Our Peru trip: Lima, Inca sites, and Lake Titicaca

We were on the observation platform on the last car of the Andean Explorer, passing slowly through the small town of Racchi. The boy was standing in a hole roughly as deep as his legs were long, waving both hands high and laughing at our screams of astonishment.

We were astonished because the hole in which he was standing was directly between the two tracks. He had popped up just as the final car cleared the spot. He must have been crouching there as we passed over, know that a group of tourists would be on the deck of the last car. His big smile and bouncy wave showed us he had received exactly the reaction he wanted.

No one else popped out from under our train, but Peruvians waved and smiled in every village we passed through and sometimes even when we were miles from anything on the map. The older children grinned and waved, and the youngest kids hollered and hopped when we waved back. The adults would smile and wave back if we waved first. The teenagers, like teens everywhere I guess, did not acknowledge our presence.

We were traveling from the ancient capital of the Incan Empire, Cuzco, to Lake Titicaca, where the Incas believed their gods created them. In Sicuani, one of the larger towns we passed through on our trip, a two-story school stood by the tracks. The train’s whistle seemed to be a signal for the students to jump from their seats and run to the windows. Bunches of them were leaning out, waving, yelling, and smiling.

What explains this universal impulse to watch trains and wave?

Here’s my guess: Connection. Before we shared that moment with the Peruvian boy, he and we had been separated by distance, culture, language, and economics. After those few seconds, we will live the rest of our lives separated.

But in that one brief moment, we connected. He got a reaction from us, and we got one from him.

I see you! You see me!

I think it's that same impulse brought us to Peru. I live my little life in Wisconsin, connected to a lot of wonderful people, but separated from so many more. I’m never going to speak Quechuan, the Incan language still spoken by about 12% of Peruvians. I'll never routinely shop for my vegetables in the Sunday market at Chinchero, the birthplace of the rainbow, nor spin scarlet strands of wool into thread and weave them into intricate textiles.

I’m separated from contemporary Peruvians by culture and distance, and I'm separated from their pre-Columbian ancestors by an additional several hundred years. I am never going to walk a rope bridge over a raging Urubamba River, help to build a wall without mortar that will stand for centuries in an earthquake zone, or live in a cloud-forest city where the year-round temperatures match those in Camelot.

But for nine days, I saw their work, learned about them, and walked where they walked. I breathed the thin Andean air; tasted their giant roasted corn; and heard their llamas hum. I know a little bit more about the infinite variety that we humans can imagine and accomplish.

I see you, Peru!

Basic facts about our trip

Our trip was organized by the travel company AHI and arranged through our universities’ alumni associations. In our group of 34 travelers, we had 11 University of Wisconsin-Madison alumni. The other colleges included Tulane University, University of Redlands, University of Tennessee, and McGill University. A few people from the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia were also with us. There was not a person in our group whom I'd mind having move in next door.

Our tour guides were personable and very knowledgeable, and AHI arranged for local experts to give our group five lectures or panel presentations, when we could pepper them with one-on-one questions. The experts included Guillermo Cock, a working archeologist whose discoveries have been the subject of a National Geographic issue and a Nova show, and Alfredo Mormontoy Atayupanqui, the recently retired head curator and resident archeologist of Machu Picchu.

We traveled during the southern hemisphere's summer and Peru's rainy season but got wet on only about two of our nine days. Even then, it was mostly drizzle and did not interfere with our sightseeing. The places we visited were close to the equator (12-13 degrees latitude south or so), but temperatures are very moderate in Lima, due to the Humboldt current up from Antarctica, and in Cuzco, the Sacred Valley, and Puno, due to the altitude.

I’ll put more photos and stories in later posts, but this was our basic itinerary:

• We started in Lima and toured the city, visiting the San Francisco Monastery and catacombs, the Cathedral on the Plaza de Armes, and the National Museum of Archeology, Anthropology, and History. That evening, we were guests at a private dinner in the elegant ancestral residence of one of the descendants of Peru's colonial Spanish nobility.
• We then traveled to Cuzco, where the group visited Sacsayhuaman, a massive Incan site believed to have been used, among other purposes, for large religious ceremonies; Koricancha, the Incas' golden Temple of the Sun, and the Spanish cathedral. On our own with Dick and Adele, Keith and I visited a museum of pre-Columbian artifacts and a Museum of Pre-Columbian Art. Keith and I also trotted (well, dragged ourselves) up to the Plaza San Blas.
• The next event was a bus-and-train ride down the Sacred Valley of the Urubamba River to the Andean cloud forest, the town of Agua Calientes, and Machu Picchu. We stayed one night in the most relaxing hotel I have ever had the pleasure of visiting. The next morning, we took advantage of the lodge’s nature tours.
• We once again traveled into the Sacred Valley, this time stopping at Ollantaytambo, another gargantuan construction and the site of the Incans’ one successful battle with the Spanish invaders. We also visited a ranch where they raise llamas, vicunas, alpacas, and guanacos; demonstrate dyeing, spinning, and weaving techniques for the tourists and—of course—sell us impressive handicrafts.
• Next day was the luxurious ten-hour rail journey up to the altiplano (high Andean plains), the city of Puno, and Lake Titicaca. While there, we boated out to visit the natives on their man-made floating islands of totora reeds and spent a large part of the day on the paradise island of Taquile.

Ali Mama
Alejandra Cabieses, our 'campus director' accompanied us the whole trip, and deserves her own section in this blog. The first day, she introduced herself as “not Ali Baba, but Ali Mama,” helping us to remember her name while giving us a sense of what her role would be.

Ali Mama lived up to her nickname. How on God’s green earth a group of fully grown and well-educated adults would need so much tending, I don’t know. But if it were not for Ali Mama’s habit of examining every train or bus from which we emerged, Keith and I would have left behind a sunglasses case and two $70 collapsible walking sticks, and other members of our group would have left behind hats, jackets, cameras, and at least one fully packed overnight case. She accompanied one of our group to the emergency room to get stitches in her knee from a bad tumble.

Relentlessly patient, good-natured, and humorous, Ali knew the good restaurants, which stores sold genuine baby alpaca sweaters and which sold only “maybe alpaca.” She knew where the nearest bathrooms were, and—always—where we were going next, what we should bring with us, and when we would get there.

She also translated for us. When the check-in desk at the Juliaca airport sent my suitcase down the conveyor belt to the plane without its tags, I shouted to Ali, “What’s Spanish for red?” and she shouted back “Roja!” and I was able to tell the counter staff what to shout to the baggage handlers. (They successfully matched the tag with the bag.)

That’s all for now. I’m going to dig into my notes and photos and see what sense I can make of them all.

Next: A cradle of human civilization

Peru 2: A Cradle of Civilization

Spirates, guts, and the Peruvian Jello orchid

I have neither standing nor desire to criticize any of our guides' English--they were great. I, on the other hand, spent about three days referring to Keith as ‘my wife’ (esposa) before I remembered that he is, in fact, my husband (esposo.)

Still, I have to tell how the guides’ accents entertained us.

One member of our group mentioned to me that she spent several minutes trying to imagine why the ancient Peruvians were concerned with 'spirates' (pirates, with an s) before she realized the guide was talking about spirits.

In Koricancha, our guide told us that when we looked into the next room, we would see the “fine Inca wools.” I was going to be very surprised if we saw bolts of 15th-century fabric and, sure enough, a few sentences later, he explained how the 'fine wools' gave the building structural integrity. Walls.

At Inkaterra, the luxury resort near Machu Picchu, the guide for our nature walk pointed out a “Jello orchid.” (They also come in red, white and orange.) Jello orchids are surprising enough, but other guides had pointed out Jello boulders and Jello houses, which are much more amazing when you think about it.

But my favorite was when a guide was explaining the native Peruvians' agricultural accomplishments. The pre-Columbian natives, he said, used corn, quinoa and other grains as “offerings to their guts.”

Well fancy that! So do I!

Peru’s Pre-Columbian natives

As we were sorting out our thoughts during the trip home, Mike said Ted had remarked that while Machu Picchu was everything he had hoped it would be, it was the rest of Peru that was a revelation. I agree. (I’m going to refer to members of our group only by first name; not everyone likes to have his or her full name on the Internet.)

Peru has literally tons of impressive archeological sites. At many places in the Sacred Valley and some in the altiplano (never mind the coastal areas and the north, which we did not visit), it seemed as if you could not throw a stone without hitting some ancient retaining wall or foundation. And to get a stone to throw in the first place, you might have to pull it from an ancient wall.

I exaggerate, of course, but I was astounded by the number of apparently pre-Columbian walls that are still functioning as erosion control or being used as agricultural terraces. I lost count of the minor archeological sites we simply rode by for want of time. Machu Picchu is just the icing on a very large cake.

Modern-day Peru takes its archeology seriously. We were not yet on the ground in Lima before the in-flight video was encouraging us to “Preservar nuestro patrimonio.” I saw that word, ‘patrimonio’ on several billboards, including one for a presidential candidate.

They are protecting the legacy of their own ancestors. Jose, our guide for Cuzco and the Sacred Valley (which includes Machu Picchu), is proudly mestizo, a mix of native and Spanish ancestry. Our final lecturer, Carlos Siebt, informed us that fully 82% of Peru’s citizens are descended wholly or in part from the pre-Columbian natives of the area.

Jose is tri-lingual: he speaks his mother's native Quechuan, 
his father's Spanish, and English.

 But above that, Peru appreciates the fundamental value of their ancient artifacts to the whole of humanity. The subtitle on the entrance sign to Machu Picchu is “Patrimonio Cultural de la Humanidad.”

Finally, Peru is aware of the economic advantages of sitting on the archeological Mother Lode of the Western Hemisphere. Jose told us that while it is true that Pizarro found gold mines for Spain, Hiram Bingham (the Yalie who put Machu Picchu back on the map) “found an American-dollar mine for Peru.”

Our lecturer on the Pre-Columbian cultures, Ulla Holmquist (a Peruvian, despite her name) and Hernando, our guide for Lima and the National Museum of Archeology, Anthropology, and History, helped us appreciate that, given the archeological discoveries of the 20th century, we can no longer exclude this area when we think of the cradles of human civilization.

The natives of ancient Peru can hold their own against Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

This is Ulla, explaining to us how we can decipher pre-Columbian pottery decoration.

 To start at the beginning of the Peruvians’ story, we need to go back 12,000 years. Really. The first signs of human habitation in Peru are cave paintings, which have been found at several coastal sites and dated to around 10,000 BCE. We didn’t go there; we saw them only in the museum.

Around the time these paintings were made, similar pictures were being drawn in caves in Europe and Asia, but no one in the world was yet cultivating crops on a large scale. The very first stone structures were being built in Jericho, and Wisconsin was just emerging from underneath its last glacier.

By 2500 BCE (4,500 years ago), the residents of an area around Caral in central Peru were not only living in buildings made of thatch, wood, stone, and mud bricks, they were creating the earliest known cities in the Western Hemisphere, which had temples, amphitheaters, and houses. These folks were building pyramids at around the same time as the people in Egypt.

The civilization that built Caral was also cultivating crops for both food and fiber, weaving cotton into cloth, and carving bones into flutes.

Additional Peruvian archeological sites have produced evidence of agriculture by 6000 BCE. By 2000 BCE, ancient Peruvians had domesticated llamas, alpacas, and guinea pigs, and were cultivating corn, quinoa, potatoes, pumpkins, chilies, green beans, lima beans, gourds, peanuts, guavas, avocadoes, plums, and other vegetables whose names I did not recognize. Again, for reference purposes, at around 2000 BCE, Stonehenge was about done and Sumerians were ascendant in Mesopotamia.

Peruvian culture went through several stages of fragmentation into local tribal cultures, followed by the ascendancy of more unifying cultures, followed by a return to regional tribes. The Chavin culture (1000-300 BCE) was the first culture to influence broad areas around what is now Peru.

Judging by the iconography on their carvings and pottery, they apparently worshiped birds of prey, felines (jaguars and pumas), and snakes. This started a 3-level organization of the sacred universe that came all the way down to the Incas: the sky divinities, the earth divinities, and the underworld divinities.

For the purposes of museum-going, things don’t get truly photogenic until the Ceramic period, which started around 1800 BCE in Peru.


Regional cultures developed again around 300 BCE. The best pottery seems to have come from the Moche culture, which also built massive platform mounds.

One thing about Moche pottery: I might be violating the rules of this blog-hosting service if I post photos of the more amusing Moche pots. Go to Google images and type in "Moche sex pottery" if you want to see some raunchy pots!

Around 600 CE (Dark Ages in Europe), the Wari and Tiwanaku cultures again imposed broad cultural and political organization on the area that is now Peru. The Wari culture controlled the north, and the Tinwanaku the south. The Wari, in particular, are said to have developed the methods of building and maintaining an empire (road-building, regional outposts, communications, political organization) that paved the way for the Incas and later the Spaniards to gain and maintain control of Peru's various regional tribes.

Please notice that I haven't even touched the Incas or Spaniards yet. By the time the Incas got their empire game going in the middle of the 15th century, the Peruvian natives had mastered monumental architecture, metal-working technology and artistry up through gold, silver, copper, and bronze, but not yet iron or steel.

Their agricultural practices were arguably better than those used in Europe. They wove fine, intricate fabrics--up to 300 threads per inch!

They had developed methods of social organization, including an extensive network of highly functional roads and regional outposts, but not yet (tragically for both them and us) written language.

Next post: the Incas.

Peru 4: Machu Picchu

Denise was suffering motion sickness from the bus and train rides to Agua Calientes at the foot of Machu Picchu. So while most of the group went right up to the ruins, she rested at the hotel. (She went up the next day and so did not miss out. She got better weather to boot.)

As individuals wandered in to the lounge before supper, Denise was asking everyone, “What surprised you the most?” It was a darned good question, and I got to hear some of the answers as I sat beside her. Apologies to the people I will quote: I neglected to note who said what.

“How very three-dimensional it was.”
That remark sounds silly, but I absolutely know what it meant. To my eyes, the Machu Picchu vista was plenty big, but pictures had prepared me for its size. However, with the many different peaks, the abrupt walls and terraces rising from the slopes, and nothing at the same level as anything else, the place is a playground for binocular vision.

“How fast the clouds move in and out.”
Of all the things that created the aura of enchantment, the clouds were right up there. Machu Picchu is situated in what is known as a ‘cloud forest.’ Even though it’s at a lower altitude than Cuzco, the wispy clouds at Machu Picchu were drifting around, over, and below us, changing the scenery from moment to moment.

“No matter where you went in the city, you could hear the roar of the Urubamba.”
How delightful it must have been to live there continuously sheltered by the mountain gods, continuously serenaded by the water gods!

“The size of the place and the number of people who lived there.”
Jose said only 500 people were believed to have lived at Machu Picchu, though others stopped by on their journey between the Incans’ jungle territory and their Cuzco headquarters. Nowadays, 2,500 people visit Machu Picchu every day. However, once we got past the places where the tour groups congregate, such as on the iconic entry point from the Inca Trail, it did not seem crowded at all.

Above and below, photos near the entry.

 

Further in: Where did everyone go?

If you look hard, you can find one tourist in this photo 
of the Temple of the Condor, taking shelter from the rain.

“How much freedom you have to move about.”
The controls on tourists wandering around Machu Picchu are surprisingly minimal, although guards are watching. When most of our group went to lunch and I was wandering around, I went anywhere I wanted. I did notice, however, that if I (or anyone else) stood still, it would be only a minute or two before a guy with a jacket that said “Instituto Nacional de Cultura” would come by to check discreetly on what I was doing.

The rock said to represent the head of the condor 
is protected only by a string and a few stakes.

“They have so many llamas running around loose.”
Jose called them “the most photographed llamas in the world,” and said that their function was to mow the grass. At one point, a few of us nearly collided with a llama that came trotting around a corner, acting as if he assumed we would know whether to step the left or the right to get out of his way on the narrow path. We managed.

“The Incas could build walls so well, and do such a lousy job with steps.”
It didn’t help that it was raining while we were there and the slanted stones could get slippery. Stairs were of varying unpredictable heights and widths, and were rarely completely flat. (Barbara: thank you, thank you, thank you, for letting us know to take walking sticks!)

 

“How often the mothers of Machu Picchu must have yelled, “Get away from that edge!”
Before I saw it for myself, I was assuming that if you accidentally stepped off the edge of one of those terraces, you would fall six or eight feet at most. Oh, no. There are places—still, unfenced—where the wrong step will be your last. I did not, however, get into as much of a pickle as the guy in this video, which I stumbled across as I was fact-checking for this post.

“The walls had been plastered and painted.”
Jose pointed out to us a few places in the royal or sacred residence where remnants of plaster still clung to some interior walls. Somehow, it is known that they were painted orange, brown, red and yellow.

“They write on the walls with chalk.”
The caretakers are actively studying and managing the site, and they mark the stones they are working on with chalk. In a few rooms, the stones were numbered and lines were drawn from wall to wall. Jose told us that they replace a few stones from time to time, as they get worn.

“How well the drainage system still operates.”
One system routed water from a spring on the mountain through the city for the residents’ use, with particular attention to sending the water through the sacred zone for ritual and worship purposes. Another captured rainwater and channeled it to irrigate the crops and then go safely into the Urubamba. We can thank the Incans’ skill at designing and building drainage systems for avoiding the erosion that would otherwise have sent large portions of the city tumbling down the mountain during 400 years of neglect.

Seeing the centuries' old drainage system spring into action was my reward for staying at Machu Picchu when the hard rain came in the early afternoon.

The water spilled out of the upper sluice 
and then ran through a paved channel across the terrace, 
from where it fell into another channel.

“The city was still unfinished when it was abandoned.”
“None of the stones were like the big ones we saw in Cuzco.”
Machu Picchu is known as a mysterious place, and it is true that we probably will never know the exact uses for each of the rooms. However, after listening to the lecturers, particularly Alfredo Mormontoy Atayupanqui, the former curator of the site, and to Jose, I’m ready to accept the following explanation.

An empire needs outposts to manage its trade routes and govern its outlying territories. When Pachacutec expanded the Incan Empire from Cuzco out into the jungle, he needed to have a control center on the way there—a place to conduct regional governmental business and to manage trade going between Cuzco and the ‘antisuyo,’ or jungle region, of the empire. The site at Machu Picchu was easily defended and sitting right on the Inca trail where everyone going that way had to pass.

Jose taught us to recognize the high-quality walls used for the sacred sites and noble residences, and the mundane walls that were used for everything else.

Walls of a sacred space on the left; mundane walls at the rear and right.

Stonework of stunning, sacred quality at the Temple of the Sun.

Mundane stonework on the watchtower overlooking the approach on the Inca Trail.

 He said that only three percent of the walls in Machu Picchu are of the sacred style; the rest are functional, work-a-day walls. That seemed right to my eyes.

There are several sacred areas that clearly relate to worship or gratitude for water, mountains and the sun, and one sacred or noble residence. (I overheard a German-speaking guide refer to it as “der Kaiser Zimmer.”) However, there is nothing anywhere close to the scale or scope of sacred-style walls that we saw in Cuzco. Machu Picchu was much more a working city than a sacred site.

The city was probably started in the mid 1400’s and so was only about 75 years old when the Spanish arrived in Peru. Jose pointed out the stone quarry, where it is evident that work abruptly stopped. He pointed out partial buildings and even altars that are not ruins, but are simply unfinished. Had the missing walls been finished and then fallen down, the blocks would have still been lying around when Bingham took his first photos at the site, but they were not.

When the Inca Manco Yupanqui decided in 1537 to concede Cuzco and relocate his kingdom to Vitcos, the Incan Empire—as an Empire—was finished. There was no longer any use for an outpost to handle regional government and trade. It’s probable that orders went out to abandon Machu Picchu and to follow the Inca to Vitcos.

The curator Atayupanqui described to us large ‘dumps’ of deliberately smashed heavy pottery that archeologists found in odd places during excavations. Incans used to break pottery as a way of seeking the favor of the gods, so the best explanation is that they broke a lot of pots before they followed the Inca to Vitcos. Atayupanqui pointed out that if we were leaving that place on foot, never to return, we’d probably decide to sacrifice all our large, heavy pottery, too.

When the Spaniards finally killed the last Inca, they undertook a deliberate, thorough program of dismantling every sacred Incan site they could find. Some natives were cooperating with the Spaniards, so it was easy to find the sacred sites. The fact that none of the natives led the Spaniards to Machu Picchu indicates that it was not considered sacred or valuable. The city was not mentioned in either the chronicles of the early Spaniards or those written by natives, who recorded so much of the rest of their history.

For the next 400 years, the only people who cared about Machu Picchu were the few families who lived there, enjoying their isolation.

None of that makes sense if Machu Picchu was a treasured sacred site, but it all makes sense if it was a young, unfinished regional outpost for which the Incans had no use as soon as their empire collapsed.

And thank goodness, because that kept it undamaged, and now the entire world can appreciate it!

Next: The merger of two cultures.