Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu and the Golden Empires of Peru, a special exhibition at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, offered me a view of a World Heritage Site I’ve always wanted to visit. In January this exhibit allowed me to travel there virtually with my friend Marjo. In 1993, she had spent the night in a small posada at Machu Picchu with her late husband Van. That night they were awakened by a dramatic thunderstorm. According to Van, “the Gods were showing their eternal power.” The next morning Machu Picchu was magically quiet; daytime trippers arrived later in the day. Our visit to the exhibition was magical, too. So in February I returned with Nina and Elizabeth and two weeks later, with Lilli and Violet. On that final visit we stood in line 45 minutes to experience the Virtual Reality option previewed at the end of this post. We loved the feeling of almost being there!

The exhibit revealed how much I have to learn about Andean civilizations, which archaeologists believe first developed on the narrow coastal plain of the Pacific Ocean and extended from southern Colombia southward down the Andes to Chile and northwest Argentina. The Norte Chico civilization of Peru is the oldest known civilization in the Americas, dating back to 3200 BCE. The exhibit had relics from the Cupisnique Culture (1250 – 100 BCE); the Moche (100-800 CE); the Chimu (1100 – 1470 CE), and finally, the Incas.

Of the many heroes depicted in they exhibition, it was Ai Aipaec, a Moche, whom I found most intriguing. He is the central figure in this mural, with his head bowed to a god with a spear. A video animating the mural showed how Andeans transformed what they observed about climate cycles into a story about Ai Aipaec’s death and subsequent rebirth. Honoring him and his sacrifice, they believed, helped keep their crops watered.

Offering one’s life was the most noble communal act–it assured the return of the natural cycles and life for the whole community. This sculpture shows an exhausted Ai Aipaec. His face is wrinkled and tired; he’s become an old man. The Owl Crown is gone, but with his snakehead ear ornaments intact, he can enter the Underworld. Ai Aipaec has been resurrected as a Marvel comics’ Spiderman, with the torso of a human male (snakes for hair and large fangs) and the lower body of an enormous spider.

Ceramic artifacts revealed how artisans depicted the opposite forces animating the world: male/female, night/day, Sun/Moon, life/death, wet and dry seasons. Reconcyling opposites made them whole and created life, order, and the continuity of natural cycles.

Ceramics from early civilizations were quite explicit

Spiral designs on pots represented the cycles of nature, expressing the possibility of a new beginning. Spirals also symbolized the movement of water. These funerary objects held liquids. Through rituals all liquids, water, or sacrificial blood became camaquen, the vital force that animates everything in the Andean world.

Machu Picchu was constructed as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). Often mistakenly referred to as the “Lost City of the Incas”, it is the most familiar icon of Inca civilization. The Incas built the estate around 1450 but abandoned it a century later, at the time of the Spanish conquest. The gold in this exhibition was even more captivating than the ceramic artifacts. It appealed to the Spanish Conquistadors, too. At the time of the Spanish Conquest, which began in 1532, the Inca Empire was vast, stretching for thousands of miles across the Andes with a population of 12 million people from many ethnic groups. After the Spanish conquest, the Inca Empire unraveled.

Machu Picchu was abandoned and left to Nature. On July 24, 1911, a Yale University history lecturer named Hiram Bingham III climbed to the top of that mountain ridge and encountered one of the most extraordinary sets of ruins on Earth: Machu Picchu. The Museum website offers a vivid description:

Nestled in a cloud forest, this great Inca Empire’s enduring symbol of architectural prowess is protected by twin sacred mountains and is invisible from below. Further adding to its unrivaled beauty, the flourishing landscape of Machu Picchu has restored much of the original biodiversity that it enjoyed in Incan times through a recent reforestation initiative. In this dramatically staged expedition, the sounds of roaring jaguars, screaming macaws, and torrential rainfall are all around you as you unravel the mysteries of Andean cosmology and marvel at the sophistication of Andean artists.

The Virtual Reality upgrade gave us 15 minutes of exploring the wonders of Machu Picchu with a facsimile of its founder, the Inca emperor Pachacuti. Guided by a condor, we flew from the Temple of the Sun, past the Three Window house, to the heights of Huayna Picchu. Cinematic motion chairs brought brought the experience to life, complete with a thunderstorm and an earthquake. Travel was never so easy; history rarely such fun! Thank you Boca Museum!

Update on April 2, 2022: Leslie, my daughter-in-law, shared with me this picture of her sister Cindy and Kristian becoming engaged at Machu Picchu. Kristian’s father Lucho was born in Peru. They are now parents of Quinn Gomez, born March 18, 2020.

Martha says:

March 2, 2022 at 4:02 pm

from my friend Nicholas Hagoort: In 1969 I traveled throughout South America with a Harvard Alumni group. In Peru we flew from Lima to Cuzco, high in the Andes. So high, approximately 11,00 feet as I recall, that I was immediately fatigued and had to nap. We were told that natives chewed coca leaves to help with altitude sickness. I considered that practice degenerate until I arrived in Cuzco. I never got those leaves but immediately understood their need to indulge that habit.

We visited remaining Inca built walls, perfectly tessellated, topped by Spanish-built walls built far less perfectly. We bought sweaters knitted with alpaca from local sheep.

A day or so later we boarded a train bound for Machu Picchu. This proved to be a most memorable train ride. The train had to surmount numerous switchbacks which required the train to back up a hill onto a flat surface, then proceed uphill to the next switchback where the process was repeated.

We then rolled through thick jungle and made several stops at stations along the way. At those stations we met native boys attempting to sell some local fruits. These were indigenous boys who spoke no Spanish, only Quechua. Very enterprising young lads indeed. We then moved on toward MP while gazing down at the Urubamba River, an Amazon River headwater, far below. These were stunning vistas. This four hour train ride was one of the highlights of our Peruvian experience.

At MP we boarded a small bus which then proceeded to climb the thirteen switchbacks to the top of the mountain on which MP is situated. Previously, this climb was done on the backs of donkeys. We were happy to be motorized. At each switchback, we were met by the same boy trying to sell his wares. He ran up and down the mountain to meet the bus at every level. I complimented him in my halting Spanish (which he probably never understood) and predicted that later in life, he would be elected to the Peruvian presidency.

At the top is a small hotel. In front of the hotel, a path leads around a hill until the full view of MP suddenly comes into view. It’s as stunning as you might imagine after seeing the iconic photos of the site. We were then allowed to poke around in the ruins to our heart’s content.

A member of our group, Roger Griswold, was an elderly pilot and inventor from Connecticut. More important, he was a nephew of Hiram Bingham, the discoverer of MP in 1911 Roger’s dream was to visit this site but he never did. Roger had severe acrophobia and the path to MP ran a long the top of a sharp drop to the right. Roger could not face that view to the right and never completed walking to the site.

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