Oooooo! Pretties!

I've no memory of reading this at all. The back makes it sound both interesting and memorable - a retired brigadier stumbling upon shenanigans from WW2 recruiting the sixth Doctor for help. Richards and Cole are both solid Doctor Who authors who I rate but none of it stirs a memory.

We had a "free" day in Cusco, but there were some suggestions of activities that our guide could organise for us. Two other people in the group were interested in seeing the Moray Ruins and the Salt Mines of Maras and we were happy to tag along and make the excursion cheaper.

Moray was the first Inca Plant laboratory we encountered. As noted previously, it wasn't quite clear to us why it earned the status of laboratory.

( Pictures under the Cut )

The Salt Mines are not actually mines, but a salt extraction plant that predates the arrival of the Spanish and which are still worked today. Mineral rich water from the mountains comes in and fills clay lined pools. The water then evaporates and the salt is collected. They are owned by 300 families and there were people working them - flattening the clay lining - when we visited. I bought salt.

( Photos under the Cut )

Sacsayhuaman is a massive Inca fortress, called the House of the Sun, on a hill top above Cusco. We were taken up their on our first day in Peru, walked around the site and then walked back down into Cusco.

( It is quite a thing )

Then Wilbert showed us around Machu Picchu.

( Photos )

The story of Machu Picchu, as Wilbert told it to us, was that it was under construction as a district capital when the Spanish arrived. Intimating that things were going badly with the Spanish, the Inca moved 700 people and all their gold from their capital of Cusco along the Inca trail to Machu Picchu, destroying the roads behind them with landslides. They remained there for 80 years but were aware that the Spanish, in search of the gold, were getting closer aided by a generation of half-Peruvian, half-Spanish collaborators. After 80 years, therefore, they hid the gold in the surrounding hills and some moved back towards Cusco where they were captured by the Spanish and others moved east into the Amazon where their descendents were briefly encountered by archeologists in the 1970s. The Spanish eventually reached Machu Picchu but found no gold. This story does not appear anywhere else I've looked (but, as noted, information at the level of detail I'm accustomed to for historic sites is much harder to find for Machu Picchu), but it wouldn't surprise me if it isn't the legend as told among the local Andean people.