Machu
Picchu, Peru
"A
few buses waited for the tourists at Puenta Ruinas. They went up an
unpaved six-kilometer path, winding along the steep mountainside. The lost
city of the Incas was slowly revealed, the ruins
spread out on the top like a decomposed carcass of a giant guanaco. This
was once the exclusive abode of the Inca nobility and priests. The train
in the valley below became smaller and smaller, a baby serpent caught
in a brief encounter with the sun. It was hard to comprehend why such an
isolated site was chosen for this settlement - the flattish top of a
steep mountain, surrounded by deep green valleys and then more mountains
- a mysterious, disquieting place. Eastwards, inside the inhospitable
Amazon rainforest, more spectacular ruins, as yet unexcavated, are
believed to exist. Terrace farming supplied food to this community of one
thousand elite who lived by the solar calendar for centuries, until the
Spaniards ended it all. The Inca civilization of twelve million people,
built upon formidable organizing prowess and administrative efficiency,
which extended from Colombia to northern Chile and which achieved the rare
and enviable feat of providing sustenance to all its members, succumbed to
the craft and cunning of 180 semi-literate Spanish swordsmen with a
reputation for savagery and love of gold. Hard to comprehend? The Peruvian
writer Mario Vargas Llosa has offered an explanation ..." (read
more)