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As an avid hiker and sometimes pilgrim, Macchu Picchu via the Inca Trail has been on my list of places to go for a while. I picked up Mark Adams’ book mistakenly thinking it would be a cross guide-history book for the Inca Trail. Instead, the 50% of the book that is history is a biographical account of Hiram Bingham III. The slivers of Incan history and Spanish colonization seemed very thin indeed. The remaining half of the book detailed Adams’ exploration with a guide to multiple Incan sites in the Andes, including Macchu Picchu. And yet, Adams determined explicitly to avoid the Inca Trail on this excursion. While he (eventually) gets around to the significance of the trail, it feels much too little and way too late from my point of view.
But while I found the Bingham sections rather dull, Adams’ voice came out more engagingly when he tells his story of Peru, the quest, and the cast of mule handlers, guides, and archaeologists along the way. Diversions such as this bit on music in Peru I found entertaining:
“Among the ideas I’d had time to chew over while walking was a theory about the surfeit of bad eighties music in Peru. Here’s my best guess: around 1992, the record companies in New York and London gathered together all the millions of cassettes and CDs that they couldn’t sell, even marked down to 99 cents at truck stops, and shipped them off to Peru, where they were air-dropped all across the country.”
In addition, we learn about the author’s lack of understanding of hiking gear (socks) and his inexperience. “Walking downhill was more complicated, and taxing, than I’d imagined. It takes a lot of energy to stop oneself from sliding down a dusty path littered with rocks the size and shape of marbles.” If being amused at his assumptions about hiking were not enough, we can laugh at his confusion over his guide singing the theme from the U.S.-boycotted 1980 Olympics about Moscow and vodka. Also, I appreciated repeated discussions of the Inca engineering exactness, which is one of the marvels of their age. And yes, Archaeoastronomy gets unearthed as a topic in this book, as it appears you can’t really understand Inca location selections or architecture without the explanation of the stars in the sky. His irreverence and cheekiness when he delves into these topics are part of what make this portion of the book worth reading:
“The stone buildings of the Incas, Machu Picchu in particular, are the empire’s most easily recognizable legacy. The most important ones, constructed for religious purposes or for members of the royal family, are famous for their jigsaw-puzzle masonry; the stones are held together without mortar, wedged so tightly that it is impossible to insert a knife blade between them. (It is equally impossible for a visitor to take a guided tour of Cusco during which this fact is not demonstrated.)”
‘The Sun Gate at sunrise is a complete waste of time,’ John said as we looked south. ‘The sun doesn’t actually arrive at Machu Picchu at the sunrise. And when it does rise everything’s covered in mist.’
This was a bit different from what I was expecting, but well worth reading if you are considering a trip to Macchu Picchu, either in person in the future, or virtually whenever!
But while I found the Bingham sections rather dull, Adams’ voice came out more engagingly when he tells his story of Peru, the quest, and the cast of mule handlers, guides, and archaeologists along the way. Diversions such as this bit on music in Peru I found entertaining:
“Among the ideas I’d had time to chew over while walking was a theory about the surfeit of bad eighties music in Peru. Here’s my best guess: around 1992, the record companies in New York and London gathered together all the millions of cassettes and CDs that they couldn’t sell, even marked down to 99 cents at truck stops, and shipped them off to Peru, where they were air-dropped all across the country.”
In addition, we learn about the author’s lack of understanding of hiking gear (socks) and his inexperience. “Walking downhill was more complicated, and taxing, than I’d imagined. It takes a lot of energy to stop oneself from sliding down a dusty path littered with rocks the size and shape of marbles.” If being amused at his assumptions about hiking were not enough, we can laugh at his confusion over his guide singing the theme from the U.S.-boycotted 1980 Olympics about Moscow and vodka. Also, I appreciated repeated discussions of the Inca engineering exactness, which is one of the marvels of their age. And yes, Archaeoastronomy gets unearthed as a topic in this book, as it appears you can’t really understand Inca location selections or architecture without the explanation of the stars in the sky. His irreverence and cheekiness when he delves into these topics are part of what make this portion of the book worth reading:
“The stone buildings of the Incas, Machu Picchu in particular, are the empire’s most easily recognizable legacy. The most important ones, constructed for religious purposes or for members of the royal family, are famous for their jigsaw-puzzle masonry; the stones are held together without mortar, wedged so tightly that it is impossible to insert a knife blade between them. (It is equally impossible for a visitor to take a guided tour of Cusco during which this fact is not demonstrated.)”
‘The Sun Gate at sunrise is a complete waste of time,’ John said as we looked south. ‘The sun doesn’t actually arrive at Machu Picchu at the sunrise. And when it does rise everything’s covered in mist.’
This was a bit different from what I was expecting, but well worth reading if you are considering a trip to Macchu Picchu, either in person in the future, or virtually whenever!