Dear Readers,
We are proud to announce that we have reached our third anniversary edition. And since we have to make a big time celebration, let's make it on the best way we can: talking about Machu Picchu.
Yep, since you could never have enough about Machu Picchu, and since on these three years we never made a single article about it, this whole issue is
Machu Picchu. From the discovery made by Hiram Bingham on 1919 of this citadel, to beautiful articles about its archaeological and ecological importance. Finally, we have prepared a surprise on the bottom of this issue that we are sure you will enjoy. You cannot complaint, you will be Machu Picchu experts from now on.
But there is something that maybe you will not find on these articles: that mixed feeling
of rapture and calmness people experience when, at seven in the morning, Machu Picchu is over a mattress of clouds. You have to live it to understand it. Hope you will.
Regards,
Jose and Cynthia
It's remarkable that Machu Picchu was first brought to the attention of the world in 1911. The Spanish invaders at the time of the Conquest and during centuries of colonial rule never discover the city, and nobody ever led them there, suggesting that the site had long since been abandoned and forgotten.It was Hiram Bingham, a Hawaiian man born on November 19, 1875 who did such a discovery. He had a good education, a B.A. degree from Yale University in 1898, a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1905 and then spent one year as a Preceptor at Princeton University.
In November 1906 Bingham sailed to South America to follow the route Bolivar did; one of the liberators of Latin America in its war against Spain he had studied. That was the first approach to what it will be one of the greatest discoveries of the 20th century. In December 1908, Bingham attended the First Pan-American Scientific Congress in Santiago, Chile. It was there that he decided to follow the old Spanish trade route from Buenos Aires to Lima and hence to Cusco. There Bingham met J.J. Nunez, prefect of the Apurimac region, who invited him on the arduous trip to the ruins of Choquequirao, thought at the time to be the site of Vilcabamba, the "last resting place of the Incas".
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History engraved on stone. Forests covering mountains. Gorgeous skies in which the clouds collide over almost vertical granite cliffs, sometimes hiding and sometimes showing the spectacle of a natural environment that seems to have been made for the gods.Few notice this, even when they are looking at photographs of the gray stone citadel which seems to have come from nowhere to dominate this wild landscape of peaks and deep valleys. Machu Picchu is-an always has been- a natural refuge. It is not chance that the impenetrable jungles contain great Andean bears moving like silent phantoms up the bamboo-clad slopes; not is it luck that the quetzals and cock of the rocks can be seen frequently among the mossy limbs of the ancient pisonayes. The crystal but always turbulent waters of the Vilcanota are the playground for ducks and colorful fuchsias like Christmas decorations attract dozens of humming birds with their strange beaks and plumage that seems to have been designed by modern artists.
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Almost a century after its archaeological discovery and thanks to recent studies of sixteenth century archival documents, there are good arguments to suppose that the citadel of Machu Picchu was - like the pyramids of the pharaohs in Egypt or the tomb of the emperor Chin Shi Huan in China - the luxurious and well cared mausoleum of the Inca Pachacutec, founder and first emperor of Tawantinsuyu.No one doubts that it is a sanctuary of superior social position built in a privileged place seven or eight days' journey on foot from the city of Cusco. In Machu Picchu there are remains of buildings that were covered with gold, presumably with fantasy gardens, idols and offerings like those of the temple of Qorikancha in Cusco.
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