10. The Race That Worshipped the Trapezium (Cuzco, Machu Picchu)

SUNDAY

Last night was murder. As soon as I returned to Hotel Conquistador, I knew that I had drawn the short straw. I was right above the discotheque Tasca whose music collection seemed to consist solely of Doors records- and they played them LOUD. I had woken up at 6:00am, had been through the 12hr hopalong train to Cuzco, I was tired but couldn't sleep. I tried earplugs and I tried some cans of beer. I just became more agitated until, finally at 00:30am, I went to the reception and asked to move. I was paying after all $25.

The receptionist led me to a room on the floor above on the other side. I was a double, but I could stay for the price of a single. No heating, though unlike the first room. What the hell, I packed my things, crossed my fingers that I hadn't left anything back and moved to the new double room where I slept at last at about 01:30am. At least they seemed to party in Cuzco.

After about 6 hours sleep, I woke up for the Urubamba valley tour. Edith tried to entice me for the last time to go on $100 private taxi day tour just to Pisaq with the Swiss, but I was not that gullible. But the hotel owner pissed me off for the second time: the night guard had made a mistake, he said, and could I please change to another, third, single, room ? Otherwise they would have to charge me for the double. And could I move NOW ? In one ear I had Edith and on the other I had the owner; I ducked and left them talking to each other face to face. Somehow during the confusion, Edith persuaded the owner to let me have the double room at no extra expense, and the hotel owner persuaded Edith to let me leave with the tour of Walter's to the Urubamba Valley.

The tour bus - made up of tourists from disparate agencies and guides travelled around the Plaza de Armas for twenty minutes, picking up the odd couple here and there but left after the passengers finally got annoyed. Thank God Germans have a shorter fuse than us Brits who are so embarrassed to protest, otherwise we'd still be looping around the square. I sat at the front near a Dutch couple who helped me simmer down from the events of last night and this morning. But then on the road out, the bus stopped, as a car sped up, cut us up and made us swerve and stop in order to add another, late, young couple to our contingent. The guy moved out and threw his banana skins on the road as he ran towards us. I chewed him up for that. "Would you throw rubbish in the street in your country ?", I enquired. "So what - it all goes back to Pachamama", he countered. "And where do you come from ?", I asked. "Holland", said the villain. Ooops. The two Dutch couples around me joined ranks and sent me to Coventry for most of the trip.

First Pisaq - good market, obviously touristy, but I bought two T-shirts, really cool; so cool, my friends in London asked me if they were Cyberdog shirts. Wow! - and all this for $3 each. We queued to eat the famous local bread baked with cheese and onion and then climbed up to ceremonial Pisaq proper - and an absolute stunner it was, too.

I reckon, one's first big Inca ruin is the best. Like the ancient Greeks, the Incas had an eye for scenery and set their temples and cities poised in dramatic views. The temple of Poseidon at Sounion, or the sacred site at Delphi are as elegantly in tune with their surroundings as Pisaq or Machu Picchu. The grace of the Doric and ionic columns in the former, is replaced with the sheer power of the large smoothed-out stones and the Greek curves replaced with trapezoidal arches and windows. The Incas had not invented the wheel, or the written word - and as they represent the apex of South American civilisation, they have left us with a fantastic parallel universe picture of how the world might have been in Europe, without the benefit of Greek thought; there is a direct line from Pythagoras to Pisarro.

The weather though, was bad: overcast and rainy. I have taken some very atmospheric pictures of Pisaq, but the talk in the group was all about the muddy Inca trail. "And we emerged from the Gate of the Sun for that wondrous view of Machu Picchu - and we saw nothing because of the fog", was the chorus amongst the people I met. I think I lost hope of doing the trail when I spent all these extra days in La Paz; certainly I made up my mind with the weather. I would take the train all the way to Machu Picchu and stay overnight in Aguas Calientes.

After Pisaq, we visited the imposing sight of Ollantaytambo. I will not endeavour to talk about the Inca civilisation - such a thing would be an act of arrogance with the wealth of research that is floating about - but now and again, recounting of a story becomes inevitable. The story of Ollantay whose 'tambo' (akin to caravanserai) stands gloriously gigantic by the Urubamba river, is one of those Romeo-and-Juliet amours folles which find resonance in all cultures. Ollantay was a general of Antisuyo - one of the four provinces of the Incas (Bolivia being Kollasuyo and the altiplano Bolivians as I have mentioned at length still call themselves Kollas) - who fell in love with Kusi Qoyllur, the daughter of the Inca Pacha Kuteq. When, after a successful expedition, the Inca offered him anything he wanted, Ollantay asked for the hand of his daughter in marriage. This, in a rigid class society was blasphemy, and Ollantay had to flee the wrath of the Inca and stayed in the fortified Ollantaytambo. Kusi Qoyllur was entombed alive - with only food and water every day to keep her from dying and prolong her agony - and had Ollantay's child, a daughter, imprisoned. Ollantay rebelled and during the subsequent war, Pacha Kuteq died and was replaced by his son, Thupaq Yupanki who proved more lenient. The legend has it, that Ollantay was defeated by the able general Rumi Nawi and led in front of the Inca in chains - but when the latter investigated his claims and found his semi-dead sister who had been in the live-in tomb for fifteen years with his niece, he thought the couple had suffered enough and he let them live happily ever after. There is an opera in there somewhere. How come Puccini missed all this ?

Opposite the great fort of Ollantaytambo there is a distinct bearded figure carved in the rock - everyone spots it; it is the figure of the Inca deity Viracocha chiselled vertically on the cliff face. No one knows how the Incas did it, or whether they modified pre-existing natural features. But, in conjunction with the enormous stonework in abundance, the thought that passes everyone's mind "How did they do THAT ?", is followed by "What a waste of knowledge" and ends up with "The Catholic Church has a lot to answer for itself". What I find particularly distasteful about the missionaries - which is still going on in the jungles of Brazil - is that every person who, horror of horrors, parades his or her nudity naturally, is deemed 'uncivilised' and doomed for eternal damnation. The first thing the missionaries do in a grand act of anal retentiveness, is provide the 'savages' with trousers and dresses, oblivious of the irony that the real effect of eating the forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden was the self-discovery of nakedness and the sense of shame that comes with it. In that respect, all missionaries are serpents offering apples. But I digress.

The last part of the trip took us back via the village of Chincherro, with a church which was built on an Inca temple and a cross carved on the gigantic stonework that provides not only the foundation, but also the midrib of the building. However, the most amazing thing about the church in Chincherro are the frescoes. The whole church is covered internally in paintings in rose and cyan colours like a forgotten, out-of-the-way Sistine chapel. No Michelangelo at work here, so don't expect masterpieces, but the sensory onslaught is just as imposing.

Our guide Alvaro was an admirer of Inca rule: a left-wing advocate of their pre-socialist pre-Marxist society where no one was hungry and money was non-existent. Wow.

"The Fujimori government tells us that we should stop having too many children because we can not feed them. The Incas could. Why ? Because the capitalist system diverts the resources and is geared to maximising profit - not need".

This in Spanish to the local tourists - the English version to the gringos was much more mundane. I got into an argument : you just can't pick and choose from a society and claim that its political and economic system was a panacea. If you want Inca rule, you will have to swallow the lot: absolute power; a class system more refined than anywhere in the world except, perhaps, India; and disregard for human life. It would appear that all educated people in Cuzco are revolutionary Marxist types who admire, long for and have re-interpreted the Inca rule. This intellectual base is hardly surprising as Abimael Guzman, the leader of Sendero Luminoso was a philosophy teacher at Ayacucho University.

The mistake they make, and I told that to Alvaro, is that they separate the theocracy of the Incas with its absolute and corrupt power from their achievements whereas the two go together. "They held the secret - by being centralised and collecting taxes through work, no one was hungry", Alvaro said. Well, the second is slavery disguised subtly and the last bit a conjecture. As for being centralised and efficient: fascist governments make the trains run on time - but I can't imagine the Italians voting in another Mussolini to correct the timetables of the State railways. (On second thoughts they would - this was a bad analogy; but you know what I mean). And what irritated me the most in that rosy view of the Inca past, by modern-day Peruvian leftists is that they don't swallow the rest: the dissent against the Incas which aided the Spanish conquistadors, the human sacrifices, the class privileges of the ruling class, the death penalty for everything - yeah, let's havemoreofit, man!

The day ended with a bang. After a second exhausting day, I was longing for a warm bath. I turned the shower tap on. Nothing came out. Or rather a trickle of water came out and then the flow stopped. Perhaps I was too high up. I turned the water off and on again., this time both in the shower and the sink. The pipes in the bathroom started clanging. Ahh, I thought here comes the water at last!

Almost immediately, one of the connecting pipes burst with a massive Bang! and superheated steam started hissing inside the bathroom. I just about escaped being burned, opened all windows, dressed myself and ran down frantically two flights of stairs. "My bathroom pipes burst", I screamed. "You have a Turkish Bath in number 315". The woman receptionist looked at me blankly. "Don't lose any time. We have a serious explosion situation here which could blow up the hotel so that only its strong Inca foundations will remain". She understood the word explosion, hysteria took over and she sent off for her husband screaming and wailing.

On my floor every hotel resident was, it seemed, inside my bedroom which by now had visibility nil. I started packing my things, while they were trying in a nice, caring but clumsy Latin American way to stop the flow of steam with their bare hands, scalding themselves in their process. I picked up anything I could still distinguish from the bathroom, having to fight off the inept and the curious. To paraphrase Mr Motivator, it's not the ups and downs of life that bug me - it's the jerks.

By the time the owner arrived and surveyed with shock what had happened, I had packed my bags.

"I'm going from this hotel de mierda!", I said, putting on my best assertive fuck-you voice. "Get me a cab !"

I must have been such a steaming (forgive the pun) volcano of pissed-offness the owner disappeared and did just that. A taxi came almost immediately and took me to the very wonderful and friendly Hostal del Inca ($20 with room and bath no heating, nice breakfast) off the Avenida del Sol. I returned the next day to pay for the one night I had spent at Hotel Conquistador; no way was I paying for the second day. Apparently, the explosion had lowered the pressure, destroyed the heating elements and the hotel was going to be without hot water, ney without water for a week. Who says you have to be a pop star to wreck a hotel room. Eat your heart out Liam Gallagher!

MONDAY

Unlike other Spanish colonial towns, like Sucre, La Paz or Potosí, Cuzco differs in its large spaces. None of the claustrophobia of narrow alleyways and two-story houses. Cuzco has large wide avenues, big open squares, churches you can step back and take a picture of and will fit in your photo; archways, curves, light. Peter Matthiesen called it 'the Paris of South America', but I don't agree - what would we then call Buenos Aires which, like Paris, still revolves mostly around the 1900's belle époque ? I am at loss of words to describe Cuzco. The culture concentrated in its churches and museums is second to none in the South America I have visited; the combination of Inca foundations and Spanish colonial is unique; and the sense of mystique invoked by the knowledge that you are walking on the scared Inca capital is extraordinary. No, if I had to compare Cuzco to an Old World city, I'd compare it to Rome: it was the seat of an Empire, its old religion has been replaced by Christian beliefs and the ancient monuments coexist with beautiful Baroque architecture. The city of Cuzco along with Machu Picchu were the first Peruvian monuments to be declared 'patrimony of all mankind in 1983, followed by Chavin, the Husacaran National park, the archaeological zone at Chan Chan, the Manu National Park, the historic centre of Lima, the Rio Abiseo National Park and recently (1994) the Nazca lines and geoglyphs. Peru is the country with most UNESCO World Patrimony sites in Hispanic South America. Compare it with Bolivia's three: Sucre, Potosí and the Missions around Santa Cruz. Or Chile's only one: Easter Island and THAT is stretching it.

I spent my first full day in Cuzco ticking off the monuments. First, to the temple of Qorikancha; the complex of the Church of Santo Domingo built around the most sacred Inca Temple of the Sun when Pisarro's brother, Juan Pisarro donated it to a Dominican missionary Juan Olías. There is an interesting tug-of-war at the moment between the tourist board who wants to rebuild the Temple of the Sun for the tourists and the Dominican friars who obviously consider this a sacrilege. Of course, I sided with the Dominicans. What has happened, has happened, and we can not undo the past - if we try to, we are prone to repeat it.

A walk around Qoricancha - the church is not much cop - beautifully labelled and kept, is fan-ta-stic; the inner sanctum has surprisingly remained intact with the chambers of the worship of the Sun (inlaid with gold, long plundered), Moon (silver) and Venus (errm... both, obviously the Incas were confused there) excellently preserved along with the curved (hey, man, they could do arcs, too!) Temple of the Sun facing aptly the Avenida del Sol. In the gardens, loose Inca stonework provides some clues as to how the stone work blended together; the Incas used joints in the way a carpenter does today: there were forked mortises and tenon joints aplenty, but cast in stone rather than wood.

I spent quite some time figuring out how to leave Cuzco and eventually arrive at Arica. I didn't fancy the train back to Puno and Arequipa, so I thought I'd fly. Arequipa-Tacna, I could do by bus, I thought. But Aeroperu had a ticket to Tacna with an overnight stop at Arequipa for $80. Too good to miss really. Problem is, Friday was full and the only such combined flight avaiable was for Thursday. Now Tuesday/Wednesday I would be in Machu Picchu (Eric and Beatrice would be going then, as well) and I still needed a day to finish off Cuzco. I got on the waiting list for Friday and ran to my friendly guide, Walter. I arranged a train ticket to Machu Picchu with him, a hotel in Aguas Calientes for $10 and I left my Aeroperu ticket with him, would he please check with Aeroperu, bribe officials or bump a tourist off the Friday flight for me, please ?

And so to the convent of Santa Catalina. Again, much gore on the pictures that hang, but not as much as in Sucre; one corrridor with scenes from the cult figure of Santa Rosa de Lima. There is another frescoed-out chapel like the church in Chincherro - and brighter. It has a superb decoration of at three levels: one is a depiction of 17th century romantic/bucolic life, one of saints and one of heaven. I was there alone, absorbed and heard a strange murmur - I went to the novice nuns' chapel, and behind the bars and curtains, I heard the nuns chant mass - it was twelve noon sharp. Gosh, these women are barred from normal life, as they were centuries ago. What drives someone in the dog-end of the 20th century to a voluntary prison - a deep sense of spirituality or terminal weakness and inability to cope? I shouldn't judge; after all I myself would like to become wise - and eventually a Buddha. But who says I can't by travelling around the world rather than subjecting myself to rigid dogmatic routine ?

Another Latin American operetta - this time in the main post office. I wrote a letter to my bank manager in London, informing him that I had lost my bankers' card. As one can only use the card in Britain, I was not worried that it would be of use to the thieves in Oruro, but I wanted to send a letter so that a replacement could be arranged by the time I arrived for Xmas. Anyway, I wrote the letter and wanted to send it quickly. $14. Shit! Oh, well, OK. But an express letter address had to be typed by the secretary on the envelope. After two words, she came to see me; what was that address again ? She brought the envelope where she had half-typed 'Tina Manjer' instead of 'The Manager'. My hair fell and I decided not to spend $14 for the letter to be sent to an imaginary person in an imaginary address (probably in an imaginary country). "Oh, I'll send it normal post", I said, smiling politely.

I had to atone for not doing the Inca trail, so I decided to climb to Saqsaywaman, the Inca fort overlooking Cuzco. It's a steep but pleasurable climb; especially so, since I had for the first time the ruins to myself and not have to share them with tourists. I stayed for something close to two hours exploring, walking and meditating on the vast site. It was a temple of the Sun (archaeologists have excavated skeletons of priests and sacrificial llamas) which turned into a fort and now hosts the recently revived festival of Inti Raimi every June. It is held on the June solstice - and heralds the onset of winter for the Southern hemisphere - the Inca Christmas ?

Next to it, there is a Corcovado-like statue of Christ massively dwarfed by the Inca ramparts; this site contains the largest stones in any Inca structure; there is an 'Inca throne' with grooves for chicha, the local drink which tastes like cider; and also, rarely seen amongst this trapezium-loving folk, some circles. The views of Cuzco are themselves worth the climb, but the weather was very changeable and if you blinked, you missed the dry spell. Quick, get the camera out, point, shoot, damn it's raining again.

In the evening, I went to a restaurant determined to have the local speciality. I had rocotto relleno : stuffed chilli pepper and cuy al horno. Cuy, is the local guinea pig. I asked the waiter:

"Does it come whole ? " It did.

"Can I not have the head please ?".

"Sin cabeza ?" he asked surprised (apparently the head is a delicacy - like all unmentionable and uneatable disgusting things are a 'delicacy' for the 'connoisseurs').

"Yes, please, please no head. The bloody thing already looks like a rat. If you want me to eat it, then it must look as little like a rat as possible".

The waiter stared bemused at the strange gringo. "OK. Do you want to come in and choose it ?"

Aaaargh! CHOOSE IT ? Like a LOBSTER ? Alive ? While it's still fluffy ? No please, don't subject me to that. "You choose it for me. Choose one which has lived a long, happy and rewarding life", I said quite upset with my carnivorous behaviour.

I thought better.

"On second thoughts, choose a fat bastard", I added with a tinge of guilt.

Well, this was the third (and last) new animal life form I ate during this trip after peccary and llama. So what did it taste like ? Well, you had to use your hands - there is no fat on it. The sauce that sticks to it is very tasty, but the skin is very chewy. It's not unlike rabbit, but the worst part is that they serve it as is: with the feet that stick out including its sharp nails. I was eating it wondering if I had been conned and it was a rat. Oh, bloody hell, if it was a rat, it tasted fine. And so I completed the dish, imagining the thread I would post it in USENET under: "JohnM ate my hamster!"

For afters, I ventured to the Cross Keys Bar, the gringo locale in Cuzco. And the place is awash with backpackers. In fact, Cuzco is the only place I have been where English was actually the mother tongue in backpackerland rather than German, which is the norm. Cuzco attracts the Brits, the Aussies and the Americans like a magnet - the well-trodden Inca trail being the main drawing point.

In the Cross Keys bar - a surprise. I ordered my beer, turned around and came face to face with a familiar beard. Could it be ? it was! I was face-to-face with Paul, the guy from rec.travel.latin-america who I'd met in Santa Cruz, who had taken me to all the parties on Halloween and who had left his job there to take up a job in Cuzco with GAP. (see my Chapter Four "Santa Cruise"). Well, there he was, with Sean, his Canadian boss and his fellow colleagues, having just come back from a trek in the jungle. We continued drinking in the Irish pub across the Plaza de Armas. The surprise was mutual. I told him of Uyuni and the robbery; he told me his heart-wrenching departure from Santa Cruz where he left all these people crying at the Rio Piray on the Sunday when I was having lunch at Sergio's and visiting the Lomas de Arena; how he would now undertake a 47-day trip from La Paz to Rio and how at last he'd be returning to Rio as he promised the son of his girlfriend all these years ago - his eyes lit up then. He got paid local wages, but every day he is on the road, all expenses are paid, so his salary could just accumulate. At 46, he loves it. I would love to do what Paul was doing, but how can you make such a commitment (he had undertaken a minimum year's contract with GAP) ? When he left New Zealand, he made a conscious decision to break with the past. Could one do that easily and lead a life of constant travelling being responsible for snotty travellers with their whims and whines all year ? The thought has crossed my mind many times since and the answer is always negative. What is a pleasure undertaken as a venture, becomes routine when it changes into a profession.

Paul and I had not met after Halloween in Santa Cruz. Now we could say our good-byes properly. Unfinished business has a habit of haunting you, so I was pleased to have sorted THAT matter out over a couple of pints of Guinness, wishing Paul the best in his new career.

TUESDAY /WEDNESDAY

The trip on the train to Machu Picchu is magnificent. The tourist train is, after all, the Peruvian showcase - this one was built by Spaniards. As it leaves Cuzco, it zigzags itself very oddly and unexpectedly to climb above the valley where the capital of the Incas is perched - it only adds to the train's charm. After the Pampa of Anta (subject to the first Inca victory during their fantastic expansion) it follows the Urubamba river after Huarocondo. At the famous Km 88, most backpackers get off (and I was looking with a tired but jealous eye) at Corihuayrachina and the landscape becomes subtropical - something I had not seen since Santa Cruz. Oh - and the river itself looks like a good 4 out of 6 for white-water rafting.

Machu Picchu (pronounced Pik-chu) is one of those extreme places which you either love or hate - except that no one, hahaha, hates it ! Just the site itself without the ruins would be awe-inspiring: a small plateau amongst two peaks - the Machu or Old and the Huayana or New Picchu (Peak) with a bird's eye view of the Urubamba river that snakes itself around it. Imagine Pompeii in the Grand Canyon and you get the picture. Nature aside, put in the middle of it, the best preserved, most famous, most romantically written about, currently controversial in a 90's PC sort of way (Hiram Bingham 'discovered' it ? when it was known to Indians all along ?) and finally just plainly picturesque Inca city, harmoniously blending with the environment, and you have not only the makings of a myth, but of a living fantasy. whose principal attraction is both its inaccessibility and its realisability. (Ouch! must write 1000 times 'I should write smaller sentences'). Everyone wants to go to Machu Picchu , that is the fantasy - and 2000 people visit it every day - but most would like to have been there. The inaccessibility frightens them, so, for the ones like us, who do make the pilgrimage - for pilgrimage to beauty it is - being there is the closest most of us will ever come to the realisation of a dream.

I had reasonably good weather, too. In Cuzco it was raining both days. It was relatively drizzly but mostly dry and overcast the first day but bright and sunny the second day. I never regretted staying two days. Machu Picchu joins two other places I have paid twice to see in two consecutive days: the Taj Mahal in Agra, India and the Palace and Castle of Alhambra in Grenada, Spain.

The guide, Romulo, turned out to have co-authored a book on the Incas "Pachamama's children". His great great uncle was one of the Indian guides who had helped Hiram Bingham find the site in 1911. He claims the when Hiram Bingham found his relative's initials carved on the Sacred stone (the one on the trail to Huayana Picchu) he wiped them out by fire. So who 'discovered' Machu Picchu ? This is a sore point with the Peruvians who want the 2000 or so artefacts in the Yale University museum returned to Peru. They compare them to the Elgin marbles; but Hiram Bingham never wrenched a piece of a building to take away with him.

In Machu Picchu I met Manuel and the Swiss. Manuel was on a day trip, Eric and Beatrice were staying at Hotel Ruinas. They shared the same travel guide, who, as Eric told me later, hated tourists. 'Not a good profession to be in if you hate foreigners, hahaha', said Eric cuttingly. But my own, Romulo, was something else. I noticed that Alvaro on Sunday in Pisaq was left wing. Romulo was also left wing - it seems all the tourist guides are secret Guzman supporters. Now I consider myself left wing, too, but I have learned from history - and I was clashing with Romulo on all fronts following the arguments with Alvaro on Sunday and freaking out the tourists; one does not argue with a guide, especially one who has written a book! I said openly I did not believe his great grand uncle had carved his initials. Quachua was not a written language and Indians were illiterate at the time, so what his relative had learned not only to write, but to write his name in in Spanish, too ? And carving one's initials on stonework is surely a Western practice. Romulo was furious and avoided me like the plague.

But I was too annoyed not to take him on. He said that Hiram Bingham climbed the summit with the Indian Melchor; and yet Bingham in his book emphatically says that a Peruvian policeman who was shadowing him during his expedition was a third participant. He claimed that Machu Picchu was a large settlement; it was estimated to house 400. He showed the industrial sector and claimed that it was another observatory. And he missed the most important fact that we do know about the site. That 80% of the skeletons excavated are female - which lends credence to the belief that the Virgins of the Sun took refuge in Machu Picchu to escape the Spaniards.

So what impressed me the most in Machu Picchu ? Not the jail sector with the temple of the condor or the 'masterpiece' Temple of the Sun with its elaborate first floor stonework; not the Sun Dial with its four points aligned to the four cardinal points in the horizon; not the elegant temple of the three windows or the main gateway. It was the agricultural sector with the irrigation channels, terraced gardens that I found so environmentally friendly - it showed that people lived there after all who tried to make the most out of their harsh circumstances. Oh, and the flower garden is dazzling: wild bromelias and planted coca trees which shocked the clueless visitors who marvellled at the cheek of growing coca openly and missed the rest: a most hallucinogenic dattura flower and a hollow ant tree. Poison ants run up and down inside it helping it with nutrients, while it provides protection. The ants' bite is so painful, Indians still use it in initiation ceremonies. This is also how they punished adulterers: they tied them naked to the tree overnight, and cut the tree so that the ants ran out on the victim. Imagine warrior ants whose sole purpose in life is to attack intruders given a chance to live out their raison d'être. Ouch !

For lunch I had a small snack outside the Hotel Ruinas; the buffet there was a whopping $15. I met Manuel and the Swiss and I joined them for a beer. Manuel was finally departing tomorrow for Lima. Beatrice and Eric were staying tonight like myself. We were returning to Cuzco with the same tourist train tomorrow. Manuel told us about the water problems in the Hostal del Inca where he was satying. He asked to be shown to the pumps in the basement. "I am a chemical engineer, let me in". They let him and he fixed their pumping system for them. The pumps were apparently working against each other rather than in sync. We said our good-byes to Manuel; he left with all the tourists and Machu Picchu was magically peaceful again.

The fire in October 1997, which started from the power plant one can see looking towards the valley of San Miguel west from the summit, reached the site itself but miraculously was quenched by rainfall just in time had destroyed the trail to the top of Huayana Picchu; I climbed Machu Picchu instead on the trail leading to the top. An hour's superb climb with great - albeit misty - views. Even this trail has been partly destroyed by the fire and washed out by the rain. Sometimes I had to walk on a narrow two-foot ridge next to a 3000 foot drop.

On the bus down to Aguas Calientes, we encountered the young gamins who earn their living by taking the footpath down, racing the bus and appearing in front of it shouting a high-pitched "Good-bye" and waving at every corner. At the bridge across the Urubamba, ours, an eight-year-old named Jose climbed the bus afterwards not even out of breath and left with one sol from each one of us; twenty two in all. A pretty good and deserved compensation methinks. Still, I'd like to see them do that on the way up.

I liked Aguas Calientes. I stayed in Hostal Las Rochas all the way up Calle Pacha Cuteq until the actual thermal springs. It had a clean bath and a wonderful hot shower and was one of the best value hotels I've stayed in. I had a pizza in a bar which played Led Zeppelin favourites. There is something funny listening to Whole Lotta Love up in the Andes at full blast. It clearly means something completely different to the Peruvian not-so-youth than to the British and I wish I knew what - coz then I would be much wiser about our universal culture.

Next day, I woke up ready for the 7:30 bus up Machu Picchu. I looked out of the window. Huayana Picchu was lost in fog. As the next bus was at 9:00 am I decided to go to the Thermal Baths. These are quite safe, although I went to change in an unmarked zone which was apparently for women. An old granny came in and caught me starkers - I probably gave her the biggest thrill of her twilight years.

I enjoyed the ritual: warm tub, very hot tub, cold shower, back to the warm tub. I started speaking to a couple of girls who thought I was Brazilian. Alas, not, I sighed. Not many foreigners came to the thermal baths, although a long-haired Japanese guy who I has spotted in the Cross Keys leapt in after me. He was hoping to spend another two months with $400. Well, he was thin.

In Machu Picchu I now climbed back up the Inca trail starting from the rear - penetrating deep enough for it to be pleasurable but not long enough for it to be painful (what AM I on about ?) up to the gate of the Sun. Slowly, the trickle of backpackers passed after me with their Indian sherpas who were RUNNING. (Eric later told me that he asked them why at the end of a long trail, they were running and dashing to the finish. "So that we can rest earlier", they answered. What ?)

I spent a lot of time now in the ruins, surprising a party of New Age Americans who were all communing with nature by collectively touching the Intihuatana sun dial. They seemed embarrassed; like I caught them in flagrante (and for all I know they were so weird they might have been having group tantric sex), but they were not alone. A group of Japanese did exactly the same with the Funeral Rock, and several English women were reciting verses to Mother Earth in the lotus position, man.

In the balcony, I had a few beers and met again with Beatrice and Eric. They, too went all the way to the gate of the Sun. Together we walked the 2000 ft down (in 35 minutes, not bad at their pace). One of the best memories I have of Peru is the cheapness and tastiness of the fruit juices they squeeze on the spot for you at one sol a go. I introduced Eric and Beatrice to these pleasures when I spotted an old woman with a juice maker by the station. The old woman was very slow, though, and as she was going to make three glasses for us, Eric had to help her if we were to leave that day. He had to listen patiently to her tales of woe 'Thanks for helping me, my husband died six months ago and I am all alone, bless you good gringo'. We drank our juices and climbed into the first train car almost when the train started to move.

All three of us were on the same train, in the first compartment. We were sitting next to the funnel and it was hot and jerky, so I moved to the last seat where it was stable enough to listen to my Graham Gold CD. After a while Eric came up to me and said jokingly : "The train will explode, hahaha". Apparently fumes were coming out of his seat which was above the diesel engine. Hahaha indeed. Soon after I saw Eric gesticulating; the wall behind him was turning black. We were one hour outside Machu Picchu and we had a fire on our diesel engine. Eric raised the alarm.

There were four nationalities in the car and five different opinions voiced in six different languages; when the train came to a halt, there was a prompt division of cultures. The Latin Americans all went out to help whereas the Americans and Europeans stayed inside complaining to the conductor about the lack of maintenance. I asked the stewardess: "¿Que pasa ?" She answered: "The engine stopped" in that great Latin American ain't-it-obvious-stupid? kind of expression. But what was wrong ? Well, the engine didn't have any cooling water. Was there a leak ? No, no they forgot to fill up the water tank which cools the engine. They were filling it up with water from the Urubamba river which was flowing next to us. But that was dirty, muddy water. "Well, señor", she said, "if you have a better idea let us know".

Unfortunately there was a leak. During the rest of the trip, one guard would continually top up manually the water tank of what is the showcase tourist train for Peru. I started discussing maintenance with Eric. Just like Bolivia (or the old Soviet Union, I remember), maintenance is a difficult concept to grasp for a developing country or even a communist superpower. They only fix something when it goes wrong. Planning and spending money on something that does not have an immediate value requires a big leap of imagination and insight, which many developing countries lack. But the important thing was we were on the way back to Cuzco.

...for another hour. Then we heard a loud 'CHUNG!' and the train suddenly stopped. I looked back. we had lost cars B,C,D and E; the connector had been undone. I waved bye-bye to the horrified passengers through the glass window at the back. They were not amused. "It's a good thing we are not on a slope", I said to the stewardess. "We are on a slope", she corrected me. And smiling innocently, she added: "It's only tiny. We'll fix it before they start sliding."

We did eventually zigzag our way into Cuzco station, one hour late. But my luck had returned. Walter had changed my air ticket to Arequipa/Tacna for Friday! I had another day in Cuzco, like I wanted.

In the evening, I met up for a drink with Eric and Beatrice in the Cross/Keys bar. Tomorrow they were doing the Urubamba valley tour I did on Sunday. There was all-day pisco day in the bar: you paid for a small pisco and you got one, fishbowl size. Beatrice looked with horror at her own massive glass. She got drunk halfway through and never finished it. To be fair, I only managed two. Talk turned to the relative merits of pisco: Peruvian vs. Chilean and my next destination, Chile.

"Ah, the Chileans, hahaha", mused Eric. "Along with Colombians, the nicest people in South America. Very patriotic, too. Just count the flags you will see around you." And he proceeded to tell me a story how, during Chilean Independence Day (18th of September), when everyone puts out the Chilean flag, the Hyatt Regency in Santiago mixed up their flags and put out the Texas flag instead. A diplomatic incident ensued. But I knew Chile and the Chileans from my previous visit eighteen months ago (you can read about in http://www.scroll.demon.co.uk/travel.htm) and I was looking forward to the next two weeks, especially in dry Atacama after my wet sojourn in Cuzco.

THURSDAY

Today, I sought out Pantiacolla tours on Plateros. Apparently there are half a dozen Machu Picchus, lying unexcavated and remote. Choquekiraqi, Vilcabamba, Espiritu Pampa and Vitcus amongst them It takes ten to fifteen days camping on foot in the jungle to reach them, and a party of six upwards will persuade the agency to organise the trip. One for the future, when I return to Cuzco, coz I will.

The wealth of museums in Cuzco is phenomenal. The best is the Archaeological museum; excellent collection of pre-Inca stuff, including one of the most famous fabrics in history: the Manto de Paracas, a superbly preserved and elaborately decorated Indian cloak from 800BC. Excuse me, this was woven when Homer was alive! Then, more great eleven-coloured Nazca pottery. It looks as if the Nazcas with their Chinese face lamps I saw in La Paz, their mummies, their lines and their pottery are becoming my favourite pre-Inca civilisation. (I have to return to Peru if only to visit this site. Nazca was not on my plan this time - had I known, I would have fitted it in). Then, the Chancay muñecas, coeval with the Manto de Paracas, 2200-year-old girl's dolls properly dressed in their clothes; and finally a monolith with what looked like an ancestor of ET designed on it.

The Inca kerus with their bright colours on black-and-brown pottery betray a high form of art - something the Incas are accused often of lacking. Unfortunately the golden llama figurines in the museum were stolen (in 1993? 1994?) so only replicas were on display. But I drew the line when I discovered that the forty turquoise Piquillacta figurines were not on display; just pictures of them. I went straight to the Administration Office, and said that I was an archaeology PhD, from the University of Oxford, no less, and I had to see the figurines. They were chuffed I knew about these exhibits, and the woman director found a key to open a cupboard to open a safe to get a key to go to another room to open another safe and take out a box inlaid with blue silk. Inside, they were the famous Piquillacta figurines, the masterpieces of pre-Columbian art: forty small statuettes, as tall as chess pieces, only 5cm high, all individually expressive, depicting forty individuals whose faces were exquisitely illustrated on the miniatures - all swathed from the waist down in funerary cloths; there was one with long eras like Prince Charles, one with a beard, every wrinkle showing under the magnifying glass . I felt I had opened an Egyptian tomb and that I was the first to cast eyes on these treasures. Stunning!

I left the museum buzzing and walked up to San Blas (all Germans laugh at the mention of this church, as translated in German it means Saint Suck). There is a perfect Inca fountain on the plaza by its side, but the church itself hides the carved interior and gilded tabernacle plus an incredible, elaborately carved cedar pulpit. This ends in a male figure (Jesus ? St Peter ? San Blas ?) at the feet of whom lies a real human skull. Apparently it belongs to the sculptor/woodcarver. Such are the macabre niceties of Latin American Catholicism. San Blas, by the way, is a must-see. The cathedral is vast and impressive, the frescoes look like mural oil paintings and the gold outdoes any church in Bolivia.

I had lunch in a small cafe by Heladeros; I had a four-course meal for $2. OK, the last course was a banana, but when you add the haba beans with a rich egg sauce, a chicken soup, tallarin with cheese and pesto, you have a substantial meal for peanuts. The restaurant is called La Moni and is on Heladeros 149, if you care to find it. It is full of locals which should be a recommendation by itself.

Then off to the Museum of Local History which is quite substantial for a city of that importance. there, the little Schickelgruber by the door wanted me to leave my small camera and my rucksack behind. No. I've lost one camera already. After a stand-off he relented . Just like the Pink Panther, however, he followed me from room to room pretending to hide behind pillars with his belly sticking out, accidentally bumping into me and smiling embarrassed like a little boy found out; and making indiscreetly creaking noises on the wooden floor while tip-toeing behind me. At one point, I got fed up: if they didn't trust me, why should I trust them, why don't they provide a safe area for a locking bags in, do they know I've been robbed etc. etc. - poor guy didn't know what hit him and left me on my own.

The museum ? It has the best collection of painting of the Cuzco school I have seen. These have bold colours (unlike the darkness of Potosí school), lack perspective, have expressionist design and full of 'brocateadas'. That is, golden leaf in the form of a flowery design has been multiply stamped on the dresses, rendewring the whole overbearing and over-ornate. Subjects are saints, archangels, Santa Rosa de Lima, biblical scenes, plus the obligatory depiction of Christ's circumcision, a subject on which the South Americans dwell a bit too much on, methinks. I presume the Indians must have been shocked with the concept; I wouldn't like to have been a Jesuit trying to explain.

After an hour in the Internet Cafe on top of the Avenida Sol, reading my junk mail again, I ended up in my final museum: the Archbishop's palace which is now the Museum of Sacred Art. Again a lot of 'pintura cusqueña' and again I got incensed with the curators. Where were the masterpieces of the Cuzco school: the twelve panels of the procession of Corpus Christi by Diego Quispe Tito ? I found the administration again and made them open the special room which they keep locked but open to any one with enough knowledge to request to see the paintings Two German tourists tagged along. The paintings cover all four walls of a large room and, unlike any other composition of the Cuzco school, depict real life from Peru in the 18th century: a series of processions on the day of Corpus Christi. There is an Inca ruler, one winking at the painter like at a camera, a series of individual Rembrandt-like faces of notables. As with other paintings of Quispe Tito, red (and red hats) dominate, but the whole Gesamtkunstwerk weighs on you with considerable power. So why are they not on display ? "Too precious", was the answer. "And we don't have the money to employ full-time guards".

In the evening, I picked up Eric and Beatrice from their hotel. I bought them a small present; a book I'd bought in Ollantaytambo on Sunday and had read myself already, about the significance of the shape of Inca cities and monuments. From the air, Cuzco looks like a puma, Machu Picchu like a crocodile and so on. I had made a dedication which nearly brought Beatrice to tears. Eric came down later furious: $160/night and no hot water. Beatrice finished her bath and the water stopped. The pumps were not working. Pity Manuel wasn't around. Walter told me that the tourists were 40% down last year. No wonder tourism has dropped - Cuzco is overpriced for the services it provides; the war with Ecuador has frightened off visitors; the image of Peru never really recovered after the guerrilla abductions of the early nineties. One has to look at the Internet questions in rec.travel.latin-america: "Single girl is going to Peru for a month. Will I be raped upon arrival or will they wait a bit ?" or "Is Cuzco/Lima/Arequipa safe for Americans or do they prefer mugging the Germans first?"

Eric and Beatrice bought me dinner at El Tumi - we had a quick pisco sour in the Irish bar beforehand which they also bought for me. I had Trucha a la Florentina and a chocolate cake where you could taste the calories, plus a bottle of the best Chilean wine. Finally we parted over a few piscos at the Cross-Keys. We exchanged addresses; I have a standing invitation to Bogotá (but I might take them up when they return to Zürich). Eric and Beatrice adopted me for the duration of our trip ; they were my guardian angels in Peru and helped me re-establish my cool and confidence after the Bolivian robbery and for this I love them to bits.

My Pery days were ending. I couldn't wait to get to civilisation, sorry Chile. I decided to do Arequipa and Tacna quickly, surely there was nothing there to see and do ?

I was wrong on both fronts. In fact, I am ashamed to admit I was terribly wrong, as you shall see next. There is no bit of Peru which is boring.