The tour to the Colca Canyon, as it turned out, was an old-age style guided bus tour and not a walking trek of a sort; Though the participants were young travelers, this tour is easily suitable for much older people, and can be attended by them as well - you hardly get off the bus to get photos, and the amount of walking involved is not worth mentioning.
Finally, I got out of Cusco.
The city of Machu-Picchu existed for 130 years. It was abandoned for an unknown reason in 1530, 2 years before the Spaniards arrived at Peru. This may be one of the reasons that the conquistadores never found out about it, and it remained for centuries hidden in the mountains, completely intact, a perfect example to how the people lived in the Inca times.
Despite its undenyable beauty, I would not recommend the Inca Trail for my grandmother. It was probably the most difficult trek that I did during this travel, though I am not sure how much of the difficulty was due to objective conditions, and how much - due to my poor state during most of it.
The Inca world was strongly connected to astronomy and celestial objects, as I found out in the last few days. The most interesting fact, is that regarding to the dark stelar constelations. In addition to the normal star constelations, the Inca regarded the milky way as the celestial river, and dark areas in it - where there are no stars (or rather, cosmological clouds)- were also regarded as constelations. This is the first culture I encounter that actually did this - like inverse paintings, only celestial. The black areas were regarded as the dark shadows of animals coming to drink from the river, e.g. the celestial llama, the serpant of the sky, and so forth. They were all really important for the Inca everyday life.
Cusco, which was the capital of the Inca empire, is located high in the mountains of southern Peru. The scenery on the way is very dramatic: deep valleys with fast rivers separate the green mountains, irrigated terraces spot the slopes, and on the side of the road you can see locals walking with strong colored textiles: as I have learned later, Cusco is the centre of the Peruvian textile industry.
Half of Israel is covered with deserts. The most dominant ancient culture that flourished in Israel’s deserts is called the Nabateans. Originally from Saudi-Arabia, in the era of the first temple they were known as the pirates of the red sea. Later, however, they developed immensly and formed a state, based in present days Jordan, who was a sister state to the Hashmonaic state of Israel during the second temple times - pretty much like present day Jordan is a sister to present day Israel, shaped by the same regional and international forces, and by the same natural environment (actually, it always amazed me just how much equivalences one can find between present-day Israel and Jordan, and the 2200 years old Hashmonaic state and Nabatean state. Too bad people don’t know history). The Nabateans, which had an extremely interesting and developed culture, based their state on commerce - bringing spices from Yemen to the roman empire in Italy. On the way, they left numerous archaeological sites throughout the middle east, the most famous being their ancient capital - Petra, located in Jordan. In Israel they left huge water holes, old desert inns, and even some glorious city ruins that are spread throughout the deserts. I once spent some time studying their culture and their adaptivity to desert life, and during my day in Nasca I kept comparing the way these far away culture developed in order to survive in the harsh environment.
Maybe it is only me, but the deserts of southern Peru have striking resemblance to those of southern Israel. Once you leave Lima on the panamerican highway, you immediately enter an area of small brown-grey hills that look just like the area between Beer Sheva and the Negev Junction. Later on, when you get closer to Nasca, the view changes considerably, and after passing an area of large sand dunes it becomes very close to Israel’s great desert rivers - the Paran and Zin desert areas. Stuck between the Andean mountains in the east and the pacific coast in the west, the Peruvian desert feels like an excellent place to visit, and indeed it didn’t fail.
When I was a child, and first read about the fall of the precolombian american empires (the Aztec in Mexico and the Inca in Peru), I took a very natural position in favour of the indians. It took me many years to understand that apart from being ruthless murderous criminals, the spanish conquerors must have also been very brave and adventurous men - even if only for the money. They did have, at least before they established their courts, pretty difficult life; and they did live and die away from the country they grew in. Makes you wander.
Elad’s blog is proudly powered by
WordPress
Entries (RSS)
and Comments (RSS).
This page viewed 44803 times.