.  We cannot divorce ourselves from the guilt of humanity.  We can only learn from the past and realize that God created all people equal.  We must live tolerance and acceptance and love for all of humanity.