Tripped

Looks Like We Chose the Right Year to Go

Devastating floods have struck many of the places we visited when we were in Peru, almost exactly a year ago at this time.

The Artisans' Wall

I mentioned this the other day in the initial Machu Picchu post. The archaeologists think the Inca stonemasons' chief purpose in building this wall was sheer artistry - showing off their skill at ashlar construction simply because they could. Note the variety of sizes and shapes in the stones - no two alike:

We're both still trying to absorb what we've seen the last few days, and now that we've re-established a reliable Net connection I've also been trying to catch up on my photo sorting, uploading, and backup. I've completed a photo album of our Sacred Valley tour, which you can see in the column to the right, but it's not fleshed out fully with descriptions yet - but if you want to go poking around the web to figure out what you're looking at, we visited, in order, Moray, the nearby church at Tiobamba, and Chinchero, with a few random stops along the way to admire the views. Albums of our Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu pictures are still to come, along with some highlights here of what we saw. We're in Cusco through tomorrow morning, then off to Guayaquil, Ecuador to get ready for our Galapagos trip.

Machu Picchu

I wrote the other day about the Incas attempts, through the artistry of their stonework, to match the physical beauty surrounding them. It's not just that they worshipped the mountains they lived in; they worshipped the form of those mountains. Machu Picchu has some of the clearest examples of that in the shadow stones you see mounted on various platforms, including one of the most famous locations on the site, the Sacred Rock:

It's partially obscured by the cloud cover, but you can see how the rock is mimicking the form of the mountains behind it. Now obviously there's religious symbolism in this, since we know from the histories that the Incas found spiritual value in individual mountains and rocks. But another interpretation could be that it's the artists' showing off: "See that gorgeous vista over there? Well we can do that too!" Which is consistent with what you see elsewhere on the site - a short walk away from here is what's called "The Artisan's Wall," because no single rock in the wall is shaped the same way, and the researchers think it was built as an ostentatious display (it faces the Plaza) of their stone-shaping skills. I'll post a picture of that when I have a better Net connection.

Our one big splurge on this portion of the trip was a night in the fabulously expensive Sanctuary Lodge,  located next door to the MP gate. That way we didn't have to worry about making sure to catch the last bus down at the end of the day to Aguas Caliente - a not very attractive down that is basically nothing but hotels for day trippers to the site - and we could roll out of bed and into the park today.