The New Conquistadors have returned in force to Peru.
They come heavily armed — with cameras and US dollars. After more than two decades of timidity caused by terrorism, they come to re-live the romance of finding Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas, feeling more confident since President Fujimori’s recent decisive victory against the terrorists at the Japanese Embassy.
Now, the only things to be conquered are the altitude of the Andes, the length of the Inca trail, and the usual hazards of Third World travel: theft, robbery, sickness and unpredictable transport and communications.
And they are worth over-coming, to see these elegant ruins and to wonder at the organisational power of a society without wheel, writing or steel to construct from stone such a city in such a place.
Machu Picchu lay under jungle for more than three centuries until its rediscovery in 1911 by the American archaeologist Hiram Bingham, and he discovered it only through a combination of perseverance and luck. The Spanish conquerors never saw the city to which the remnant Inca royal court, high priests and supporters retreated from their capital at Cuzco after the conquest of the Inca empire (then divided by civil war) by Pizarro in the 1530s.
In the words of Bingham: “”The sanctuary was lost for centuries because this ridge is in the most inaccessible corner of the most inaccessible section of the central Andes. No part of the highlands of Peru is better defended by natural bulwarks – a stupendous canyon whose rock is granite, and whose precipices are frequently a thousand feet sheer, presenting difficulties which daunt the most ambitious modern mountain climbers. Yet, here, in a remote part of the canyon, in this narrow ridge flanked by tremendous precipices, a highly civilised people, artistic, inventive, well organised, and capable of sustained endeavour, at some time in the distant past built themselves a sanctuary for the worship of the sun. Since they had no iron or steel tools – only stone hammers and little bronze crowbars – its construction must have cost generations, if not centuries of effort.”
Many thought the Incas took with them large quantities of gold that had earlier been seen, but not taken, by the Spaniards at Cuzco. But none was found at Machu Picchu and many still think it is still to be found.
The Incas had built a trail to their city from their more accessible capital at Cuzco, but blocked it after their retreat, and it fell to disuse for centuries.
That trail is still largely intact today and the new conquistador tourist can walk it. In parts, it is beyond mere astonishment. At extreme points, if you took a large step sidewards you would fall as much as 1000 metres before striking any portion of the cliff wide enough to stop a body.
Bingham found the city first and found the trail by going backwards. The modern tourist can go on the trail and “”discover” the city at the end.
Of course, there were Inca trails all over their empire _ from Ecuador to Chile, but as they have nearly all been obliterated, the 35km of this trail have now become known as (ital) the (end ital) Inca trail and on the way you can walk over the weather-rounded stones put down by the Incas three, maybe four centuries ago.
The track starts near the town of Ollantaytambo which nestles under a huge Inca terracing and fortification centre – it was here that the Spaniards suffered their only defeat — however short-lived — in the conquest. And here as everywhere else the Spaniards did their best to tear down all but the foundations of the Inca constructions to use the stone for themselves. But even the Spanish saw they could not improve upon the Inca stonework in the foundations and used them for the bases of their own churches.
The tracks goes over two passes, the highest at 4200 metres, offering splendid views of the Andes and lessons in botany, evolution and archaeology at every turn. For the tracks climbs from fertile valley, through forest and above the treeline to tussock grass and barren rock. At every commanding place Incas fortresses remain, perching in impossible places that would pose immense difficulty even to the modern builder.
The Spanish could not conquer this. After the last of the sun-worshippers died _ untouched by the conquest _ the jungle took the city and much of the trail. Meanwhile, Europe had the Reformation; the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, and power moved from Spain to Holland, France, Britain and finally the United States.
Not only did an American find the lost city of the Incas, but his countrymen dominate the army of tourist redisoverers.
And now we see three cultures in Peru: Indian, Spanish and the new conquistadors of tourism, fast food and Coca-Cola. Each in their time have been certain of the permanence and correctness of their way of life _ that the worship of the sun, Christ or the dollar is the only context for human life on the planet with homage given at the temple of the sun, in the cathedral or at McDonald’s.
If you like, though, you can go to Machu Picchu by train, or at least return that way, for a track has been laid through the gorge of the Urubamba River whose rapids and flooding before being tamed somewhat by a hydro dam provided an insuperable barrier to the conquering Spaniards.
The modern journey starts – as most do – with a jet flight, into Lima, the capital of Peru. It is an important part of the journey, for life in Lima contrasts with virtually everything we know about Inca society. And it is folly for the modern tourist — for tourist he is — to ignore jets, the modern city and other tourists and to imagine there is some idyllic Inca or Indian Peru to be visited, uncontaminated by the commerce of life or the daily quest for food, clothing, shelter and comfort.
Incidentally, it is always sobering for Europeans and people from the New World to see people in the Third World who put that quest far ahead of the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In Peru, for example, I found the gratitude and respect for Fujimori’s conquest of inflation and terrorism far more apparent than concern over his contempt for constitutional niceties, even though the abuse of that sort of power in the hands of less-principled men been the damnation of Latin America for much of this century.
Lima was built by the Spanish after the conquest because they needed a city on the coast. But it is one of the most desolate coasts on earth.
The first thing you notice about Lima is the flat roofs. Every building has a flat roof. Then you notice there are no gutters, no drainpipes, no stormwater system and virtually no trees or indeed any plant at all. It never rains in Lima, at all, ever. Well, that is a slight exaggeration. There was a freak rain-shower in 1970, but in the ensuing 27 years it has not rained.
It is only a few degrees from the equator yet it is constantly cool to warm, not hot and sweaty like Darwin or Singapore, for the great Humboldt current brings cold water from the Antarctic up the South American west coast, shrouding the brown, dusty Lima in a cool humid mist for most of the year.
Surfers wear wetsuits equidistant from the equator as Cairns.
The water for the city comes from the Andes. Channelled to irrigate the occasional patch of grass, garden or odd tree, to break the flat pastel pink and yellow of Lima’s buildings.
In the centre, there are elegant Spanish squares, ornate windows and balconies and ornate altars in ornate Catholic Cathedrals. (I wonder if in Latin America, llamas, rather than camels, are used in the eye-of-the-needle metaphor.) In any event, the cedar for these extravagant edifices was brought from Central America down the coast. Until recently that was easier than bringing logs across the Andes from the Amazon basin.
It is a city of youth. (Or is Australia becoming a collection of cities of the aged). Elegant good-looking young women with short skirts and hosed legs and energetic young men with highly polished shoes cruise the sidewalks. It is not a city of 9 to 5. The city does not open till 10am and only comes to life after 5. And it is closed from noon till 3. It follows the sine curve of the Latin American day _ surge at 10; dies at 1; surges at 3; dies at 5; surges at 8.
It is not a city of wages and jobs. Rather it is a city of bargaining and thousands of individual transactions: street selling, car washing, taxis with no metres, small buses with hustlers at the side door beckoning customers and hassling over fares to destinations determined by customers’ demand rather than a pre-determined route.
A city of serious men with brightly polished shoes in side-walk cafes studying a daily diet of lurid tabloids with front page photos of women exposing buttocks _ apparently all that decency and the censor will allow.
Tiny Indian women with a baby slung on shoulder and one or two others trailing selling sweets in the great insecure daily struggle to feed, clothe and shelter.
It is not a safe city. Every ground-floor window is barred. Houses are walled with tops of steel barbs or jagged pieces of glass protruding from cement. People walk with their bags in front of them; watches are plain and jewellery not worn much on the streets.
Officially, it is a city of seven million. In truth it is a city of only 1 or 2 million surrounded by a mass of unsewered slums with no plants in which 5 or 6 million exist of whom the centre is oblivious.
It is a city of youth, dynamism, individualism, insecurity, disorder and disparity of wealth. Contrast this with what we know of the Incas.
William Prescott, who wrote the leading work last century from masses of Spanish manuscripts, described a society of impeccable order, one in which the state expropriated large amount of free labour to create shelter, food and temples for the ruling class, but in return looked after people. No one could get rich but no one could fall poor. The Incas created a vast system of roads through their 1000km-long empire so that the king (or Inca) could know every detail of what was happening at the edge, and dine on fresh fish, though the coast was more than 100km away. And European kings had salted cod.
To some extent the disparity remains. At a classy café near the sea at Miraflores, I noticed all 18 waiters had sharp Indian noses; jet black hair and dark brooding eyes. Nearly all 100 patrons had brown or reddish hair and fair faces. These were not tourist whites, but Spanish with little or no Indian blood. The disparity appears again when comparing the sport and social pages of newspapers.
From Lima the group I was with flew to Punno on the shore of Lake Titicata (170km x 60km, altitude 3820m). Here we saw that the lake has been a bulwark against total domination by the three cultures. Some speak pre-Inca languages; some speak the Inca language (Quecha) as a first language instead of Spanish; all have managed to deal with tourism on their own terms.
About 1500 people live on floating islands of reeds, using boats made from reeds to fish. Of those, a few run co-operative ventures to allow tourists in to sell handicraft and look at their islands.
On a land island, Taquile, the locals drove off tourist operators from Punno with stones or hid so the tourists had nothing to see and then set up their own co-operative boat service to the island. They also run a craft shop, each taking turns to staff it, but with the profits shared according to whose work is sold. On this island, men can be seen knitting splendid woollen hats.
From Punno our group took the train to Cuzco, the Inca capital. Some of us travelled third class to see the local colour. It was a 12-hour trip to cover the 390kms. The first 40kms took four hours. And I thought the Inca runners would be well ahead.
The train in fact is more than a mode of transport. It is a corridor of petty commerce – at least in local class.
Women selling hand knitted alpaca socks and jumpers jostle and sway through the train. Others sell empanadas – delicious vegetable pasties – fruit vegetables, beers, alpaca-skin hats.
Passengers are held to ransom by obstinate sellers offering Snickers bars at double the price in an Australian café, but mostly he has priced himself out of the market.
Passengers are then greatly entertained by a woman who staggers on to the train under the burden of several quarters of cooked lamb and two dozen potatoes wrapped in rough brown paper.
Astonishingly, she wields a knife almost the size of a machete hacking the lamb into saleable portions while nearby tourist passengers hold their hands in front of their heads and lean back for protection – as much in fascination as terror. I feared we would see more local colour than we bargained for. But the lamb was delicious.
Traveller-tourists buy clothes they could not possibly wear at home except to a fancy-dress party. And much as one might admire the excellence of the handicraft, the fact remains that the human body is better and more comfortably sheltered against the elements by Gortex coats, Polar-tec jumpers, Nike hiking boots, than natural crude fabrics.
Evidence of this can be seen at every Plaza de Armas in every town in Peru. Youth especially are shedding the traditional for jeans and running shoes. It cannot be long before traditional Indian dress is worn only by photographic models for tourists.
In this respect tourists may unusually preserve some of the things they come to see, rather than destroy them.
The same can be said about Machu Picchu itself. After 1911 the nearby old Inca capital of Cuzco (by then an irrelevance in the new Peru) flourished, and the native handicrafts with it.
And then to the trail itself. Our group had guides, cooks and porters to carry tents, packs and food. It has advantages. You can enjoy the trail more free of the burden carrying, and with a high point of 4200m in the three-night, and four-day walk it is worth the cost. The other advantage is that if anything goes wrong, an experienced guide has a better chance of fixing it quickly and cheaply, as our guide did on more than one occasion.
On the last day, two of us got up at 4am and walked the last two hours along the precipitous trail by the light of a near full moon to be sure of being there at sun up.
We came over the last crest and through the sun gate in the eerie valley light before the sun popped over the mountains. And there it was perched impossibly on a ridge beneath the sheers sides of Huayna Picchu mountain beyond. As Hiram Bingham said, “”My pictures do not do it justice.”
And then the shafts of the sun struck the mountain and the ancient city. The only living beings were two llamas and a new-age white guru, aged about 30, sitting cross-legged in the temple of the sun, facing due east.
Later the train would arrive from Cuzco bearing a cargo of hundreds heavily armed new conquistadors, but Machu Picchu seems to have been built solidly enough to withstand them.
Crispin Hull was guest in Peru of Peregrine Adventures Pty Ltd (03 9662 2700) and Great Adventure People of Toronto.
Pics: Intipata. (place of plenty of Sun), terracing where Incas experimented with agriculture found last year. Inca stone work close up, notice no mortar. Machu Picchu. Man knitting on Taquile. Woman resident of reed island on Lake Titicata rows her reed boat. Woman on reed island with handicraft.
Map: Lima. Cuzco, Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu. Railway Urubamba River. The trail. Punno. Lake Titicata.