I didn't include more details in the prior "The Cruise" post for two reasons. 1) I didn't think anyone would be interested; and 2) This trip didn't include much of the normal topics: good beer, good coffee or John-style travel. But there are details, which may be useful to some people contemplating how such a trip is put together. On the first day of the trip, we drove three hours to pick up my mother in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. At 85, she isn't comfortable driving for long distances and hadn't flown for many years. We then drove 3 1/2 more hours to Chicago, where we checked into the Wyndham, where you can get a room that includes the cost of parking for up to 12 days. We were up early on the hotel shuttle to O'Hare, where we then boarded the a non-stop American Airlines flight to New Orleans. Here, we checked into a Hampton Inn near the port. My mother was pretty tired, so Julia and I went out for a Cajun dinner and live music. Rememberi...
Julia and I generally do not sign up for tours, preferring to look things over on our own. In fact, on the day before our guided tour, we went to the market on our own and and enjoyed that experience.
But when you are in a foreign land, there are some questions that you just can't answer without the help of a local. Like what the heck is that?
As I mentioned before, one doesn't hike the Inca Trail solo. The Peruvian government requires that foreigners be escorted by a licensed guide, who is almost always employed by the tour companies. We chose our tour company because they received excellent TripAdvisor reviews and also are known for smaller groups. We expected our trekking group to be about 8-12 people. When our guide showed up at our hotel, we learned that our group was four people, and the other two people were working out some travel issues. As a result, we would be receiving a private tour.
Freddy turned out to be a great tour guide: down-to-earth, low key, relaxed, and not afraid to express his personal opinion or to ask yours.
That gray stuff in the pic up above taken from the public market? Julia and I speculated that it was some kind of weird seafood. Nope, Freddy said, it's yerky. Julia and I looked at each other before it clicked: jerky. In Peru, meat is heavily salted for preservation. After it's salted and dried, and salted and dried, and salted and dried, that's what Peruvian jerky looks like. It did not look like something that I wanted to put in my mouth.
During the first part of the tour, Freddy took us up into the hillside to the ruins near Cristo Blanco. While we learned a lot about the Inca culture, Freddie was blunt about the fact that so much is still unknown. The stones used to build the temples and government buildings were moved long distances and up steep mountainsides. The Inca had no horses or oxen. There were no steel tools for cutting or shaping stone.
Experts today can only hypothesize how the materials for construction were transported and then used at the building sites. And the hypotheses keep changing as more ruins are uncovered and analyzed.
Sacrifice Altar for people and animals
Window to a window to a window
Why can't we look back at the Inca written history to answer some of these questions? Because there isn't any. The Inca depended upon an oral history.
When the Spanish arrived during the 1500's, they killed off all of the leaders and educated people among the Inca. The Spanish also destroyed many temples. As a result, their history was mostly lost. The Spanish didn't care much about learning the Inca construction techniques, but they were seriously focused about learning where the hidden Inca gold was. As it turns out, there is very little gold or silver in the Cusco area. The precious metals mined from other places in Peru were carefully hidden away in the jungle--and only the elite knew the hiding places.
When the Spanish demanded to know where the gold was, the remaining Inca honestly answered that all of the people who had the answers were dead. To this day, treasure hunters are still trying to find the Inca gold.
Until we talked to Freddy, we had admired dozens of large Spanish churches. Freddy told us that the Spanish destroyed the Inca temples in Cusco, and replaced them with Catholic churches on the same sites. Somehow, the cathedrals didn't seem quite as beautiful with that knowledge.
Freddy left us around noon, letting us know for the first time that he would be our Inca Trail guide also. We would meet that night with our fellow trekkers and for our orientation.
Those dang Catholics! When I was a kid they took over main street in our town every Sunday. They hired cops to block all other traffic while the just-saved Catholics left church to go home.
Religion, mixed with power, is almost always going to leave winners and losers. Before the Catholics arrived, the Inca religious/government leaders tried to ward off the volcano, floods, and earthquakes by sacrificing unsullied children (virgin girls and boys who had not yet reached puberty).
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