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Machu Picchu
Then Wilbert showed us around Machu Picchu.
Wilbert was very keen to take lots of photos of us with Machu Picchu in the background. In the end we had to say we thought we had plenty and could we perhaps see the place.
This is the Sun Temple. Most of the walls at Machu Picchu were "dry stone" walls without mortar, unlike most of the walls we had seen en route. This we were told was typical of Inca Building. Peru has a much more gung ho attitude to repairing its ancient ruins so I'm not sure if the mortar we saw in our travels was a sign of modern repairs or of lower status buildings.
For reference, according to Wikipedia, the below is what Machu Picchu looked liked after the jungle was first cleared away in 1912:
One of Wilbert's less plausible claims (as in details got vaguer the more we asked about it) was to have once been director of excavations at Machu Picchu. This got tied up into a more plausible story about a mentor/father figure of his who had been significantly involved in the preservation of the site and to whom this tree was planted in memorial. I am struck by how little information can be easily found online about Machu Picchu compared to significantly more minor UK sites, let alone how little information there is about the other ruins we saw on the trail. I can't even find confirmation that this tree is a memorial to someone, let alone who, though I've no reason to suppose it is not.
These are part of the watering system between the terraces.
These were apparently for studying the stars. Lines were inlaid into them in gold and then they were filled with water. The position of the stars reflected in the water could then be measured using the gold lines.
The story of Machu Picchu, as Wilbert told it to us, was that it was under construction as a district capital when the Spanish arrived. Intimating that things were going badly with the Spanish, the Inca moved 700 people and all their gold from their capital of Cusco along the Inca trail to Machu Picchu, destroying the roads behind them with landslides. They remained there for 80 years but were aware that the Spanish, in search of the gold, were getting closer aided by a generation of half-Peruvian, half-Spanish collaborators. After 80 years, therefore, they hid the gold in the surrounding hills and some moved back towards Cusco where they were captured by the Spanish and others moved east into the Amazon where their descendents were briefly encountered by archeologists in the 1970s. The Spanish eventually reached Machu Picchu but found no gold. This story does not appear anywhere else I've looked (but, as noted, information at the level of detail I'm accustomed to for historic sites is much harder to find for Machu Picchu), but it wouldn't surprise me if it isn't the legend as told among the local Andean people.
Wilbert was very keen to take lots of photos of us with Machu Picchu in the background. In the end we had to say we thought we had plenty and could we perhaps see the place.
This is the Sun Temple. Most of the walls at Machu Picchu were "dry stone" walls without mortar, unlike most of the walls we had seen en route. This we were told was typical of Inca Building. Peru has a much more gung ho attitude to repairing its ancient ruins so I'm not sure if the mortar we saw in our travels was a sign of modern repairs or of lower status buildings.
For reference, according to Wikipedia, the below is what Machu Picchu looked liked after the jungle was first cleared away in 1912:
One of Wilbert's less plausible claims (as in details got vaguer the more we asked about it) was to have once been director of excavations at Machu Picchu. This got tied up into a more plausible story about a mentor/father figure of his who had been significantly involved in the preservation of the site and to whom this tree was planted in memorial. I am struck by how little information can be easily found online about Machu Picchu compared to significantly more minor UK sites, let alone how little information there is about the other ruins we saw on the trail. I can't even find confirmation that this tree is a memorial to someone, let alone who, though I've no reason to suppose it is not.
These are part of the watering system between the terraces.
These were apparently for studying the stars. Lines were inlaid into them in gold and then they were filled with water. The position of the stars reflected in the water could then be measured using the gold lines.
The story of Machu Picchu, as Wilbert told it to us, was that it was under construction as a district capital when the Spanish arrived. Intimating that things were going badly with the Spanish, the Inca moved 700 people and all their gold from their capital of Cusco along the Inca trail to Machu Picchu, destroying the roads behind them with landslides. They remained there for 80 years but were aware that the Spanish, in search of the gold, were getting closer aided by a generation of half-Peruvian, half-Spanish collaborators. After 80 years, therefore, they hid the gold in the surrounding hills and some moved back towards Cusco where they were captured by the Spanish and others moved east into the Amazon where their descendents were briefly encountered by archeologists in the 1970s. The Spanish eventually reached Machu Picchu but found no gold. This story does not appear anywhere else I've looked (but, as noted, information at the level of detail I'm accustomed to for historic sites is much harder to find for Machu Picchu), but it wouldn't surprise me if it isn't the legend as told among the local Andean people.
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