Blinded by Inca Science

OK, the Reduced Power of the Internets here is going to interfere with my ability to post pictures before Raul comes back at 5:30 am to take us to sunrise at the temple of the sun.  Oh well.  Text it is. 

I've decided that I actually really like the human tendency to tour.  Complaints about obnoxious, insensitive, loud, inappropriate tourists aside, I find it kind of unifying that so many of the world's humans (who have the means, obviously) share this frankly peculiar desire to go to places where other humans, often very different from them, live and have history, and then see how those other humans live and eat and what that history is like.  Aguas Calientes is a town that exists almost entirely to support tourists (going to Machu Picchu, a place whose name I still can't spell), and it's full of Humans from all corners.  French Humans, Israeli Humans, Argentinean Humans, Japanese Humans, Chinese Humans…all coming to learn something about Peruvian Humans.  It sort of makes me feel fuzzy and warm.

That said, tourists are weird.  One of the many places we visited today are the inappropriately-named "amphitheaters" at Moray, inappropriately named because they weren't amphitheaters.  It is believed they actually served as agricultural laboratories in which the Inca engineers studied and improved their crops.  They used carefully-sized-and-situated terraces, irrigation, and the sun to generate microclimates at various levels of the "amphitheater", and then experimented with different crops and crop breeding in each of those microclimates.

I honestly and truly believe this is amazing.  The level of scientific and engineering acumen required is astonishing.  Also, I love science. 

I would not, however, describe myself as spiritually moved by this feat of pre-Columbian engineering.  Perhaps I suffer a lack of imagination.  By contrast, when we arrived at the largest amphitheater, there was definitely a group of tourists down in the center of it sharing some kind of communal spiritual experience.  It involved spinning and also some shouting in unison.  I will pretend that they are even more powerfully moved by Science than I.

(instead of the more likely explanation, which that they were sadly misinformed as to the purpose of the site and instead just assumed it was spiritual.  They weren't alone in this misconception: another group we passed was engaged in a solemn discussion about how the site was used as a spiritual sacrifice location with temples at the top and channels in the stone for blood to run down…or something equally bizarre). 

We, fortunately, have a knowledgeable guide to set us straight, and also the ability to Google. 

Props are due to Raul, who has scheduled our days carefully to arrive at all sites at times that are offset from the big day-tour groups from Cusco.  This means we never eat or sleep, really, but we have gotten largely unmolested visits in to all locations so far, including the salineras at Moras and the truly impressive, albeit unfinished, temple at Ollantaytamba.

(I remember how to spell Ollantaytamba ever since Raul explained that it used to be just called Tamba until a long story involving the general Ollanta happened there, turning it into Ollanta y Tamba = Ollantaytamba, a phrase I can now remember). 

As for the train between Ollantaytamba and Aguas Calientes: every time we came to a fork in the tracks, a gentleman hopped out of the conductor's room, in front of my window on the right side of the train, hoofed it to the lever to move the tracks, and then watched the train roll by (slowly; Em's "high-speed" phrasing is inaccurate).  The thing is, it was the same gentleman.  Every time.  Hopped out the room, operated the lever, watched the train roll away.  How did he get back?!  WHERE DID HE GO??!

Must be up at 5, so salt, science, and temple pictures must wait until reasonable internet reappears in my life.  I also have a whole sequence of Strange Fruits Whose Names I Don't Know waiting for that same internet reappearance, sigh...