11-19-03 – 12:47pm

          We’re on the boat back to Puno and the past day and a half has been so full that I never did get a chance to write anything and I hardly know where to begin now. The family we stayed with on Amantani was incredibly sweet. We were expecting more of a touristy setup with separate guesthouses and people dressing up only for the tourists, but even though there was a large group of us coming and staying with families it was the real thing. It’s only been since 1999 that the Island was opened to tourism an the Islanders (Quichua Indians, who speak mostly Quichua and some Spanish) are deeply traditional who’s dress and culture have as yet been only slightly affected by contact with the modern world. They told us it would be “a cultural experience” which we now know means a hole in the ground for a bathroom, candlelight, no electricity, rock hard beds, and the kitchen just a fire in a smoky, dark room with a dirt floor on which everyone eats. In short, it means that it will be one of those wonderful and eye opening experiences you’ll never forget.

Here's some children on a bluff overlooking the boat dock, without any TV on the Island, watching us seemed the most entertaining thing around.

Here's our host, Ruth, sitting to the right, waiting to collect Susan and I from the dock. The woman on the island are constantly spinning wool, whether sitting or just walking from place to place. There are definitely no idle hands on this island!

          We were met by Ruth, who took us to her house and helped her mother cook us lunch – potato soup, then several baked varieties of potatoes I’ve never seen before, and some fish. Dinner was more potatoes prepared various ways and a little bit of pasta – did I mention that the main crop on the Island is potatoes?

          The entire family was incredibly sweet. One of the sons made us wristbands with our names on them, and I did a portrait drawing of another son, Orlando, in my sketchbook and gave it to him as a gift. All were quite interested in the drawing process and studied my every stroke with intensity. When I finished the portrait, one of the young daughters excitedly brought me a rose to see if I’d do a drawing of it for her, which I happily did.  

Here's two of the younger daughters watching me draw. They have just returned from school as can be seen by the fact that they're still in their class uniforms. The school is on the other side of the island so it takes them an hour to walk there and an hour to walk home afterward. They would probably be baffled to think of this as a hardship.

          After lunch we hiked up the hill and watched a soccer game between some of the young tourists and local boys – at around 12 – 13,000 feet I’ll let you guess who won! Then another long and tiring hike up to the top of the island where we watched the sunset.

          One of the local guides told us a great deal about the island on the way up and one story in particular stuck with me as a great example of the basic differences between the modern world and a traditional culture such as this. A few years back the Peruvian government decided to help the Island with two gifts, a hospital and a police station. The Islanders preferred their local shaman, however, whose method of diagnosis is to have a person sleep a night with a live guinea pig under their shirt. In the morning the shaman kills the animal and by reading its entrails can tell what the problem is and what treatment should be administered. Our guide assured us that this method was 95% accurate and he felt certain that eventually all modern countries will adopt it. With such overwhelming success, was it any surprise that no one ever went to the doctors, who eventually simply left?

          As for the two policemen, you have to understand that on such a small island as this, where everyone knows everyone else, there simply isn’t any crime to speak of. You could literally leave your pack in the middle of the path and it would be there the next day. With nothing to do, the policemen mostly sat around and got drunk and the Islanders ignored them. But when a couple of local, unmarried girls got pregnant and it was discovered that the policemen were the fathers, a large group of the Islanders rounded the officers up, escorted them down to the shore, put them on a boat with oars and a sail and a serious warning not to return.

          After our potato diner, I went to a dance the local villagers were throwing for all the guests while Susan stayed in our room to rest. I didn’t have to worry about her, I knew, since a petrified hummingbird dangled over our doorway to protect the room from evil spirits, as well as a much larger bird dangling in the yard.

I feel safer just looking at this, don't you?

          The dance was fantastic! The young musicians put their all into their drums, tambourines, flutes, and small guitars. 

The Islanders were so small that all us foreigners seemed to tower over them when we danced with them. These people’s faces are so beautifully unique and full of character that I was just dying to paint them! The room itself was lit by a single light bulb, the only electricity I’d seen on the Island , and it turns out that it is run by the stored-up electricity of a solar panel on the roof specifically for these dances. 

Here's a not-so-great photo I tried taking of the spectacular lightning storm that was dancing through the thunderclouds across the lake as I came back from the dance.

          Unfortunately, in the morning Susan was a bit ill from what we’d eaten the previous day. Because we didn’t want to be rude and refuse to eat while sitting at breakfast with the rest of our host family (or to let them know she was sick and have them call the Shaman!), we decided to skip breakfast on the pretense of wanting to explore the shore, even though it was 6:00am and the boat wouldn’t arrive for another few hours. Wow! Both Susan and I agreed that her illness was a blessing in disguise since we never would have been there to witness the small sail boats coming into shore and being frantically unloaded by dozens of locals in their exotic outfits. I could hardly believe there was a place that still used sail boats since almost everywhere we’ve been had traded in their sails for outboard motors. Two hours of photographing the sudden market that sprang up on the previously empty sand left me emotionally drained. 

          Once on the boat I rested a bit and had some of the energy bars we brought with us as we headed to an island named Taquile. The steep cliffs and even the people’s dress reminded us so much of some of the Greek Islands we’d visited in the Mediterranean .

  11-20-03 – 12:30 pm

The local bus to Cusco we’re sitting on has come to a stop due to a series of strikes by the local farmers who have placed barricades of rocks both in front and behind our bus and all other traffic on this remote stretch of road. 

Apparently they’re protesting the government’s program of eradicating coca fields, which is being done under pressure from the United States . Peru doesn’t produce much cocaine from their production of coca leaves but the Bush administration is trying to pre-empt its growth as they fight the trade in Columbia , fearing that those producers might simply shift their production to Peru someday. I can certainly understand the local farmer’s confusion over this logic!

In past journals I've edited out some of my own thoughts not related to the trip, but thought I'd keep a few in this time. I hope I don't upset anyone, but just skip the next couple of paragraphs if you'd rather just stick to the travel stuff

The problem is that just as barley is not beer and grapes are not wine, coca leaves are not cocaine until they go through a very intensive processing with other chemicals on a large scale. Coca leaves have been used for thousands of years in this region for tea, medicine, to chew for energy, and for many other purposes intimately tied to these people’s culture. Virtually every table, be it in a restaurant or private home, has a bowl of coca leaves on it for making tea, which we’ve had many times here with no more of an effect than regular tea.

I find it hard understanding what right we have in forcing another sovereign nation to eradicate a plant across the board because one of its uses is illegal in our country. Can you even imagine what our reaction would be if another country did the same to us? The negative feelings this will and does generate toward the US far outweighs any good that may come from burning these farmer's fields of coca leaves, which most aren’t even using to create cocaine in the first place.

Most of the times these issues are simply words in a newspaper and so far off it’s hard to imagine them as even real, but sitting here on this bus, looking into the faces of people for whom these issues have a real impact, I can’t help but think of all the other horrors the war on drugs has spawned; the heavily armed gangs that are created by such an illicit market, akin to the violence spawned by the prohibition of alcohol in the past; the vast numbers of people overcrowding jails for nonviolent offenses; and whole countries like Columbia being terrorized by drug lord terrorists.

The logic in defense of current drug policies seems to be that people who use drugs will be more likely to commit crimes. That may be true at least for some users, just as it is also true that there will always be a percentage of people who become alcoholics and drive drunk, but I have to wonder if those crimes could possibly be greater than the ones carried out by the vast network of drug lords, smuggling networks, and violent gangs and dealers? And, beyond that, are the current drug policies even cutting down on the number of addicts and the subsequent crime they are creating? Even with all the money and horrors the drug war has created, not to mention all the ill will we generate with people like these farmers standing in front of our bus, has it even had the desired effect?

I have certainly seen what drugs can do firsthand, both to family members and friends and if all this were actually keeping drugs out of the hands of people I might see the trade-off as worthwhile, but just about every time I go to a big city someone comes up to me and offers me drugs so it leaves me to wonder if all these efforts have even lowered its use and the consequent number of  addicts? Maybe it has, maybe we would be far worse of without all these actions, despite the problems they’ve caused; I honestly wish I knew.

Well, as you can tell we’ve been sitting here quite a while so I apologize for the long rant – that’s just what happens when you sit an artist down for a long time with nothing to do and no changing scenery! I’m not pretending that I know the answers to these questions or trying to preach a solution to anyone, and I hope I’m not offending anyone by simply asking them (though I’m sure there are many who probably will be). I think one of the great things about traveling and reading history is that it forces one to look at things from a different point-of-view and to raise questions about some of what you’ve just taken for granted in the past. If nothing else, it teaches you to question everything.

Oh, for the days of my isolated youth when I had all the answers; for now, having traveled the world by foot and book, the questions outnumber the answers and I feel vastly more ignorant than I did back then!

Sitting here is somewhat surrealistic since the protest is quite peaceful, though many of the farmers hold the shovels and pickaxes they used to help move the rocks and possibly as a silent deterrent to any of us going and moving the stones ourselves. To the sides of the bus life goes on as normal, farmers work the fields, school children play in the schoolyard, young girls come up to the bus and try selling us gloves. Some tourists from another bus even kick a soccer ball around with some of the village kids to pass the time.

1:48 pm , same day

I have to say that I really don’t blame these people at all for what they’re doing. What other means do they have to get their voices heard in such a nonviolent way? I can see far off a bunch of people ahead of the lined up busses and trucks as well as hear someone on a bullhorn, probably shouting their protest.

The protesters started letting the large tourist buses through, but since we’re traveling on a local bus, we’re not allowed through.

2:27 pm same day

          A camera news crew finally showed up and, once the farmers got the chance to get their message out, they used a bulldozer to clear the rocks and burning tree stumps out of the road. Unfortunately, there’s so much debris all along the road for miles that it’s slow going as the drivers have to constantly get out and clear rocks.

2:46 pm same day

          We received reports of another roadblock ahead so we stopped at a roadside restaurant to eat and wait and see what happens. It’s uncertain if we’ll make Cuzco today. Susan’s suggestion is to trade some portraits of the strike’s leaders for our bus’ passage. Joanne isn’t talking to Garrett today in punishment for staying out at a bar with Manuel and Andrew till 3:00 am last night so we spend most of the time chatting with her about and her life there. She said that she gave Garrett the silent treatment once before during this trip for staying out too late, but he is so laid back that he didn’t even know she was giving it to him until she broke down and had to tell him she wasn’t talking to him!

4:12 pm

Well, we had a pretty good lunch – steak for me and asparagus soup for Susan. Garrett and Joanne are communicating again and we had a lot of fun talking to them both. Garrett grew up a dairy farmer in Northern Ireland and desperately wishes to get back to that, but there just isn’t any way to make a living doing it anymore in Ireland. Small farms like that just can’t compete with larger, more efficient operations in other countries.

We are back on the road now and we’ve seen some traffic coming from the other direction so we’re hopeful – 4:00 pm was when we were scheduled to arrive into Cuzco .

11/21/03 – 6:00 pm

We finally made it into Cuzco at 7:30 pm last night; twelve hours after we left. The city was much bigger than I’d expected. I was too tired to walk around so just stayed in the hostel room while Susan went out to eat with some of the others in our group. She told me later that trying to walk the streets was like running a gauntlet, with sometimes a dozen people surrounding you, pushing menus in your face and shouting things to try and get you into their restaurant. Some even shouted things like, “Your friends are waiting for you in my restaurant and sent me to get you!” Now, how could this ploy work? If you weren’t meeting anyone for dinner you’d know they were lying. If you were, did they think you were going to actually eat at their place when you got there and found your friends not there?

          Today, when we walked around I was struck by the beauty of the architecture and hilly, cobbled streets, but deeply disappointed in how modernly dressed everyone was and the exhausting effort it took just to walk around. People constantly accost you with aggressive offers to shine your shoes, sell you things or simply to beg, while the narrow streets are choked with taxis that come in an endless stream of beeping and noxious fumes. Since there are almost no lights or stop signs, crossing most streets is a game of chicken.

Here's a couple of views from of Cuzco from the surrounding hills.

          Even though it’s exhausting, the beauty of the churches and streets are worth seeing, but I must admit that I enjoyed stepping back in time on Amantani Island far more and wish I was there instead, despite the lack of restaurants. As I walk around here, I keep finding myself trying to picture this when it was the capital of the Inca Empire and the largest city in all of ancient America. Here and there you come across a wall made of the distinctive white granite blocks weighing in the tons and cut so perfectly they require no mortar; fitted so perfectly not even a pin can be inserted between them. 

I'm guessing that the irregularity of these block's shapes help tie them together during earthquakes much better than if they were all square.

But most of the stones and ancient buildings had long ago been leveled by the Spanish conquistadors and the material re-used to build the towering churches as a divine sign that the old gods had been defeated by new, more powerful ones.  

          In thinking of all the marvels that these people accomplished, from the backbreaking terraced agriculture, the domestication of the few edible plants and small animals available to them, the intricate aqueducts, complex astronomy, thousands of miles of roads, etc, I fight the impulse to feel sorry for them and think of the conquistadors as the bad guys. After all, the Inca ruled because they were able to conquer the people that were here before them, just as those people had done in an unbroken line to the first human inhabitants.  

To reject this evolutionary process is to reject all that civilization has accomplished, both the good and the bad. Here is an excerpt of the Incas invocation of the sun god that I’m quoting from Hiram Bingham’s “Lost City of the Incas” (page 120) that illustrates this truth well, I think. “…Oh Sun! Thou who has said let there be Cuzco and Tampu, grant that these children may conquer all other people. We beseech thee that thy children the Incas may conquer all other people. We beseech thee that thy children the Incas may be always conquerors, since it is for this that thou has created them.”  

          The story of how Pizarro, with a small group of soldiers was able to capture the Inca Atahualpa in the mist of an army outnumbering them by a thousand times is one of the great tales of history. Now, before any of us of European bloodlines start thinking that the reason Pizarro was coming in boats to conquer the Inca and not the other way around is out of some inherent superiority of either mind, genetics, or anything other than geographic circumstance, I’d encourage you to read one of my favorite books;

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies -- by Jared Diamond.

The first few chapters are a bit dry for the non-scientific oriented, but if you stick with it things get a lot more exciting and is a must read for anyone interested in history, travel, and why certain countries and continents seemed to leap forward so quickly while others lagged behind.  

11/22/03 – 6:00 am Saturday

          The rest of our group left this morning at 4:30 am for their trek to Machu Picchu . Susan and I chose to skip that part so we could see more of the small villages surrounding Cuzco . Manuel had mentioned last night that we might just stay in and see the towns from here, which has me concerned and I’m going to talk to him today to clarify things and make sure we’ll be staying in Ollantaytambo, which I’ve read a great deal about and don’t want to miss.

          I also rose 4:30 and walked around town taking photos of the early morning light hitting the tops of the churches. 

My dislike of the town grew as the hordes of drunken partiers disgorged from the clubs and filled the streets. Some fought each other and the police, a drunken teenager got mad at a taxi driver, pulled down his pants and defecated on the cab. A couple of drunken guys shout out obscenities at me, threateningly advancing. I turn and stand watching them, at that moment truly hoping they will come at me so I can relieve some of the frustration of this town by breaking a few noses. They are so drunk they can hardly stand, it wouldn’t be difficult. But they finally laugh, give me the finger and stagger off.

          Susan was planning on meeting me in the square when she got up so I went back to the hotel to preempt her being out on the urine-smelling street alone with all these nutcases. It’s too bad the beauty of the town is being ruined by the ugliness of its inhabitants.

9:02 pm same day

          Susan and I just returned from a fantastic dinner at the Inca Grill on the main square. After and awful start to the day, the pendulum has swung so far back in the other direction that I’m amazed to read what I wrote in the morning. The intensity of the highs and lows on such trips are enough to make one’s head spin.  

          After going out to breakfast, Susan and I sat in the square for a while. A little girl selling bird seed and an older woman sat by us and they were so nice that Susan took some Polaroid photos of them and gave them each one. The little girl just stared and stared at her photo. Then a group of young teenage girls came up to us and motioned to their camera and then to themselves sheepishly. Thinking they wanted us to take a photo of them together, we nodded and reached for their camera, but realized we had misunderstood. They wanted to have their photo taken with us, each in turn standing between us and having one of their classmates take the picture with their camera. They were just so excited to talk to us, though they knew almost no English and us almost no Spanish.  

          Then we went to the Museum, which was interesting. Next, the day’s highlight! We tracked down a place called Cento de Textiles Tadicioeles del Cuzco that our friend who sketches with us at home, the artist Amy Evans, recommended we visit. When we arrived, there was a sign saying closed, but when we looked through the window and saw eight woman in traditional outfits weaving in a circle in the back, we knocked and they let us in. Not only were the textiles they were weaving spectacular, but the photos I took of them working were just what I’d been dying to paint. We bought five fabrics and left so excited and inspired that the earlier travails were forgotten. Cuzco was beginning to look much better.  

"The Artist" Peru
oil, 20" by 16"

          Had a great lunch at the Van Gogh Café overlooking the square, then took a cab up to Saqsaywaman, an Inca site with beautifully fitted stones overlooking the city. We walked down from there and spent some time with some children in a small square, some dressed up trying to hire themselves out for photos with tourists, others selling postcards or shinning shoes. Susan gave them each a pencil, which was a huge hit and seemed more valuable to them than money. I took photos of them and they loved seeing themselves played back on the screen.  

          Then we headed down to the main square and when Susan sat down she was engulfed by eight, eleven year olds on a class trip from Lima. They were so excited that we were from the ! The girls just wanted to touch Susan’s skin which they found very unique and were also fascinated by my beard which is rare here. I took their photos and they were riotously excited by seeing themselves and vied frantically with each other to be next at having their photo taken. When it was time to go, one of the girls gave Susan a charm on a necklace and each insisted on hugging us both and kissing us on the cheek.  

          Overwhelmed by the day, we went to the Inca Grill which was incredibly good! Next to our table were two American brothers and next to them a husband and wife from the US, which surprised us since we’d seen so few Americans on this trip anywhere. We enjoyed talking to them and exchanging impressions. Well, what a turnaround the day has held. First we saw the worst of Cuzco and now the best.  

11/24/03 – 6:56 pm

Susan and I are sitting in the kitchen of Hostal Rupa Wasi as the owner, a tall, blond surfer-looking guy is preparing diner. Both of us are pretty tired out from the train ride here, but first I’ll have to describe all the wonders we saw yesterday.

          The tour of the Sacred Valley was spectacular both for the mountainous scenery and the people in the villages. 

We first went to the local Sunday market in Pisac. The sun was baking hot, but all the colors and activity of the farmers who come down from all the surrounding area for the market was spectacular.

 We also visited Ollantaytambo. Susan and I separated from the rest of the group who were walking up the hill so we could take our time wandering through this unique town, built by the Incas of perfectly fitted stone and canals that run along all the streets; the clear, cold water led down in stone channels all the way from the glaciers looming above us on the spectacular mountains. I would love to come back and spend a month just painting on the spot in these little towns around here, but that will have to wait till the next trip!  

"Ollantaytambo Trio" Peru
oil. 46" by 36"

Here's one of the beautifully cut Inca doorways. Remember, this is granite, one of the heaviest and hardest stones there is. Notice how perfectly joined they are, negating the need for mortar to hold them standing for all these hundreds of years.

Just out walking the pigs!

          But the highlight had to be Chinchero, our last stop. The moment our bus pulled into the parking lot and I saw the adjacent field filled with woman sewing and weaving, I again left the group, which Susan this time decided to stick with to see the town while I took photos. As before, everyone was so interested to see themselves on the digital screen that I soon had a line of people wanting to have their photo taken so they could see themselves on the screen. One girl named Gabrielle, who is 15 and studying English talked to me for a while about her hopes of coming to the US someday.  

    
A couple of the long line of people who wanted their photo taken so they could then see themselves on the camera's screen.

These domesticated Guinea Pigs don't even have to be caged -- this is just a room of a house without a door.

          Then back through the incredible scenery, a dinner, then exhausted sleep. We rose at 4:30 and got everything set to catch an early train to , but when the taxi never showed up, Manuel informed us the driver had accidentally bought tickets for tomorrow and we’d now have to leave at 8:00am and drive to Ollantytambo and catch the train there.

          With some time on our hands, we explored a few more areas of Cuzco we hadn’t yet seen and indulged in a second breakfast. Once again a group of school kids came up to us shyly requesting to have their photos taken with us in turn.  

I just loved these bank doors in Cuzco; who needs a sign letting you know this is where the money is with doors like this! I'm not sure why, but there were often lines stretching for blocks in front of the banks, with armed police keeping order.

           Then we retraced the route to Ollantytamobo again and caught the train to the under-construction town nearest to . As we descended to 9-10 feet, the mountains turned green and we were soon surrounded by the jungle. The beauty of the ride was marred only by the thick diesel fumes of the engine, which occasionally blew in through the windows, almost chocking us. Because of the earlier mix-up, we’d ended up on the more expensive tourist train with rich travelers, rather than the local train. Though part of the top was glass, we were surprised to find that the seats were actually smaller than the back-packer train and, since the cheaper cars were farther back, they didn’t get any fumes from the engine! So much for our one taste of luxury.  

The nice thing about the fumes, though, was that it gave Susan an excuse to wear her fashionable mask!

          The town here is one huge construction site; stoneworkers and all manner of laborers frantically building on all sides of the railroad tracks that also serve as the town’s main street. 

Once we climbed the long stairs up to our hostel and deposited our luggage, we decided to go for a walk along the majestically roaring river that ran down the deep gorge the town nestled in. Within a few yards outside of town, however, we were soon surrounded on all sides with piles of rotting garbage. Gnats and mosquitoes quickly filled the air and we were forced to retreat back to town. It was tragic to see the impact that such unchecked and unplanned tourism was having on this remote and beautiful natural place. Looking at all the plastic water bottles bobbing in the river made we almost want to turn around and catch the train back so I didn’t feel a collaborator in such disfigurement. One of the reasons we chose Gap Tours was that they were environmentally low impact, utilizing existing transportation and other methods of responsible travel. I only wish everyone else carried their water bottles out as we did until reaching a town with recycling. With all the money spent in a place like this, it seems very shortsighted not to spend a little to maintain it for the future.

Here's the two partners who owned the place we stayed at.

           As we had lunch in a restaurant straddling the train tracks, it was amazing once again to note the unconcern people here have for their children. The two or three year-old little girl of the lady cooking our lunch crawled/waddled down the stone stairs, paused for a while on the tracks in a lull between trains, then crossed up stairs on the other side to visit the little boy who’d been squealing encouragement all the way. A French man at the table next to us even excitedly called the woman out of the kitchen and pointed at the child as she crossed the tracks, but the busy mother just laughed at this silly over-worry on his part and returned to cooking. Eventually the little girl made her toddling way back quite safely.

           Well, dinner seems about ready and smells great!

11-27-13    9:25am

          Susan and I are sitting in the antiquated Cuzco Airport (stay out of the bathrooms!) waiting for our small plane to take us to the jungle. Susan is a bit nervous since she hates small planes and the flight is supposed to be very bumpy over the Andes .  

A shot from out of the window of our small plane over the Andes.

           Drugs, both illegal and legal, seem to be the theme of this trip. Led by Manuel, at least half the group go out drinking late into the night whenever they’re in a town. At about 2:20 am last night we were woken by one group member being carried in completely unconscious. Everybody except Susan and I bought lots of bottles of wine to bring with them to the jungle. I mentioned the doubtfulness of them being allowed to bring wine bottles on the plane but was unanimously assured that it was allowed. One bottle broke in the hotel lobby and at the airport everyone was told you couldn’t carry on the glass bottles, so they stuffed them in the checked bags. There was so many bottles, though, that a few asked if they could put some bottles in our luggage, but we politely declined, since we didn’t want our clothes soaked with red wine.

          While we wait, I thought I'd do some catching up in the journal. Machu Picchu was far more spectacular than I’d imagined. 

Not only the scale of it, but the mind boggling realization of how much human effort went into building it since single stones can weigh in at a dozen tons and all was accomplished with stone tools and simple muscle power. 

This photo gives you an idea of the scale of the terraces and the amount of work that must have went into building them.

The actual city was probably called Vitcos, but no one knew this when it was discovered so it’s come to be known by the name of the mountain next to it. Most of what I know about its history comes from the book “Lost City of the Incas” written by the city’s re discoverer, Hiram Bingham.  

          When Pizarro captured Cuzco in 1533, the newly crowned Inca, Manco II, staged one last desperate attempt to drive the small group of Spaniards out of his country, but failed. With his three sons and many followers he then disappeared into the remote Urubamba Valley, beyond the knowledge and reach of the Spanish. Protected by natural defenses, the last four Incas amazingly held off what was then the mightiest empire in the world for almost half a century. The last Inca, Tupac Amaru, was captured in 1572, having been finally flushed out of his sanctuary, hunted down in the jungle, brought back to Cuzco, and tortured to death with the rest of his family and chiefs. Their hidden city would slowly be reclaimed by the jungle and forgotten by history until its rediscovery in 1911.  

          So many of the seemingly ordinary rocks and rooms had secrets that you’d never have guessed on casual inspection. Here a rock that looked as if someone had just forgotten to polish it, cast a shadow that looked like the head of a Llama at a specific day of the year. Another jumble of rocks turned out to be the miniature re-creation of the range of mountains we were standing on. 

There were so many little touches like this, some that would only be visible on a single, significant day of the year that you had to wonder how many were yet to be discovered.  

Here's our standard tourist photo!

          Probably the most interesting thing for me because of all I’ve read about it was the Temple of the Sun and the cave beneath it. When Cuzco was the Inca capital at the time the Spanish came, there was also a Temple of the Sun with a large, solid gold disc within. Unlike most Inca architecture, which is square, this temple in was circular, even though it was built on flat ground. Here too, at Machu Piccu, the Temple of the Sun is circular, but for the obvious reason that it conforms to the circular dimensions of the large rock with the cave underneath. Could it be that this temple at Machu Picchu was the original sacred place after which the uniquely circular one in Cuzco was modeled? This was Hiram Bingham’s theory, and it seems logical to me.

          Further is the many reports that the Spanish received of the first Inca ruler to conquer Cuzco, Manco Capac, and the fact that he was born at a place with a cave called Tampu-tocco. It was said that after his great victory at (the beginning of the Inca empire, about three centuries before the Spanish arrived) a memorial wall with three windows (another oddity not usual with Inca architecture) was built at Manco Capac’s birthplace. And, just as Hiram Bingham found it nearly a century before, there was the beautifully constructed temple, its white granite blocks some of the most beautifully cut of any Inca architecture to be seen anywhere, and a wall with three majestic windows looking at the misty mountains beyond.

          Of course, when the Spanish received these clues they had never seen or even heard of Machu Picchu, so it’s no surprise that they found another, nearer location with a cave to set as the birthplace of the first Inca (though it lacks both temple and a wall with three windows). Maybe I’m letting my imagination get the better of me, but the poetry of Machu Piccu being both the birthplace and last stand of the great culture of the Inca seems to complete the circle elegantly.

          Even more fascinating to me is the theory which ties the Inca at Machu Piccu to the even earlier culture of the Amautas, who are said to have ruled an empire from Cuzco four or five hundred years before the Inca, but which was overrun and destroyed by barbarian hordes that came out of the south. One legend says that the Amautas fled after this disaster to a place called Tampu-tocco. Could it be that the technologies and culture of this earlier empire and culture found refuge during this four hundred year “Peruvian Dark Age” here at Machu Piccu, only to reassert itself with the Inca? Could it be that when the Inca came back to conquer and rule the fertile valleys from Cuzco, they built a replica of their beloved Temple of the Sun? Well, I sure think it makes a great epic story at least! If only they’d had an alphabet, what an Old Testament of the Americas it might have made!

Once we’d seen the ruins, a few people from the trek and I hiked up the Huayna Picchu Mountain. 

Here's some of us at the top.

Beautiful! Just as we started down, it began to rain sideways, me and two others had rain gear, but the rest had decided to leave their packs below, and were soaked and shivering by the time we reached the bottom. I was especially glad I’d brought a small rafting drybag to put my camera in since the rain was intense. As we rushed through the city's ruins, I got a chance to marvel at how efficiently the intricate system of granite gutters were channeling the water off the terraces and keeping the walkways clear of runoff.

          Then a bus back to town, lunch, some shopping for souvenirs and then a long train and bus ride back to Cuzco.

          Everyone took it pretty easy in Cuzco yesterday; Susan and I walked around the surrounding hills and saw some interesting neighborhoods of all economic levels. On time Susan sat down on a grassy slope to rest and I said “Look!” She couldn’t understand what I was pointing to until I repeated it several times and she realized she had unwittingly sat down next to a hug sleeping pig with five piglets nestled next to it.  

          We had lunch at the Inca Grill and then dinner there with the group as well. Susan is completely full of energy and I’ve lost about 10 pounds from the constant activity, but even though I’m feeling physically great, I'm starting to get mentally fatigued. The fact that we’re not painting on this trip is making me antsy to get back to the studio. I have so many great photos and ideas for paintings that I can’t wait to get at them. Well, the jungle next, then home!

11-27-03     4:00 pm

We’ve been on a small boat on the river for 4 hours now. It’s very hot , seats cramped, uncomfortable and if we stop, the bugs instantly swarm. We are all wondering why we’re doing this?  

11-28-03       3:24 pm

Susan and I have been lying in our jungle hut for a couple of hours, reading and trying to move as little as possible. The heat isn’t the worst we’ve ever experienced, but the humidity and oppressive stillness of the air in the jungle makes the sweat just pour off you – no electricity means not even a ceiling fan to stir the air about you.  

          In the hut next to us Andrew and Manuel are talking about, what else, drinking. For two hours they’ve spoken of nothing else; the types of Bourbon, whiskey, beer, etc. What they drank last night, the night before, how much they’ve spent on drinks this trip – in the many hundreds of dollars – what they will drink tonight. It’s really rather interesting, actually, this glimpse into one of the countless subcultures of peopl. No doubt our endless discussions on art with our friends would seem just as empty to them, or golfers, pool players, musicians, baseball card collectors, linguists, and on and on into the myriad subjects that we throw our lives into in the search for meaning. Who’s to say that Manuel and Andrew’s solemn pursuit is any less worthy than the rest of ours? They certainly are at least as committed as we are to painting. Sometimes it seems that all of life's pursuits are merely a way to while away the time between the two main events -- birth and death. We distract ourselves with these thoughts by drinking, painting, writing plays, building civilizations, studying science, and making up myths about what will happen afterward so we won't get too depressed at the thought of the the pointlessness of it all.  Yes, I think the heat and boredom is finally beginning to fry my brain – maybe I need a drink…  

Here's a shot of the largest rodent in the world. The sounds of some of this fellow's relatives underneath our hut freaked Susan out all night and kept her from getting much rest.

          We arose at 4:30am this morning and took a short boat ride, then an easy hike to a small lake. The jungle is really impressive inside, all the vegetation, animals, and even the rainbow of strange and beautiful bugs and butterflies. We went out onto the lake in a small canoe and watched birds, amazingly camouflaged bats lazing under fallen trees, and even a small, three-foot Cayman that swam up and down the side of the boat, occasionally opening up its mouth and rising out of the water at the sight of a finger or hand that reached out a little too far toward the edge. It terrified Loren, but Susan thought it was cute.  

          We returned drenched in sweat and no one opted for another hike today. The skies are darkening and thunder making us all hopeful for rain and some kind of breeze!

11-29-03       9:09am

We’re on the river on the way back up to the airport – storms all last night, lots of lightning and thunder, though the bulk of the rain was elsewhere. The coolness of the air is tempered by the fact that the river is very high and choked with trees that pile up in large log jams here and there. Occasionally our tinny canoe hits a submerged trunk with a jarring thud or even becomes temporarily hemmed in by the logs so that the driver has to shut down the engine and can drift for a while before things shift around enough that he can find a path out.

I have to admit that this ride, though not as stifling hot, is a lot tenser. Our guides Danielle and Victor have just passed out life vests and insist everyone put them on for the first time. Guess I’ll stop writing for a while and strap a vest on!

Postscript – 2-20-2004   10:15pm

Well, that’s all I’d written in my journal from Peru. Yes, we made it through the flooded river ok, and have been happily painting away from all our material here at our studios for several months now. If you’ve made it this far through all this writing then I have to congratulate you on your patience! I hope you enjoyed sharing our journey and that it will spur you on to adventures of your own!

Scott Burdick (-: