Kim MacQuarrie’s Peru & South America Blog
The first major exhibition devoted to the Incas’ fabled cold-weather retreat highlights Machu Picchu’s secrets
(This is a good article on both Machu Picchu and also on the recent traveling exhibit in the U.S. of Hiram Bingham’s Machu Picchu artifacts that Peru is currently trying to get Yale University to return–KM)
By Fergus Bordewich
Smithsonian, March 2003
Although I had seen many images of Machu Picchu, nothing prepared me for the real thing. Stretching along the crest of a narrow ridge lay the mesmerizing embodiment of the Inca Empire, a civilization brought to an abrupt and bloody end by the Spanish conquest of the 1500s. On either side of the ruins, sheer mountainsides drop away to the foaming waters of the Urubamba River more than a thousand feet below. Surrounding the site, the Andes rise in a stupendous natural amphitheater, cloud-shrouded, jagged and streaked with snow, as if the entire landscape had exploded. It is hard to believe that human beings had built such a place. It was more difficult still to grasp that Machu Picchu remained unknown to the outside world until the 20th century…
(more…)
A Self-Guided Companion Tour to the Book
Covering: Lima, Cuzco, the Sacred Valley (Pisac & Ollantaytambo), Machu Picchu, the Inca Trail, and Vilcabamba
Since the publication of The Last Days of the Incas a number of readers have written me asking about how they might visit some of the major Inca cities and locations described in the book. They’ve asked me for recommendations on where and when to go, how long to take, etc.
For those who would like to visit Peru on their own and are interested in planning a trip to Peru and to see for themselves where portions of this epic story actually unfolded, I’ve put together something I call “The Last Days of the Incas’ Peru Tour.” If you have one week, two weeks, three weeks (or more) at your disposal and want to follow your own independent itinerary, then the following information will help guide you to some of the major locations where Francisco Pizarro and his men clashed with the Incas, where Manco Inca launched his guerrilla war, where Pizarro and some of his conquistadors are buried, and where the more recent discoveries of Machu Picchu by Hiram Bingham and Vilcabamba by Gene Savoy took place…
(more…)
Indiana Jones: The Men and the Myth
Friday, May 09, 2008
NPR: On Point
By host Tom Ashbrook
It’s just a matter of days now, and Indiana Jones is back in a theater near you.
Harrison Ford, the leather jacket, the bullwhip, the fedora — 27 years after “Raiders of the Lost Ark” they’re practically archeological artifacts themselves. But who cares? Everybody wants to get back to snakes and jungle and desert and adventure.
At Yale, where the new film, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” opens in ivy splendor, that story — a true story — has never gone away. In fact, it’s hot.
This hour, On Point, we’ve got real-life derring-do, and the return of Indiana Jones [who this time goes off to Peru]…
(more…)
