Thursday 3 April 2014

The bears of HuiñayHuayna

I had already heard Hernan’s name before I found his Anecdotes. Travelling by train from Cusco along the Urubamba valley on our first trip to Machu Picchu, Jesus pointed up at a grey smudge barely visible amidst the lush green valley covering:  “Look up there,” he said “Those are the ruins my uncle helped discover”.

These days the site is well known, one of the final stops on the Inca Trail before arriving at Machu Picchu. Clinging to a densely forested slope high above the river, the ruins are connected by a long staircase and a series of cisterns or baths.  Hernan gives us his own take on how they came to light, and contemplates their fate.


The bears of Huiñay Huayna
In which, on the trail of the Peruvian spectacled bear, an archaeoogist finds some exraordinary ruins, and how they are named after the orchids that bloom all over them.