MACHU PICCHU

Our guide is a stocky, middle aged man from Cuzco, whose flies refuse to stay closed. He spends half the time he talks zipping them up again. His attitude is belligerent and didactic.  We are the stupid tourists who don't appreciate the splendour of the spectacle that is laid before us. We come to take photos without knowing what the photos mean.

No doubt he is right. We don't. He sets out, on a morning which begins misty at 6.30 and has transformed itself by 8.30 into fierce sunlight, to educate us. He shows us the way in which a compass, aligned towards the Southern Cross, is placed at the heart of the town. He explains how Inca society, whilst not Communist, espoused a type of autocratic socialism, with everyone having to work a fixed period of the year for the state, but everyone guaranteed food and shelter. He outlines the Incan legal system, which was, in his eyes, strict but eminently fair. He describes the Incan methods of astronomy, architecture and masonry. There seems little doubt that this man still considers himself an Incan as much as a Peruvian. The battles may have been lost but the war never shall be.

Machu Picchu, he assures us, is a magical place, which has connections with the Egyptian Pyramids, among other magical places. It's constructed on the tip of a mountain at the apex of an Empire. It was not, he insists, a holy city. It was a retreat but also a trading post, where the terraces are built upon layers of coastal sand. There are eight documented entrances to Machu Pichhu, he tells us, and it was never the intention it should have been kept a secret. That it was was down to nature's beneficence and its remoteness.

Later, we walk past another guide, expounding a theory which is the direct opposite. This was a secret enclave, for monks and royalty, where the common people were excluded. Later still, on our way back to Cusco by minivan along the perilous route, we stop at a restaurant to buy water, and there's our guide from the morning, popping up, his flies still falling down. The Inca is everywhere. No doubt he arrived via a secret passageway. Although he leaves in a minibus. With more tourists.

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