Having exacted our revenge on the alpaca lamb by eating
one of his relatives, we piled into the van and headed further up the hillside
overlooking the city.
Our first destination was a place called “Sacsayhuaman,”
the ancient fortress of the Incas. And
yes, my friends, it’s pronounced “Sexy-woman,” but there’s no strip-club here.
The
construction was a bit different here in a couple of ways. The stones fit perfectly together, just like
we had seen previously, only they were a LOT bigger. Some have been estimated to weigh 160 tons or
more. They are places together to form a
zig-zag wall about twenty feet high, and easily defended from invaders – all that’s
necessary is to whack a climber with a stone club if he is lucky enough to
scale the smooth walls. Secondly, the
stones were all different shapes and sizes, so it looked like a mountain had
been shattered and reassembled.
How the Incas moved these stones two miles from the
mountain quarry remains a mystery, but it is known they never used carts or
even wheels. Some theories say they were
dragged down the mountain, which may explain the perfectly flat surface, while
a recent theory contends that it is possible to rock large stones back and
forth using ropes, and walk them. Angel,
our guide, even thought that clay molds might have been used to allow the rocks
to be fitted before they were lifted.
We even heard one of the mystical mumbo-jumbos in town
describe a scene where 500 conch shells were blown at the same time, matching
the natural frequency of the rock, vibrating them into place at exactly the
same angle. He was in the process of
taking a lot of money from some new-age tourist to teach him the secrets of the
Inca universe over a steaming cup of coca tea.
The sun was starting to get lower, so we headed back to
the van. On the way, we saw three more
girls dressed in red dresses, carrying a baby llama and hawking photos. My wife says they were different, but I swear
the same three girls were following us.
Up the hill and within sight of Saxsayhuaman, we stopped
at one more place. The structure had
been carved entirely from the mountain itself. A single, strangely shaped stone had been
placed in the center of an altar. It was
surrounded by a short wall, and the surrounding walls bore irregular cuts and
ridges. This didn’t look like anything
else we had seen today. Why would the
ancient race place this amorphic monolith when everything else was a precisely
set brick?
Angel pulled out a notebook full of photos to
explain. The rock was shapeless 361 days
out of each year, and this was one of those days. During one solstice, the stone cast the shape
of a puma’s body. During sunrise at the
equinox, the puma’s face could be seen. At
midday, the ridges in the surrounding walls would draw a llama, using the sunlight
as a brush. A condor’s head on a
different date, a man’s face on another. There were at least a half dozen times each
year where cosmic forces drew their art on this rock.
As
cool as this was, my kids were both tired of looking at old rocks, so we headed
back, after a quick stop to buy a hat in the local gift shop (locals with wares
spread out on blankets). We had all had
enough, and were looking forward to a bowl of hot chicken soup and a night of
hard sleep in our frigid room at the hostel.
Continue to the next chapter of our adventure, "Cold Showers and Giant Flesh-Eating Birds."
Continue to the next chapter of our adventure, "Cold Showers and Giant Flesh-Eating Birds."
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