Documentarian Thomson's travels to the center of the Incan
landscape are intelligently enthusiastic though with a taste also
of the just knocking about. The author's two periods of significant
roaming in the Peruvian outback come nearly 20 years apart. The
first is in 1982 when, on something of a lark, he sets forth to
rediscover Llactapata, an Incan ruin described by Hiram Bingham but
subsequently mislaid. With the help of a local man-discovery,
Thomson notes, is accomplished mainly by "discovering reliable
local guides"-he achieves his mission, then proceeds to other Incan
sites, from Bolivia to Ecuador, taking his own measure of the Inca.
Since the Incas left no written history, he relies on the
suppositions of contemporary archaeologists and the most likely
dubious accounts of the conquistadors-though he's not afraid to put
emphasis where he feels it has been neglected, as on the sculptural
and aesthetic qualities of Incan stonework, or the importance of
mountains to the Incans, or the multifarious purposes of their
towns. He travels to the wildest outposts, mostly through dense
jungle: for all the ridgeline grandeur of Machu Picchu, the White
Rock, and Choquequirao, this is primarily machete country, where
one's next step is revealed only after the sweep of the blade.
There's evidence, though, of remarkable and intricate Incan
pathways, which, with their "extraordinary, almost symbiotic feel
for the mountains themselves," make the going easier at times.
Thomson's return, in 1999, is chiefly to visit Inca Wasi and the
great melancholy wreck of Espiritu Pampa. The travelogue is aided
immeasurably by profiles of explorers, archaeologists, and Incan
emperors, in particular Manco Inca, who reigned between Atahualpa
(seized and murdered by Pizzaro) and Tupac Amaru, the last emperor,
and was "a more admirable character than either of them." A
delightfully personal, skeptical, and ebullient journey, with just
the right degree of humor necessary for hard travel to distant
places. (45 b&w photographs) (Kirkus Reviews)
One man goes in search of the lost cities of the Amazon in the Inca
heartland. The lost cities of South America have always exercised a
powerful hold on the popular imagination. The ruins of the Incas
and other pre-Colombian civilisations are scattered over thousands
of miles of still largely uncharted territory, particularly in the
Eastern Andes, where the mountains fall away towards the Amazon.
Twenty-five years ago, Hugh Thomson set off into the cloud-forest
on foot to find a ruin that had been carelessly lost again after
its initial discovery. Into his history of the Inca Empire he
weaves the story of his adventures as he travelled to the most
remote Inca cities. It is also the story of the great explorers in
whose footsteps he followed, such as Hiram Bingham and Gene Savoy.
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