Perú’s Diverse Landscape, Traveling off the Beaten Path

Out of the Desert and Into the Rain Forest

THIS is not how one thinks of Peru. I opened my eyes without moving on the soft desert floor. A perfect orange sun was rising over a distant ridge, its undulations mirroring the mound where I had rolled out my sleeping bag the night before. My ears hummed in the silence. All around me, in dawn-lighted tans, whites and stripes of purple and orange, wind-sculptured forms extended in the limpid desert air. I saw no people; no signs of life at all.

All of Peru’s coast is arid, but south of Lima it becomes profound. It is one of the driest places on earth, the desolation is broken here and there by verdant valleys where streams venture seaward from the distant Andes.

Almost half of all visits by foreigners to Peru include a stop at Machu Picchu, and with good reason — the ancient Inca site is spectacular. Yet the country is far more than a one-hit wonder. The geography that gave rise to numerous ancient civilizations — dry coast, a backbone of high mountains and tropical rain forest in the east — endows the country with unparalleled natural areas.

And many are accessible, easy to add to an Inca heartland trip. In February, I visited two of Peru’s extremes — the desert and the rain forest. (The third extreme — the snow-capped high Andes — I left for another visit.)

My desert guide was Roberto Penny Cabrera. A former Peruvian marine officer and a mining engineer, Mr. Cabrera cuts a dashing figure in tan fatigues with a long knife strapped to his waist. “You like my knife?” he asked when we met in the lovely, dune-rimmed oasis of Huacachina. “Wait until you see my truck.”

Before long we were roaring out into the desert in said truck — a Mad Max pickup in olive drab, crammed with provisions: two spare tires, extra diesel and lots of water (including for a shower that protrudes from the vehicle’s side). Once we were off the paved road, it was hard driving, bouncing in the heat beneath stark hills. In February, the noon sun bears down from directly overhead, erasing any possibility of relief. Most signs of life are just as much signs of death: old burial grounds, ancient mummies and the bleached bones of what Mr. Cabrera said were failed adventurers.

Indeed, the most abundant creatures in the Ica Desert died millions of years ago: the area was once a shallow coastal shelf, and eons of wind have revealed rich fossils. Shark teeth lie in gravel-strewn gullies, or sticking straight out of sand-smoothed walls. These especially are Mr. Cabrera’s driving passion, and a sort of fever grips him when he finds a good hunting ground.

Fossils are consumed by the wind as well. But in a few places — known only to those who, like Mr. Cabrera, can read the landscape — complete whale skeletons lie undisturbed on the desert floor. They rest slumped but whole, tragic marine forms where the very idea of swimming seems absurd.

Some are so well preserved they include fossilized skin and even baleen. One whale skull had been opened by the wind to reveal the opalized remains of the animal’s brain, glowing in the sun as a reminder that all we animate today is borrowed from mute stone.

The Peruvian desert is among the best fossil-hunting grounds in the world, yet it has received little protection. Most of the land is leased as mineral concessions, and the city of Ica does not have a single museum dedicated to the fossils. Unregulated fossil hunters operate with impunity.

“They are rapers!” bellowed Mr. Cabrera when we came across a fossil dig of dubious authority. “Fossils belong to the ground!” As we poked around the area, I found the stupendous remains of a long-toothed dolphin and felt some of Mr. Cabrera’s fever.

The desert rewards those willing to put up with some hardship. The second time the radiator blew, the mercurial Mr. Cabrera fell into a funk, and I found myself sitting by the campfire, seriously evaluating whether I would survive a nighttime escape attempt.

My fidelity was rewarded with an early-morning walk looking for shark teeth with Mr. Cabrera. We found them before long: white ones, yellow ones and brown ones, imbued over millions of years with the color of the sediment that held them.

It was like beachcombing the ages: there is a stingray spine, and here a lobster shell. This is a bone from a seabird, and that a sea urchin and some petrified wood. And then, in a wind-scoured gulley, Mr. Cabrera spotted an unmistakable glint: a five-inch tooth from a megalodon — the extinct whale-eating giant shark. He did a dance, kicking up soft dust that hung in the warming air and stopping only to show me his forearm speckled with goose bumps. “Perfect things like this are a message from Pachamama,” he said, referring to the ancient Andean earth goddess..

That night I slept on the desert floor next to the exposed 12-million-year-old remains of a whale, its pearly ribs by my head. I gazed up at the outrageous southern stars—the Milky Way so vivid it no longer seemed an unlikely home for such creatures.

A few days later, it was all obscured by riotous life. I was in the rain forest, at Posada Amazonas, a lodge along the Tambopata River in the Peruvian Amazon. Water, the handmaiden to life, was everywhere: in the chai-colored river, in the humid air and dripping from leaves onto muddy trails. Intricate and fantastical diversity — immense trees to tiny, perfect insects — was all around us.

The Peruvian region of Madre de Dios is undergoing an eco-tourism boom. More than 70 jungle lodges cater to visitors eager for an easy visit to the pristine Amazon. The protected areas there include Manu, a vast park that falls down the eastern slope of the Andes into primordial rain forest, and Tambopata, which together with an adjacent area in Bolivia, is larger than Connecticut and comprises the biggest chunk of protected forest in the Amazon basin.

The second order of business upon arriving at Posada Amazonas, after being issued rubber boots, is a short walk down a forest trail to the lodge’s canopy platform. The 120-foot climb brought our small group of visitors to the light, fragrant air of rain forest treetops. We looked over a sea of trees cataloging the entire range of green shapes: tufts, sprays, bursts, blazes, cascades and starbursts. It seemed an aerial coral reef as multitudinous birds (a toucan, a blue-headed macaw, a guan) sought roosts in huge crowns, some aflame with blossoms, others bearing heavy pods of Brazil nuts.

The river bent far below, and the foothills of the Andes floated on the horizon. The sunset cut a tracery of branches in the still, spiced air, exciting a billion cicadas.

The lodge itself is spacious and comfortable. High thatch roofs shelter big, airy dining and sitting areas. Rooms, connected by elevated wooden boardwalks, provide unexpected comfort — mosquito nets, showers and flush toilets — without separating guests unduly from the rain forest; one side of each room is open directly into the unrelenting greenery.

At Posada Amazonas, each party of visitors is assigned a guide. Rodolfo Pecha, our guide, is a member of the Ese’eja indigenous group from the community of Infierno, which owns the pristine forest around the lodge. In a partnership, Rainforest Expeditions, the company that operates the lodge, is leasing the land for 20 years while training community members to take over its operation.

To Mr. Pecha, the forest din is an intelligible language. Often, he would stop us on the trail, picking out a few notes from the sibilant cacophony of chirps, barks, honks, buzzes and hoots. Then he’d answer. “That’s an antbird,” he’d say between rising whistles. “They’re really beautiful.” He’d creep off into the dense underbrush, binoculars at the ready, trailing considerably less graceful visitors through the vines.

On our second day, we awoke before dawn to the alarmingly throaty din of howler monkeys. After a quick breakfast of strong Peruvian coffee and fresh fruit, we made our way by river and squelching, muddy forest trail to an oxbow lake — a curving stretch of perfectly flat water cut off when the Tambopata meandered elsewhere.

We floated out on a silent pontoon boat, emerging into dawn light. Cascades of pink trumpet flowers dripped into the syrupy brown stillness. All around us, life was under way: dozens of birds, from waterfowl like tropical cormorants and kingfishers, a fine-feathered tiger heron and a gangly osprey, to beasts like the hoatzin. Turkey-like things as imagined by Dr. Seuss, hoatzins cruised the shrubbery along the water’s edge, eating leaves and grunting contentedly.

A riotous flock of parakeets passed overhead, heralding a trio of giant river otters that furrowed the lake in their hunt for breakfast. Easily the size of tall, skinny people, the otters are skittish and severely endangered, yet they seemed comfortably at home, gliding playfully and coming close enough for us to see their sharp teeth and button noses.

Our boat that morning had a jolly crew of nature lovers: a pair of American birders, a Hungarian couple and a Brazilian couple. They were the sort of people who don’t mind a little sun and a few mosquitoes if it means glimpsing a troupe of dusky titi monkeys. One morning on the trail, I came across the Brazilian couple gamely eating live termites at the suggestion of their guide. “Spicy,” they said, offering me one.

At the edge of the river Gyorgy Valyi, one of the Hungarians, sank up to his thighs in quicksand and surely would have been reclaimed by the preposterous Amazonian hazard had not a handful of guides rushed to the rescue. Even as he was sinking, Mr. Valyi had a grin of delighted disbelief, as though finding himself in a Tintin adventure.

Later that night, as I lay in bed, I too felt as though I were sinking into the living forest. The wafting perfumes and strange growls melded into a baroque stereoscopic vision — dreams of the hidden landscape underlying life itself.

Machu Picch Uncovered (Archeology)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machu_Picchu

Machu Picchu

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Huayna Picchu towers above the ruins of Machu Picchu
State Party	Peru
Type	Mixed
Criteria	i, iii, vii, ix
Reference	274
Region**	Latin America and The Caribbean
Inscription history
Inscription	1983  (Seventh Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List. ** Region as classified by UNESCO.

Machu Picchu (Quechua: Machu Pikchu, “Old Peak”; pronounced ['mɑ.tʃu 'pik.tʃu]) is a pre-Columbian Inca site located 2,430 metres (8,000 ft) above sea level^[1]. It is situated on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru, which is 80 kilometres (50 mi) northwest of Cuzco and through which the Urubamba River flows. The river is a partially navigable headwater of the Amazon River. Often referred to as “The Lost City of the Incas”, Machu Picchu is one of the most familiar symbols of the Inca Empire.

The Incas started building it around 1430 AD but was abandoned as an official site for the Inca rulers a hundred years later, at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. Although known locally, it was said^[who?] to have been forgotten for centuries when the site was brought to worldwide attention in 1911 by Hiram Bingham, an American historian. Since then, Machu Picchu has become an important tourist attraction. It has recently come to light that the site may have been discovered and plundered several years previously, in 1867 by a German businessman, Augusto Berns.^[2] In fact, there is substantial evidence that a British missionary, Thomas Payne, and a German engineer, J. M. von Hassel, arrived earlier than Hiram, and maps found by historians show references to Machu Picchu as early as 1874.^[3]

Machu Picchu was declared a Peruvian Historical Sanctuary in 1981 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983. Since it was not plundered by the Spanish when they conquered the Incas, it is especially important as a cultural site and is considered a sacred place.

Machu Picchu was built in the classical Inca style, with polished dry-stone walls. Its primary buildings are the Intihuatana, the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of the Three Windows. These are located in what is known by archaeologists as the Sacred District of Machu Picchu. In September 2007, Peru and Yale University reached an agreement regarding the return of artifacts which Hiram Bingham had removed from Machu Picchu in the early twentieth century.

Contents [hide] 1 History 2 Location 3 Architecture 4 Intihuatana stone 5 Concerns over tourism 6 Controversy with Yale University 7 In media 8 See also 9 Notes 10 References 11 Twin towns 12 External links

[edit] History

Machu Picchu was constructed around 1462, at the height of the Inca Empire. It was abandoned less than 100 years later. It is likely that most of its inhabitants were wiped out by smallpox before the Spanish conquistadores arrived in the area, and there is no record of their having known of the remote city. Hiram Bingham, the credited discoverer of the site, along with several others, originally hypothesized that the citadel was the traditional birthplace of the Inca of the “Virgins of the Suns”.^[4]

Another theory maintains that Machu Picchu was an Inca “llacta”, a settlement built to control the economy of these conquered regions. Yet another asserts that it may have been built as a prison for a select few who had committed heinous crimes against Inca society. Research conducted by scholars, such as John Rowe and Richard Burger, has convinced most archaeologists that rather than a defensive retreat, Machu Picchu was an estate of the Inca emperor, Pachacuti. In addition, Johan Reinhard presented evidence that the site was selected because of its position relative to sacred landscape features—such as its mountains, which are purported to be in alignment with key astronomical events that would have been important to the Incas.

Although the citadel is located only about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Cusco, the Inca capital, it was never found by the Spanish and consequently not plundered and destroyed, as was the case with many other Inca sites. Over the centuries, the surrounding jungle grew over much of the site, and few knew of its existence. On July 24, 1911, Machu Picchu was brought to the attention of scholars by Hiram Bingham, an American historian employed as a lecturer at Yale University. Bingham was led up to Machu Picchu by a local 11 year old Quechua boy named Pablito Alvarez.^[5] Bingham undertook archaeological studies and completed a survey of the area. Bingham coined the name “The Lost City of the Incas”, which was the title of his first book.

Bingham had been searching for the city of Vilcapampa, the last Inca refuge and spot of resistance during the Spanish conquest of Peru. In 1911, after years of previous trips and explorations around the zone, he was led to the citadel by Quechuans. These people were living in Machu Picchu, in the original Inca infrastructure. Although most of the original inhabitants had died within a century of the city’s construction, a small number of families survived so by the time the site was ‘discovered’ in 1911, people still were living on the site, and many mummies—mostly of women—were discovered as well. Bingham made several more trips and conducted excavations on the site through 1915, carrying off artifacts. He wrote a number of books and articles about the discovery of Machu Picchu in his lifetime.

Simone Waisbard, a long-time researcher of Cusco, claims that Enrique Palma, Gabino Sánchez, and Agustín Lizárraga left their names engraved on one of the rocks at Machu Picchu on July 14, 1901. This would mean that they ‘discovered’ it long before Bingham did in 1911. Likewise, in 1904, an engineer named Franklin supposedly spotted the ruins from a distant mountain. He told Thomas Payne, an English Christian missionary living in the region, about the site, Payne’s family members claim. They also report that in 1906, Payne and another fellow missionary named Stuart E McNairn (1867–1956) climbed up to the ruins.

The site received significant publicity after the National Geographic Society devoted their entire April 1913 issue to Machu Picchu.

An area of 325.92 square kilometers surrounding Machu Picchu was declared a “Historical Sanctuary” of Peru in 1981. In addition to the ruins, this sanctuary area includes a large portion of adjoining region, rich with flora and fauna.

Machu Picchu was designated as a World Heritage Site in 1983 when it was described as “an absolute masterpiece of architecture and a unique testimony to the Inca civilization”.^[6]

On July 7, 2007, Machu Picchu was voted as one of New Open World Corporation’s New Seven Wonders of the World. The World Monuments Fund placed Machu Picchu on its 2008 Watch List of the 100 Most Endangered Sites in the world because of environmental degradation resulting from the impact of tourism, uncontrolled development in the nearby town of Aguas Calientes that included a poorly sited tram to ease visitor access, and the construction of a bridge across the Vilcanota River that is likely to bring even more tourists to the site in defiance of a court order and government protests against it.

[edit] Location

Machu Picchu is 80 kilometers northwest of Cusco, on the crest of the mountain Machu Picchu, located about 2,350 meters (7,710 feet) above sea level. It is one of the most important archaeological sites in South America and the most visited tourist attraction in Peru.

It is above Urubamba Valley. From atop the cliff of Machu Picchu, there is a vertical rock face of 600 meters rising from the Urubamba River at the foot of the cliff. The location of the city was a military secret, and its deep precipices and mountains provide excellent natural defenses. The Inca Bridge, an Inca rope bridge, across the Urubamba River in the Pongo de Mainique, provided a secret entrance for the Inca army. Another Inca bridge to the west of Machu Picchu, the tree-trunk bridge, at a location where a gap occurs in the cliff that measures 6 metres (20 ft), could be bridged by two tree trunks. If the trees were removed, it would leave a 570 metres (1,900 ft) fall to the base of the cliffs, also discouraging invaders.

The city sits in a saddle between two mountains, with a commanding view down two valleys and a nearly impassable mountain at its back. It has a water supply from springs that cannot be blocked easily, and enough land to grow food for about four times as many people as ever lived there. The hillsides leading to it have been terraced, not only to provide more farmland to grow crops, but to steepen the slopes which invaders would have to ascend. There are two high-altitude routes from Machu Picchu across the mountains back to Cusco, one through the sun gate, and the other across the Inca bridge. Both easily could be blocked if invaders should approach along them. Regardless of its original purpose, it is strategically located and readily defended.

[edit] Architecture

The central buildings of Machu Picchu use the classical Inca architectural style of polished dry-stone walls of regular shape. The Incas were masters of this technique, called ashlar, in which blocks of stone are cut to fit together tightly without mortar. The Incas were among the best stone masons the world has seen, and many junctions in the central city are so perfect that it is said not even a blade of grass fits between the stones.

Some Inca buildings were constructed using mortar, but by Inca standards this was quick, shoddy construction, and was not used in the building of important structures. Peru is a highly seismic land, and mortar-free construction was more earthquake-resistant than using mortar. The stones of the dry-stone walls built by the Incas can move slightly and resettle without the walls collapsing.

Inca walls show numerous design details that also help protect them from collapsing in an earthquake. Doors and windows are trapezoidal and tilt inward from bottom to top; corners usually are rounded; inside corners often incline slightly into the rooms; and “L”-shaped blocks often were used to tie outside corners of the structure together. These walls do not rise straight from bottom to top but are offset slightly from row to row.

The Incas never used the wheel in any practical manner. Its use in toys demonstrates that the principle was well-known to them, although it was not applied in their engineering. The lack of strong draft animals as well as terrain and dense vegetation issues may have rendered it impractical. How they moved and placed enormous blocks of stones remains a mystery, although the general belief is that they used hundreds of men to push the stones up inclined planes. A few of the stones still have knobs on them that could have been used to lever them into position; it is believed that after the stones were placed, the Incas would have sanded the knobs away, but a few were overlooked.

The space is composed of 140 structures or features, including temples, sanctuaries, parks, and residences that include houses with thatched roofs. There are more than one hundred flights of stone steps–often completely carved from a single block of granite–and a great number of water fountains that are interconnected by channels and water-drains perforated in the rock that were designed for the original irrigation system. Evidence has been found to suggest that the irrigation system was used to carry water from a holy spring to each of the houses in turn.
According to archaeologists, the urban sector of Machu Picchu was divided into three great districts: the Sacred District, the Popular District to the south, and the District of the Priests and the Nobility.

Located in the first zone are the primary archaeological treasures: the Intihuatana, the Temple of the Sun and the Room of the Three Windows. These were dedicated to Inti, their sun god and greatest deity. The Popular District, or Residential District, is the place where the lower class people lived. It includes storage buildings and simple houses. In the royalty area, a sector that existed for the nobility, includes a group of houses located in rows over a slope, the residence of the Amautas (wise persons) was characterized by its reddish walls, and the zone of the Ñustas (princesses) had trapezoid-shaped rooms. The Monumental Mausoleum is a carved statue with a vaulted interior and carved drawings. It was used for rites or sacrifices.

As part of their road system, the Inca built a road to the Machu Picchu region. Today, tens of thousands of tourists walk the Inca Trail to visit Machu Picchu each year, acclimatising at Cusco before starting on a two- to four-day journey on foot from the Urubamba valley up through the Andes mountain range to the isolated city..

[edit] Intihuatana stone

The Intihuatana stone is one of many ritual stones in South America. The Spanish did not find Machu Picchu so the Intihuatana Stone was not destroyed as many other ritual stones in Peru were. These stones are arranged to point directly at the sun during the winter solstice. Intihuatana also is called “The Hitching Point of the Sun” because it was believed to hold the sun in its place along its annual path in the sky. At midday on March 21 and September 21, the equinoxes, the sun stands almost above the pillar—casting no shadow at all.^[7] Researchers believe that it was built as an astronomic clock or calendar.

The Intihuatana stone was damaged in September 2000 when a 450 kg (1,000-pound) crane fell onto it, breaking off a piece of stone the size of a ballpoint pen. The crane was being used by a crew hired by J. Walter Thompson advertising agency to film an advertisement for a beer brand. “Machu Picchu is the heart of our archaeological heritage and the Intihuatana is the heart of Machu Picchu. They’ve struck at our most sacred inheritance,” said Federico Kaufmann Doig, a Peruvian archaeologist.^[8]

[edit] Concerns over tourism

Machu Picchu is a UNESCO World Heritage site. As Peru’s most visited tourist attraction and major revenue generator, it is continually threatened by economic and commercial forces. In the late 1990s, the Peruvian government granted concessions to allow the construction of a cable car and development of a luxury hotel, including a tourist complex with boutiques and restaurants. These plans were met with protests from scientists, academics, and the Peruvian public—all worried that the greater numbers of visitors would pose tremendous physical burdens on the ruins.^[9]

A growing number of people visit Machu Picchu (400,000 in 2003^[10]). For this reason, there were protests against a plan to build a bridge to the site as well.^[11] A no-fly zone exists above the area.^[12] UNESCO is considering putting Machu Picchu on its list of endangered World Heritage Sites.^[11]

During the 1980s a large rock from Machu Picchu’s central plaza was moved out of its alignment to a different location in order to create a helicopter landing zone. Helicopter landings were forbidden in the 1990s. In 2006 a Cusco-based company, Helicusco, sought to have tourist flights over Machu Picchu, but the decision was quickly overturned.^[13]

[edit] Controversy with Yale University

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.

In 1912 and 1914-15, Bingham excavated the treasures from Machu Picchu—ceramic vessels, silver statues, jewelry and human bones—and took them from Peru to Yale University in the United States for further study. Yale has retained the artifacts until now. The National Geographic Society, which co-sponsored Bingham’s explorations, has acknowledged that the artifacts were taken on loan and is committed to seeing them returned to Peru.^{[citation needed]}

Eliane Karp, an anthropologist who is the wife of the former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, accused Yale of profiting from Peru’s cultural heritage by claiming title to more than 250 pieces removed from Machu Picchu by Bingham in 1912, which had been on display at Yale’s Peabody Museum ever since. Some of the artifacts Bingham removed were returned to Peru, but Yale kept the rest saying its position was supported by federal case law involving Peruvian antiquities.^[14]

On September 19, 2007, the Courant reported that Peru and Yale had reached an agreement regarding the requested return of the artifacts. The agreement includes sponsorship of a joint traveling exhibition and construction of a new museum and research center in Cusco about which Yale will advise Peruvian officials. Yale acknowledges Peru’s title to all the excavated objects from Machu Picchu, but Yale will share rights with Peru in the research collection, part of which will remain at Yale as an object of continuing study.^[15]

On June 19, 2008, National Geographic Society’s vice-president Terry Garcia was quoted by daily La República. “We were part of this agreement. National Geographic was there, we know what was said, the objects were loaned and should be returned.” In November 2008, the Peruvian government decided to sue Yale after all the negotiations to have the pieces returned failed.