Tag Archives: Architecture

Day 5 (I) – Split….

19th September. Now that I am a gentleman of leisure, one of the annoying aspects of being on holiday is having to get up early. An alarm set for 0630 seems to be par for the course for this holiday, bringing back dark memories of life as an employee, whereas having to set an alarm at all in normal life is a bit of a bore and if one has to do it, it should be no earlier than 0730. So the news from Željko that we would have to depart our hotel at 0600 in order to be on an 0630 catamarn bound for the town of Split was met with something of a groan. It turned out, as did so many of his plans, to be a good idea, but coherent thought, smooth co-ordination and swift action at 0500 are not my forte.

Anyhoo…at 0600 we bundled our cases onto a bus and stumbled down to the harbour in Bol, just as the sun was going about his (or her) business for the day.

and the catamaran duly arrived

to take us to Split, a journey of just over an hour to a very handsome town. At one stage, it used to be just this place on the Dalmatian coast, until this Roman chap, Diocles, came along, liked the weather and the local availability of fine (Brač) stone, and decided it would be just the spot to retire to once he stopped bothering about being Emperor, so he had a big Palace built there, which now forms about half of the old town of Split.

Željko had arranged for us to have a guided tour, and we met Malenka, who took us round the main sights of the Palace. As we went round, the reason for our very early departure became clear – the Palace fills with tourists very quickly, and by getting there promptly we were actually able to see it when it wasn’t mobbed. It’s an impressive site, with some of the original construction supplemented by modern reconstruction.

Some of the locals actually live within the confines of the palace; people had set up house there before its historical (and touristic) value was truly recognised, and so there are homes and apartments dotted around the site. It’s now a UNESCO world heritage site, which is in part funding the reconstruction, and Malenka explained that UNESCO rules were that any reconstruction work had to be clearly recognisable as such. So, in the photo below, it is quite clear to see which is original tilework and which is modern

as it is with this mosaic.

I shan’t bore you with too many photos of the Palace – go and see it for yourself, and get a guided tour to give you some extra insight as you go round, is my recommendation. But there are some nice courtyards off the main streets

as a stark contrast to the crowded Hell that is “souvenir alley”, the corridor leading from the South Gate.

The sheer number of tourists has (unsurprisingly) had its impact. For example, there’s one square which used to have tables and chairs set out outside a restaurant, but now they are limited to setting up places on the steps.

Outside the confines of the Palace proper, there are some scenic corners

and you can see where building started by leaning extra houses against the Palace walls.

There is a large, sprawling and busy market with many opportunities to buy local produce (Jane bought some of the local tangerines which were, indeed, very tangy)

and the area around the Palace is, generally, very crowded.

That being the case, we decided to take up on a suggestion from Malenka and head over to a quieter aera of Split, towards the Marjan Forest Park (Šuma Marjan), which is on a hill to the north-east of the harbour.

(in the middle of the hill in the photo above, you can see the terrace of the bar ViDiLiCi where we stopped for a coffee and a beer). It’s a pleasant walk up a stepped road

and the terrace I mention above has a good view over the town

as has the walk back down towards the town.

All too soon we had to reconvene to catch the (somewhat knee-crunchingly cramped) tour bus to take us to the next stage of the day, in the Krka National Park, which held the promise of some spectacular scenery. So, to see this, read on, dear reader, read on….

Breathless in Cusco

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16th April 2018

After the toils and travails of walking up to Machu Picchu, I was looking forward to some less relentless tourism – a visit to Cusco, the city that was the centre of the Inca empire in its glory days.

The journey from Machu Picchu involved once again catching the train to Ollantaytambo, where we had a chat with a couple from Bristol who were nearer the start of their South American adventure than the end. Remarkably, the train staff, having served drinks and snacks, then staged a fashion show with a view to selling us some fine examples of Andean costumery. I bet no-one told them about this sort of thing during careers guidance at school.

The train journey was followed by two hours of purgatory in a taxi. The driver seemed to be a devotee of a particularly tedious variant of traditional Peruvian music which he started playing to us, unasked. It involved a low-quality synthesised guitar/harp/keyboard background to a couple of guys who mainly shouted things like “Ariba!”, “chicos!”, “Cusco!”, “senoritas”, “cerveza!” and so on, and who very rarely actually sang anything recognisable as a tune. At every change of track, I prayed for some variety, but no – tempo, key and harmonic structure, involving just two chords, carried on unabated. I hope the driver enjoyed the music, otherwise there were three of us in the car who hated the music.

Since Cusco’s altitude, at 3,400m above sea level, is somewhat higher than anything I’d experienced before, I was expecting perforce to have to take things gently. In the event, I didn’t suffer from altitude sickness – but I did suffer from altitude. The visit’s prospect of a full day at leisure, something that we’d come to realise is important to factor in to long holidays such as ours, was thus very alluring.

However, we still had to be ready at 0830 to be taken on a guided tour of the city and its environs – who says tourism is relaxing, eh? We were reunited with Camila, our Sacred Valley guide, and she started off by taking us up to Cristo Blanco – the white statue of Jesus Christ which oversees the city. The site offers an excellent view over Cusco.

After this, we went to the nearby Inca site of Saqsaywaman. This was a citadel, with sections originally built by the Killke people, with the Incas adding to it from the 13th century. It’s a large site, with two temples either side of a huge plaza, large enough to hold several thousand people for ceremonial occasions. This is a panorama across the huge main Temple of the Sun, taken from the other temple on the site.

(Note: I had to walk up about 30 largish Inca-style steps to bring you this photo, at the top of which I had to sit down for a couple of minutes, since this site is at 3,700m altitude. So, thank you. Thank you for appreciating the effort I’ve had to make to bring you this educational piece.)

As you can see, the main temple is very substantial (indeed, the whole site occupies some 3,000 hectares). The wall is some 400 metres long, and the estimated volume of stone in the temple is 6,000 cubic metres. The stones in the bottom layers of that wall are vast, with the largest estimated to weigh 125 tonnes.

and yet, you can clearly see the precision with which the stones have been fitted together, with no mortar, and no room even to slide a piece of paper between the stones. The precision of construction and the intricacy of interlocking design are thought to have been the reasons that the site has survived Cusco’s various devastating earthquakes.

To remind visitors that there was doubtless a ceremonial aspect to the site involving the sacrifice of llamas, there are camelids on the site, in this case alpacas, both long- and short-haired varieties; we were particularly taken with this cute little one which can only have been days old.

After the visit to Saqsaywaman, it was time to head back into Cusco proper, where Camila took us to a well-known market called San Pedro (in the square outside St. Peter’s Church).

Before going in, she warned us to take only essential items, as the risk of pickpockets was high.

The San Pedro market was similar in concept to the San Francisco market we’d visited in Quito – organised in sections and with a food court – but much larger and more crowded (hence better turf for pickpockets, I suppose – at any rate we escaped unscathed in that respect). Like all such markets it’s very interesting, varied and colourful.

There are plenty of stalls offering fabrics and clothes; and if they don’t have your size, they can easily make adjustments for you there and then.

As well as the official stallholders, there are people selling from ad hoc locations just sitting on the floor (they need the relevant stallholder’s permission to do this). This one, for example, was selling cuy (guinea pig), and you could take your pick – raw or cooked!

After the bustle of the market, it was time to make things more thoughtful and spiritual, with a visit to a major temple site in Cusco, called Qorichanka. This was the most important temple in the Inca empire (of which Cusco was the capital, as you’ll know, because you’ve been keeping up).

Since this can roughly be translated as “the place with gold”, you’ll not be surprised to learn that it was pillaged by the Spanish when they arrived. Indeed, having stolen the gold, they destroyed much of what was left in building the Church of San Domingo which stands there now. However, some of the original Inca stonework survives, and, indeed supports parts of the church.

There were three temples on the original site – the Temple of the Sun, the Temple of the Moon and the Temple of Venus and the Stars. The type of stonework was the most sophisticated and labour-intensive sort, called ashlar masonry, involving cuboid blocks of similar size, fashioned to the most exacting standards in order to fit together with complete precision.

Here you can see the precision involved; even though the lines of the stone are not necessarily completely straight, the fit is as snug as a very snug thing indeed.

and the precision of alignment of the various components very high.

This was why the Inca remains have survived Cusco’s devastating earthquakes, whereas the church has had to be rebuilt. Hah!

Camila pointed out one other feature which underlined how clever the Incas were. As I say, the stonework was made to great precision (indeed, modern “experts” have failed to disassemble the remnants of the temple stonework without damage, trying to understand how the ashlar masonry worked, and have been unable to reassemble it with the original precision).

The protuberance top left is actually part of a sundial, very carefully calibrated to allow the Incas to understand the time and the seasons. Clever chaps, the Incas.

We were allowed to photograph as much of the Inca work as we liked, but prohibited from photographing the colonial/catholic religious parts of the site. In theory this is out of respect (cameras can be noisy in use; and there is nothing in the world of photography more dispiriting than seeing someone waving a selfie stick around in a place of worship) and possibly because camera flash light can be damaging, and there are (too many) people in this world who don’t even realise that their camera is using flash, far less understand how to stop it doing so. In practice, I actually believe it’s so they can sell you postcards.

The next place we visited, and the final one on our tour, was the cathedral, on the (handsome) main square of Cusco.

No, they don’t let you take photos inside there, either, so this is all you get. However, we were amused by the stories that Camila told us of the rivalry between the cathedral (left, above) and the Franciscan church (the other slab of masonry in the photo). There was politial point scoring on every side, with the cathedral having to add elaborate decoration on the front and a dome on top to match the (very ritzy) façade and dome of the Franciscan church; to add two other chapels to make it larger than the Franciscan church; and to forbid the Franciscans from using a part of the building for religious purposes to limit the size of the Franciscan church so that the cathedral was actually larger.

Despite not being able to do anything without sitting down and taking a rest every few minutes, despite the occasionally ridiculous and noisy traffic and despite the difficulty sleeping because of the resonant quality of the hotel plumbing and/or the barking dogs, I liked Cusco a lot. It felt safer, it was more compact, and it had more history to be explored than other South American cities and it has been a pleasure to be here.

A train, a boat and planes lie between us and going home, so stay tuned. But for now it’s time for lunch. (Time For The Bar happened about halfway through the above.)

The Machu Picture Trail

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14th April 2018

[Extra-long read alert]

As I’ve mentioned before, we were staying in Urubamba, at the very lovely Inkaterra Hacienda. In order to tick the next box, sorry, experience the next wonder on our journey, we had to get somewhere near Machu Picchu so that we could hike up to see one of the wonders of the tourist world, the sight of Machu Picchu from the Sun Gate. The accepted way to do this is by PeruRail train from Ollantaytambo. The downside of this way is the logistics, which involved getting up at 4.30am to be taken by taxi at 5.30am once again up that bloody bumpy road into Ollantaytambo. However, our guide for the trek, Alex, had done a good job of making sure that things worked smoothly. We arrived in good time for our train, which was due to leave at 0710, with tickets and passports in hand, both of which are necessary for the journey.

A post shared by Steve Walker (@spwalker2016) on Apr 14, 2018 at 4:42am PDT

The train is described as a Vistadome train, which means it has large windows, and also some windows in the ceilings of each compartment to give the passengers the maximum chance of catching the scenery. It’s pretty good scenery, it has to be said.

During the journey, snacks and drinks are served, and we had a chance to chat to the Australian couple who had seats opposite ours. We spent much more of the journey listening to the husband rather than having a conversation, but they were clearly good-hearted people and they’d travelled extensively so had some interesting stories to tell.

The train stopped at the border of the Machu Picchu national park for the madmen, sorry, keen beans who were doing the 4-day hike to get off and start punishing themselves. It then stopped some distance further on, at a point formally called “Kilometre 104”, which was our cue to get off and start our 1-day hike. Again, we had to provide our passports before being allowed to proceed (no-one is allowed on the trails without (a) booking the date and (b) a guide – this enables the authorities to control the numbers on the trails).

And so we were off. The trail we were doing consists of a long, consistently uphill section starting at about 2,100 metres altitude and toiling up to a place called Wiñay Wayna at 2,560m, followed by an “Inca flat”, i.e. not particularly steep up or down, section leading to the final pull up to the Sun Gate. It was spitting with rain for much of the first section, but not so much that it spoiled anything, and we got some great views as we went up. This, for example, is just down the track from where we got off, showing a passing place for trains near a hydro-electric station (now disused after being wiped out by flooding and replaced by another, bigger one elsewhere).

and you can just see the green roof of our starting point at the foot of this photo.

This is the sort of trail we were hiking

and it moves relentlessly upwards.

Alex and Jane share an interest in flowers, particuarly orchids, and I have to say I was grateful to Jane for engaging Alex in conversation about the various species to be found, as this gave me a chance for a breather whilst they chatted and I took photos of various orchids along the way (we found 12 different species in all, a record for Alex); here are a couple:

There were also wild lupins growing along the route.

Every so often, we had to stand aside as porters (supporting the multi-day hikes) came down the mountain – carrying camping equipment and at a run, for God’s sake!

Eventually, the relentless uphill stopped and we had arrived at Wiñay Wayna (which is also the final camping spot for those on the 4-day hike). Alex had mentioned that there was an Inca site there, but I had never heard the name before, and so hadn’t thought it would be of any great pith or moment. How wrong I was!

A post shared by Steve Walker (@spwalker2016) on Apr 14, 2018 at 6:06pm PDT

This site has been described as a mini Machu Picchu, and one can see why. Its name means “Forever Young” in Quecha, which is a reference to the perpetual greenness of the grass on the terraces, kept irrigated by clever Inca design and building. It displays many of the Inca skills with stoneworking and offers some stunning views.

We stopped at the camping spot for some lunch and then moved on towards our final destination. On the way, we had a fine view of the first section of our hike.

The zig-zag trail you can see on the right-hand slope is what we walked up to get to Wiñay Wayna.

About 90 minutes after leaving Wiñay Wayna, we were getting very near to the Sun Gate, whence you get the Famous View. But there are a couple of obstacles you have to overcome beforehand. First is a 53-step, very steep, section of the trail. Alex used this as an opportunity to show off

A post shared by Steve Walker (@spwalker2016) on Apr 16, 2018 at 4:11pm PDT

doing it in 13 seconds (his record is 12 seconds, but he’s a young thing and likes mountaineering and stuff like that). And then, almost immediately, there’s the final pull up to the Sun Gate.

And then……there you are. The View.

Is it me, or is this a bit of an anti-climax? Seeing this, I felt the same way as I had on first seeing Stonehenge, which I had expected to be a massive, towering edifice, but which turned out to be, well, just a group of stones in the middle of a large open space. Perhaps my vision isn’t good enough to pick out the detail, but I found that as we got closer there were many more rewarding views of the site, where you could actually begin to understand the phenomenal complexity of what had been achieved by the Incas.

We carried on to the site,

and its true breath-taking nature became ever clearer as we got nearer.

A post shared by Steve Walker (@spwalker2016) on Apr 14, 2018 at 6:26pm PDT

And getting on to the site itself gives some awe-inspiring views

as well as some less awe-inspiring, but quite charming, as there are llamas on the site.

Alex is as knowledgeable about Machu Picchu as only someone with a passion for a topic can be, and he had all sorts of fascinating insights into the history and culture of the place as well as its astonishing architecture.

We took a bit of a break at this point, as it was late on in the afternoon (which was good, as it meant the site was not crowded), so we took the (very bumpy, bouncy, twisty, turny, 10km) bus ride down to Machu Picchu village (also called Aguas Calientes) for the evening. Jane and I stayed at another splendid Inkaterra hotel, the Inkaterra Machu Picchu Pueblo. This is a resort-style hotel at the eastern end of the village and it shares the same high-quality brand values as its sister location in Urubamba, except the Pisco Sours are even better.

The next day, the site was much more crowded (this platform was empty when we were there the day before)

but it wasn’t too intolerable. The second day’s visit provided some more insights into the details (as well as some more great views)

A lot of work goes into maintining the site, with workmen removing vegetation from the stonework

and even abseiling down the walls to keep them in good shape.

The vast scope of the terracing becomes clear as you walk around

and the trademark Inca Trapezoid shape can be seen everywhere.

The temple part of the site has a formal entrance gate

alongside which can be seen the demarcation line between the religious part and the farming part of the site.

There are ceremonial chambers with specially shaped stones for sacrifical purposes (llamas got a raw deal, particuarly black ones, which were regarded as being extra lucky in sacrifice). this is the Temple of the Sun

and this is the Temple of the Condor.

note the special runnels in the sacrifical stone for the blood to run off in a controlled way.

The site has extensive living quarters, some for farmers, some for noble and religious leaders,

and some roofing has been reconstructed, albeit using eucalyptus wood instead of bamboo to support the thatching.

Note the rope ties and pegs used to hold things in place.

And, all over the site, there is evidence of the astonishing stoneworking abilities of the Incas, with intricate interlocking patterns, and even rounding in the corners.

The quality and robustness of the Inca stonework is shown in its resistance to earthquake damage. This is not universal, though.

This is a temple chamber (you can tell by the niches, which were used to contain idols) that one might think had suffered earthquake damage. However, there’s a photo from 1911 – well before recent and serious earthquakes – which shows this damage, and it’s now widely accepted that it was caused by dynamiting in creation of the local railway. This is, of course, a shame, and it’s good to see that the authorities are taking some steps to control access and to maintain the site. However, one gets the sad impression from talking to guides and others that there are urgent investments needed which are unlikely to be made. One can only hope that common sense reigns so that the wonders of Machu Picchu are preserved for future generations to marvel at.