Turn Right at MacHu Picchu 12-Copy Floor Display - Mark Adams [52]
I was glad that Bingham had taken a photo of the place in its prime, because the buildings I saw had decayed beyond recognition. The elaborate front gate was still standing, but the walls around the property had crumbled. Waist-high weeds thrived in cracks between paving stones. Much of the main Spanish-style house had collapsed, and its tile roof was covered in corrugated steel sheets. Hand-carved wooden balconies, where Bingham may have sat and gone over his notes as he puzzled over what he’d found at Machu Picchu, were slowly disintegrating. All the doors were padlocked.
“I understand why the land reforms happened, but how could the farmers around here just let this place fall apart?” I asked John as we tried, and failed, to find a path down to what had been Huadquiña’s spectacular riverfront gardens. Comparing what I saw to the photograph Bingham had taken, the only recognizable feature was the campanile, which still held its two bronze bells. “Couldn’t they find a use for it?”
“ ‘Hacienda’ is still a dirty word in these parts,” John said.
Through a wrought-iron gate, we looked into what had likely been the dining room. The interior had been stripped clean except for some built-in shelves that held stacks of yellowed papers. It was probably the room in which Bingham had shown off his first freshly developed photographs of what he had seen at Machu Picchu. “They were struck dumb with wonder and astonishment,” he remembered of his hosts’ reactions. “They could not understand how it was possible that they should have passed so close to Machu Picchu every year of their lives since the river road was opened without knowing what was there.”
From Huadquiña, Bingham continued on to another hacienda, Santa Ana. The owner introduced him to a friend, “a crusty old fellow” named Evaristo Mogrovejo, the lieutenant governor of a nearby town. Bingham offered Mogrovejo a silver dollar for each Inca ruin that he could show him. Mogrovejo accepted the proposal. One place Mogrovejo strongly urged him to visit was called Rosaspata, a name that mixes Spanish and Quechua to mean “hill of roses.” It stood on a hill above the towns of Tincochaca—the modern Huancacalle—and Puquiura. If this was the same Puquiura that Calancha had described, Bingham knew, “Vitcos must be nearby.”
TWENTY-FOUR
The White Rock
At Vitcos
Like Bingham, the rebel king Manco Inca had thought long and hard about the location of Vitcos. In the middle of 1537, he realized that with Spanish reinforcements constantly pouring into the former Inca empire, he couldn’t hold out for long at the fortress of Ollantaytambo. He called his chiefs together and delivered a rousing thank-you speech, concluding with what sounded like the imperial equivalent of resigning to spend more time with one’s family. Manco informed his audience that he would be departing Ollantaytambo for an extended visit to the Antis, a jungle tribe that had been conquered by his great-grandfather, Pachacutec. The Antis lived in the Antisuyu, the easternmost of the four quarters of Tawantinsuyu. The land of the Antis was where the mountains collided with the Amazon jungle—the Spaniards are believed to have begun using the name Andes based on the name of the tribe.
On its well-fortified mountaintop, Vitcos was a good choice for a new headquarters. The move must have been planned as a permanent one. Manco brought along the mummies of his father, grandfather and great-grandfather. He was joined by his queen and favorite wife, Cura Ocllo, who had escaped from her captivity in Cusco. As they withdrew, Inca soldiers attempted to destroy the trails behind them, as if to slam the door on any Spaniards who came sniffing