15 Feb 2002
I spent the past week in Cusco, once capital of the Inca Empire, one of the greatest land empires to ever exist. The Inca state was supposed to have begun on the Island of the Sun in the Bolivian side of the 4000-meter-above-sea-level Lake Titicaca. (Well, the area Bolivian bureaucrats have denied me permission to visit – my first-ever entry-denied notice, after having been to close to 80 countries.)

The Nomad reaches Machu Picchu, totally drenched.

Legends spoke about how it was dark in the beginning (that isn't original, huh?), and the Creator decided to make the sun and the moon gods to have some fun. Then eight siblings – four brothers and four sisters – were created when sunrays hit the surface of Lake Titicaca. Brushing aside incestuous considerations, these siblings married each other and then traveled underground (do not ask me how) to more sensible heights in the Cusco Valley (3300 m above sea level) in Peru, where Manco, the chief among the brothers, had his brothers turned into stones one by one (call it sibling rivalry). Then, together with his sister-wife, and the wives of his now turned-stone brothers, he founded the Inca state in Cusco.

Things turned out really well for the Inca state. They expanded rapidly within 100 years to include southern Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and northern parts of Chile and Argentina. They were experts in astronomy and mathematics, and they ran an empire across the high Andes, deserts and deep jungles, using the amazing stone highways they built across their lands. They unified their empire through a common language and imposed standardized measures throughout. Yet they did not invent the wheel, nor a system of writing. When a small group of hundred-odd Spanish adventurers and fortune-seekers under Pizarro came in 1532, they captured the Inca emperor through treachery, killed him even after a huge ransom in the form of a room filled with gold and silver was paid, and then within a few years destroyed this great empire.

Since then, Cusco has retained its Inca foundations and transformed itself into one of the finest Spanish colonial cities in the world. With the suppression of the Marxist Shining Path rebellion in the early 1990s by the former president Alberto Fujimori, Cusco has become the latest tourism boomtown in South America. Backpackers fill the streets, many of whom are here not only to explore the city itself but also to use it as a base to do the famous Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, the lost Inca city between the Andes and the Amazon.

I arrived in Cusco from Puno on the banks of Lake Titicaca. Rumours have preceded me about the closure of the Inca Trail in February. True indeed. The authorities have closed it for maintenance during the raining season, and travel agents have come out with a two-day alternative, which involves taking the PeruRail train to 104km point, hike up to the ruins of Winay-Wayna, Intipunku (Sun Gate) and then to Machu Picchu itself. Fine with me, as the heavens have been raining non-stop since I arrived in the Peruvian Highlands.

Well, the biggest problem I have with all this is the rip-off price of $120 for the 2-day trip. Even if you do the trip on your own, it costs a bomb: $35 for the 4-hour rail journey in a part of the world where most routine train trips this long probably cost one fifth of that; $25 for the entrance to Machu Picchu; and $9 for the bus from Agua Calientes to the summit of Machu Picchu; not to mention other auxiliary costs. But well, they win in this count of price extortion... who would come to Peru without visiting Machu Picchu ?

And so off I joined a group of jolly Swiss, Americans, English and Irish on this journey of a lifetime. The trip started off well, with a scenic train trip through the picturesque Sacred Valley with its many villages and colonial towns lost in time.

However, soon after we began our hike from 104km, the Inca supreme Sun God soon decided to take a break and let the thunder and rain gods take over the show. Heavy showers drenched all of us from top to bottom and sideways too. My fellow travelers amused themselves by admiring the occasional tropical orchids and pitcher plants that we come across in this cloud forest. Well, as a Singaporean, I have seen too many of these in my neighbourhood parks and our own mini-rainforest in Singapore. Not terribly excited, but I pretended anyway or spoiled the fun in this already miserable weather.

The magnificent ruins of Winay-Wayna were soon in sight, and I must confess the Rain God must have added some value by playing the now-you-see-it-and-now-you-don't game. The ruins sure looked mysterious enough, and if you display a little bit of positive thinking, yeah, the trip was still probably worth braving the rain. The high point came the moment one reached Intipunku, the Gate of the Sun, after an exhausting hike up a flight of steep stairs. Here, amongst the clearing midst, the lost city of Machu Picchu reveals itself for the first time.

Machu Picchu, a well-preserved city built on the top of a mountain reachable these days either through the original Inca stone-paved highway (the so-called Inca Trail) through high mountain ridges and passes, or a hair-pin road with multiple turns built in the 1960s to cater for international tourism, with a US$9 bus ride for the 20-minute journey from the tourist village of Aguas Calientes ("warm water", for the hot springs found nearby).

Machu Picchu appears suddenly at the end of the Inca Trail.

Unlike other Inca cities, MP was never found or destroyed by the Spanish Conquistadors. It was probably built as a ceremonial city and then abandoned suddenly. Not only does it contain the best prototype of an Inca city of temples and palaces, it is built in such a magnificent setting, surrounded by freestanding peaks, not unlike those in Guilin, China, or Halong Bay, Vietnam, only much higher, not only at their summits, but also from the very base. The very majesty of the city and its panoramic surrounding dispelled all thoughts of doubt in me. This must be one of the most spectacular sights I have ever seen in my travels to almost 80 countries all these years.

We wondered around for a short while, spent the night in Aguas Calientes and returned the next day for a more thorough exploration. Amazing place. OK, well worth getting wet for! We returned to Cusco on 11th February, which happened to be Chinese New Year's Eve. Trying to celebrate the CNY, I decided to hop by the Chinese restaurant right at the heart of Cusco's Plaza de Armas. Peru supposedly has the largest Chinese community in South America, with more than 100,000 Chinese in Lima and a Chinatown there to boost the numbers.

In many Peruvian cities, one finds what the Peruvians call "Restaurant Chifa", or Chinese restaurants – the word "Chifa" supposedly originated from the Chinese words "Chi-fan", i.e., to eat rice. In fact, Chinese cuisine has become so popular in Peru that most native-Peruvian (i.e., non-Chinese) restaurants have at least two dishes of Chinese origin – the "Arroz Chaufa" or fried rice, and "Soupa Wanton" or Wanton soup.

I thought I might be able to say hi to some local Chinese in Cusco during the all-important CNY, and maybe beg a free dinner treat. What a disappointment! The absence of Chinese language menu is an initial sign of the lack of authenticity. The further lack of any traditional CNY décor is also an alarming sign, plus the fact that the mestizo waitress didn't know it's CNY the next day. The wanton soup tasted more like a mixed mesh meat soup. The wanton skin was thick, and the fillings nothing more than course flour mixed with pork chunks. De rigueur wanton skin should be thick enough to hold the fillings and yet delicate enough for one to taste the freshness of minced pork fillings mixed with strands of greens. The fried noodle was worse – a greasy plate of pasta with messy chunks of ham and beans.

Yet an American tourist uttered with his mouth full of food to his (probably) newfound Peruvian girlfriend (of sorts) – "Hey, this is the best Chinese food I have ever tried." I am sure he hadn't been to the Chinese restaurants in the Bay area or NYC. After repeated pestering, the waitress finally admitted that the chef is a Quecha Indian. Well, what do you expect in the Highlands ? Maybe Chinese just do not like to settle at such high altitudes...

Apart from visiting the many museums and colonial buildings in Cusco, I visited archaeological sites with tongue twisting names like Sacsayhuaman (everyone calls it "Sexy Woman"), Pucapucaru, Tambomachay and Ollantaytambo, among others – all magnificent sites with great panoramic settings. Unfortunately it was the rainy season, and my clothing and sole pair of shoes were in a semi-permanent state of dampness, and in the case of the latter, almost constant muddiness.

I had enough of that dampness and muddiness, and so took an overnight bus to Nazca, site of the famous and mysterious Nazca lines. Tomorrow, I shall fly on a Cessna 4-seater over the Pampas of Nazca. After that, I shall visit more dead bodies in the famous Inca cemetery nearby, before going to the resort village of Huacachina, nestled among the sand dunes of Ica Valley. Lima follows after that.

>> Continued

Tan Wee-Cheng http://weecheng.com

Copyright Tan Wee-Cheng. All rights reserved. Story reproduced with kind permission.

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