Cuzco and Machu Picchu

A few days relaxing across the border in the famous Peruvian city of Cuzco and the Lost City of the Incas: Machu Picchu. I arrived in Cuzco during the festival of El Señor when associations of the christian faithful carry large statues of Christ Crucified on their shoulders around the city.

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Cuzco was known during Incan times as the naval of the world and had similar holy significance to citizens of the Incan Empire as Jerusalem or Mecca has to Christians and Muslims. Today groups from all over the Andes still come to Cuzco on pilgrimage during festivals like that of El Señor.

Although the Spanish conquisadors tried their best to destroy all vestiges of the Incan religion and forcibly introduce Catholicism, Incan elements still endure. For example, in the main cathedral Incan depictions of fertility appear in carvings of bare breasted women representing Pachamama, or mother earth. The Cathedral itself is built upon the foundations of the Temple of Wiracocha, the Incan God of the Sun, and esoterics still equate Wiracocha with Jesus Christ as the saviour of the world.

I visited the world famous Lost City of the Incas, Machu Picchu, which is only accessible by the Inca Trail or by a spectacular (and very expensive) train journey. The journey snakes through several fertile vallys before arriving at the peaceful town of Agua Calliente complete with kids playing in the rain. It reminded me so much of Chinese highland villages I visited several years ago that I craved a steaming bowl of noodles for hours.

A dawn wake up the next day to get to Machu Picchu and a few hours clambering up and down paths. Its the setting that makes it so extraordinary: the high and narrow mountains looping up and down through clouds, sheer drops on all sides, and the ruins directly in the centre, as if surrounded by enormous sentinals.

Machu Picchu was discovered by a Yale University lecturer called Hiram Bingham in 1911 (not obviously by the locals who were living there and led him to it). Apparently the Peruvian government is going through legal channels to try and recover thousands of artifacts taken from the site as Yale University has refused to relinguish them.

I loved the train back just as much as the ruins. The same route of course, but bright shafts of afternoon sun turned the ride magical. Passed workers hauling corn or animals, passed run down train stations and engine graveyards, back to the centre of the world, where the lights of 1000 years of civilization were burning bright and welcome.