The history is interesting, but I enjoy present-day Cuzco more,
which is why, when Devy hands us a pass to Cuzco's rash of museums,
I stuff it in my pocket and discover a lively town instead. The
Incas knew Cuzco as "the navel of the world," and it remains a
maelstrom of activity today, with frying meat smells spilling from
restaurants, boys kicking soccer balls up steep sidewalks, painters
working inside shadowy doorways, and streets upon which no auto
insurer in its right mind would ever venture.
In Cuzco we also meet
Eddie Pizarro. Our guide for the trip, Eddie
is a native of Cuzco. He studied tourism and Inca history at the
Universidad Andina Del Cuzco, and is a wealth of Inca information,
at least what information there is to tell.
What is known? Without formal tools or written instruction, workers
and craftsmen quarried stones, hauled them improbable distances,
and then cut them so they folded upon each other like lovers,
creating buildings solid enough to withstand the fervent wrath of
nature (Peru has suffered powerful earthquakes) and the
Spanish.
"So perfect," Eddie says, "the Spanish thought the Incas were
devils."
Endowed with a Zenlike calm and a ten-year-old's sense of fun and
wonder, Eddie obviously enjoys the mystery that overhangs most
everything he tells us. There are some things, he says, we can
count as fact. For instance, that Inca was actually the name of the
godlike rulers descended from the son of the Sun, and Quechua
(pronounced "Catch-wa") was their culture. Beyond that, well … .
"People guess about everything." He shrugs. "UFOs. Aliens. You can
make your own theory because nothing is proved."
Cuzco is interesting, but the real magic begins when we get out on
the trail. Few places rival
Peru's natural beauty, and few places
give you a better gander at it than the
Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.
From its jumping-off spot at Chilca, the trail is only thirty-three
miles long.
But it winds through a potpourri of stupefying natural wonders.
Peru's mountains don't hump into the sky; they sheer straight up,
like mossy shark fins. Far below, amidst a broccoli-mass of trees,
rivers glint like silver thread. Between the two, birds wheel
gracefully in stomach-lurching space. Now and again, as we round a
bend and the world drops away below us, we see, on a grassy bluff
or a near-sheer terrace, temples crafted from cow-size stones, and
Eddie smiles as he points out that the nearest quarry was twelve
miles down and away.