Alright! Guess what we get to see today? Another video!
You already know quite a bit about the Inca. Ready to see some more pictures of Inca ruins? Take a look at this one. In it you can see a kid about your age.



That’s a picture of a ruin called Saqsaywaman (pron. “Sak-SAY-wah-mahn”). Remember Pachacutec, whose dad took off and left him to defend the Incas by himself? Well after he began growing the Inca empire he decided to replan the capital Cuzco so it looked like a puma. Those jagged walls you see? Those are the puma’s teeth. They’re also part of what used to be a huge fort, where one of the largest battles between the Spanish and the Inca took place. Most of the stones are gone now. They were taken long ago down into the city and used by the Spanish for building homes and churches. But would you look at the size of them! Geologists say that some of them could weigh up to 50 tons! Apparently they were transferred from a quarry miles away to build the fort. How in the heck could someone move a rock that big into place without using a forklift?



Here’s another photo of some ruins named Pisac. I don’t remember exactly how these buildings were used, but I wanted to show you how high above the valley they were. There were even more ruins higher up! What are those step–like platforms called? They’re called terraces. The Inca were a mountainous people. Often times there wasn’t enough flat land for them to grow all their crops, so they would cut terraces into the mountain to give them more area for food. Because the elevation changed so quickly, they could grow different types of foods. For example, high up potatoes would be grown, and lower on the mountain you could find corn. The terraces also made it easier to defend themselves.



I saved the best for last. The most famous ruins in Peru are also the most famous in all of South America. They’re called Macchu Picchu. Every year thousands of people travel to visit the ruins. Some very lucky ones get the chance to hike to them on a road called the Inca Trail. It’s 33km long (about 20 miles), which doesn’t sound that long, but it took us more than three days. The hard part is the trail goes over three mountain passes, one of them almost 14,000ft high! It’s rainy season now, so most of the time it was misty and foggy, but when it did get clear the views were beautiful. In fact, the photo from my last entry with the rainbow is a picture from the Inca trail.

Remember how I said it was rainy season? Well, sometimes the rain gets a little out of hand. By the time I got to Macchu Picchu, we were told we had to leave as fast as possible because the nearest river was flooding so badly. We arrived in a nearby town called Aguas Calientes (which means “Hot Water”). Normally we would return to Cuzco on a train from this town, but the rains had caused mudslides that destroyed the train tracks. We were stuck! For four days I waited with almost 3,000 others for a way out of town. Finally, on the last day we were evacuated. I’ll let the video show you how we got out.



Pretty crazy, huh? I got to see Macchu Picchu from a helicopter! Luckily I got out of Aguas Calientes in time to catch my flight in Lima. The plane flew me to Boston so I could visit my sister and some of my best friends. After that, my mom and dad welcomed me at O’Hare airport in Chicago, and we went immediately to my favorite pizza place of all time. I sure missed good pizza when I was in Peru.
All in all, Peru was a pretty amazing adventure. It appears you guys are on your own new adventure: a new teacher! I hope you are having fun together and still enjoying our correspondence :) Remember that anytime you have a question, you can ask the teacher to send an email to me, and I’ll try and answer it as soon as possible.

So where in the world am I now? Well, I’ll give you a few clues to see if you can figure it out before my next blog entry. Last Tuesday I left for a new country to again serve as a Peace Corps volunteer. It’s more similar to Peru than it is to Guinea (though still quite different from both). They speak Spanish here, and the most famous expression is pura vida, which means “pure life”. Two words make up this Central American country’s name. See if you can find Central America on the map and start making guesses.

Pura Vida,
Kevin

The Inca

Hi again,

I remember giving you a little bit of homework.

What did you find out about the Inca people? Anything interesting? How long ago did they live? Where did they live? What sort of things were important to them, and what happened to them? Let’s start with a picture of a beautiful valley.



This view overlooks part of El Valle Segrado. That means “Sacred Valley” in Spanish. It was here that the Inca people lived for many years. There were many other types of people who lived in other parts of Peru, but this valley was where the Inca called home. Quite beautiful, I’d say.

One day another group of people came to try to conquer the Inca and steal the valley. The ruler of the Inca people grew so afraid that he ran away, leaving his son to defend the entire empire (who knows what the word “empire” means?). I couldn’t imagine one of my neighbors trying to break into my house, and then my parents running away and leaving me there to defend it, crazy! Nor could I imagine successfully defending my house and then taking over every house in the whole neighborhood! You know what? That’s exactly what happened. The son’s name was Pachacutec, and he not only fought off the invaders, he took their land. Then he started taking conquering more groups and growing his empire. One hundred years later, the Inca empire was wider than the United States! Take a look at a map of South America. The empire stretched from the south of Columbia all the way down past Santiago, Chile. That’s over 2,500 miles, and not once did they have the luxury of a car--or even a horse—-to travel over those great distances. Its capital was a city named Cuzco. The Inca actually thought that this city was the center of the entire universe. Cuzco is high up in the Andes mountains—-over 10,000ft high, actually. Up there the air’s a lot thinner, so it was tougher to breathe. I was sometimes out of breath just walking up a flight of stairs!



The legend goes that the stones rose up from the ground to help Pachacutec and the Inca people defend themselves against the invaders. For that reason stones were very important to the Inca. There were different types of stonework. Some types were used for homes and warehouses. Another style, called the “imperial style” was used to construct royal palaces and sacred temples. Here’s a picture of two different styles of stone. Both are made of granite. My tour guide Henry is explaining how the building on the left was where a regular worker may have lived, while the imperial style stones on the right were where the royalty lived.



Here’s another photo of the imperial style. Look how well the stones fit together. You want to know what they used to cut these stones so fine? Other stones! The stones used for cutting were just made of a different kind of material, one that was harder than granite.



The Inca actually prayed to many gods. One of them was “Pachamama”, or Mother Earth. They also believed there was a god of the moon, of thunder, of corn, and many more. Can you guess the most sacred god of the Inca? I’ll give you a hint: you see it every day. Need another hint? The Inca built a temple to this god in Cuzco and lined it with the material they thought represented their god: gold. What’s a gold colored object that you see every day? I bet you already have the answer…the sun! Yes, every Inca city and palace had a temple to the sun, which probably had a bunch of gold objects in it. Not Here are a couple pictures from just a small section of Qorikancha, the temple of the sun in Cuzco. Imagine the walls of this temple lined with gold!



So what happened to the Inca? Well, the Inca empire was growing in the 1400’s, about the same time as the Spanish empire was growing. Remember what year Christopher Columbus discovered the New World? Well, about 35 years later a man named Fernando Pissaro landed his ship on the coast of Peru. There he saw much gold and silver, so he decided to go back to Spain and ask the king if he had permission to conquer Peru. The king said yes. So Pissaro came back with an army, and they captured Pachacutec’s grandson Atahualpa (pron. “Ah-ta-WAL-pa”) who was the emperor at the time. Eventually, Spain began taking all of the Inca’s sacred gold and silver objects and sending them home to Spain to turn them into money. The Inca were tortured and punished for not worshiping the same god as the Spanish, and they were also forced to work in fields and gold mines without being paid. They fought back for their freedom but never won the war. Eventually, their religion, history, and traditions began to fade away.

Walking around Peru, you can still hear the Inca language quechua (pron. “KECH-wa”) being spoken, but we still know very little about the Inca because quechua is an oral language. That means they spoke, but never wrote, their language.

Alright, I know this is a lot of information to take in, so I’ll wrap it up here. I didn’t get to the exciting video I wanted to show you, but I promise I will next time.