It is believed to have been built by the Aymara, the native South Americans who inhabited Lake Titicaca) Again, we were 13,000 feet above sea level (The hat was supposed to help prevent a recurrence of altitude sickness—limiting exposure to the sun).
The massive, solid blocks of a stone not indigenous to the flat plateau gave rise to the site's nickname, "the Stonehenge of the Americas".
Machu Picchu was only rediscovered in 1911 by the American archaeologist Hiram Bingham. The ruins lie 1000 ft above the Urubamba river. Current researchers tend to believe that Machu Picchu was a country resort for elite Incans. At any given time, there were no more than 750 people living at Machu Picchu. It was a remarkably well hidden and well protected place. Located far up in the mountains, visitors had to travel up long valleys littered with Inca check points and watch towers. Remarkably, the Spanish conquistadors missed the site, and Bingham only located the site by chance. On a wet day in 1911, he traveled up the slopes with a few companions from his expedition. On meeting local peasants, they told him about ancient ruins that covered the area. To Bingham's amazement, he had found the lost Inca city of Machu Picchu.
Then it was on to Ollantaytambo (called by locals Ollanta), a town in the Sacred Valley of the Incas, where the Incas retreated after the Spanish took Cuzco and Pisac. Pisac, another Inca fortress, has a strategic position overlooking the Rio Urubamba and two deep gorges and a mountain peak behind it.
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The lines were not discovered until they were spotted from a plane in 1939. A German mathematician, Maria Reiche, spent most of her life studying the area and concluded that the Nazca lines formed part of a giant astronomical calendar. Another researcher, John Reinhard, concluded that they were sacred paths. Another researcher attributed them to “aliens”. Current thought is that, since many of the lines are oriented towards water sources, they are most likely routes to be walked upon as part of the ritual worship of water.
The flight over the lines was amusing. John was in the co-pilot seat of the plane and started talking to the pilot. In broken English/Spanish, he told the pilot that he, too, was a pilot. At that point, the pilot asked John if he’d like to fly the plane! As he turned around to look at me- with a huge grin- he saw that all of the other passengers in the plane were pulling out their barf bags! (Not because John was taking over the controls, but feeling nauseous from the banking of the plane. When we finally landed, one of the women was laid out on the picnic table- she was feeling very ill. We spent some time talking with an older man who was traveling Central and South America. He spoke no Spanish- but said that he never had a problem communicating—he would say the English word, add an “a” at the end, and pronounce it with a Spanish accent… We called him “Vam-ous Boose” for his story about catching a bus and telling the driver to go by saying “Vamous boose”.
We landed in Lima, crashed for the evening and started the next day with a tour of the city.
We saw the Cathedral, the Plaza San Martin and the Plaza Mayor
(and John had his shoes polished by one of the local shoe shine boys).
