The Pisac Ruins

(Pic: All, The ruins in Pisac)

January 30, 2009...

I went to the Inka Ruins in Pisac today with Sophia and Julia. This beauty cannot be captured by photgraph, nor described in words. Yet, I am inspired to try my best:

I think that the magic of such a place can only reach someone who´s ventured there. Whose feet have climbed the thousand stone steps and tread across the slender grass of scrupulously constructed crop terraces. Who, with face pointed up at the sky, has opened his mouth wide and tasted the lonely drizzle that falls on this Sacred Valley. Whose ears have heard the trickling whisper of a 600-year-old irrigation system; met by the thunder of living water falls cutting a new path down the mountain. Whose imagination can recall the people of this indigenous civilization and draw them out of the dust, like ghosts bustling around you. And, not finally, because so much is left unsaid, whose eyes have seen but not understood the vastness, the fastidious care, the pride, the understated magnificence.

Someone´s calloused hands carried this very stone, this stone that I´m touching, and placed it here with exact purpose; this one stone of millions, to create steps, walls, towers.

A man, a woman, strung out on coca leaves and beer, was dragged up this cold and crumbling mountainside and into the temple...

In this very place, in this broken temple where a cieling once blocked out the rain and the sun, were countless human sacrifices to their gods.

The three of us woke up at 4:00 am because it´s free entry if you´re out of the ruins by 8:00. I regretted this choice when the alarm went off. But as we began our hike in the dark, silent morning and climbed toward a lightening sky, I realized what a marvellus choice this was. We were alone on that mountain for those three hours. Sophia, and Julia, and me, and the Ruins.