Machu Picchu

Lima was fun. Cusco is impressive. But Machu Picchu... That old mountain... I had seen all the pictures, I had done my homework on the Inca Empire and its brief but extraordinary gasp, I had come prepared to be impressed. In a sense, if the cliche can be forgiven, it was nothing at all like I expected; both in a marvelous way and a somber one.

Rushed as we were we did not get to see everything (It is worth noting that you really have no impression of the size & scope of this thing until you're standing in it. Even gazing upon its terraced contour from the entrance surrenders no appreciable conception.). What we did see though staggered the senses unapologetically. Today I have had my first exhilarating flirtation with a truly ancient people and their knowledge. Today I walked in awe among the shades of half a millennium past. Today I touched with disbelieving hands stones polished and placed by Inca (Quechua?) hands over 500 years ago. If one has nurtured their imagination to any kind of extent it is not difficult to be enchanted by the sight of over 600 Inca citizens bustling about this mountaintop citadel tending the irrigated crops (some of the irrigation is still functioning today!), trading in the central courtyard, working the granite quarry, and observing the rituals and duties required by the temples.

Oh my goodness the temples... These were by far the most impressive part. The religious caste (class? not sure if the Inca were a Caste or Class society) seemed to have controlled the majority of the culture's knowledge, as it seems is the case with all ancient peoples. Even after the erosive caress of 5 centuries and the looting by Hiram Bingham this knowledge offered countless tantalizing crumbs hidden in plain sight. I think that as one so accustomed to the ink-stained footprints of knowledge I was not expecting so much, so many clues, to be so artfully worked into the very foundations of this place (which in retrospect makes perfect sense, considering they did not even possess a system of written language). Today saw my first humbling, true lesson in the archaeological aspects of my life's ambitions. Every temple reminded me in their stoic vigil how unobservant I really am.

Our guide, Martha Bustamante, was wonderful. I peppered her with volley after volley of eager questions about Machu Picchu and the Inca Empire. With a few notable exceptions she misunderstood every one and started telling me about something completely different (my monolingualism is a sore point of shame). However, she was invaluable to the experience, as it was she who pointed out the equinox-capturing windows at the first temple, the sacred numbering almost omnipresent throughout all the architecture, the shadow of the Andean Cross cast within the Room of 3 Windows, the inconspicuous sundial which Dr. Johan Reinhard also determined acted as a compass, pointing towards a specific sacred mountain in each cardinal direction, the stone with 36 corners and the ingenious acoustics within the sacrifice preparation chamber, the carefully thought-out purpose behind even a puddle of water at the top of the Temple of the Sun (not to mention the famous sun-stone itself), the remarkable topographical carving of the immediate area (Huanya Picchu, Machu Picchu, and the Urubamba river/valley), and then the Temple of the Condor, by far my favorite part of the whole complex. Condors were one of the 3 sacred animals enthroned upon a quarter of the Andean Cross, representing the (or a) connection to the realm of heaven and between the 3 primary realms of heaven, earth, and the spiritual path (if you're getting a sense that the Inca liked the number 3, you would not be wrong). This open-air temple had two of its walls carved straight out of the very form of the mountain, which Ms. Bustamante of course had to point out to me were in the shape of a condor's wings taking flight. The body was to found on the ground, carved with black stone (white for the downy collar feathers) to resemble a dorsal view of the massive raptor. Then there was the Temple of Water, again open air, with a pair of shallow stone bowls carved into the ground, representing dualism and through the reflections of their accumulated water the Inca studied the stars... I am told they created remarkably accurate astronomical charts and models of our galazy, something I'll have to look into.

As breathtaking as it all was... there was a subtle but unpleasant gravity to the experience. Ms. Bustamante mentioned her schooling a few times throughout the day. Curious, I asked what her focus had been. There was something quite disillusioning about hearing her reply: "Tourism". This one word, an otherwise harmless statement, was a heavy-handed reminder of the one ugly fact which had been coiled patiently near the back of my mind all day; the fact that despite my especial interest in and excitement over Machu Picchu, I was still just, as that little boy so insightfully informed me yesterday, a "no-good tourist". I'm not actively doing any good here. I'm not carrying out any legitimate research or conservation, no preservation and no restoration; I'm barely getting to use the excuse that it is academic and I am learning a substantial body of material. The reality of today was that I was that I was simply another face amongst a torrent of hundreds of thousands, beating down abrasively on this unique treasure with our boots and placing a pressure upon it which it cannot sustain.

I have a lot of work to do!