One Way United

A giant important Incan city, larger than Machu Picchu, was discovered in 1824 but remained hidden and forgotten in the jungle until 1993 when restoration efforts began.  Today, only 30% of the ruins has been cleared while 70% remains engulfed by the dense jungle. 

This ruin is in so many ways the anti-Machu Picchu.  There are only roughly 20 people that visit this site per day compared to the thousands per day that flock to the tourist magnet of Machu Picchu.  Choquekiraw is a place that is still being discovered.  As recently as two years ago, terraces were found below the main ruins sporting white stoned llamas that were built into the terrace walls.  Fabrice and I were the first tourists ever to visit it.  This the only known site of this phenomenon in all the known ancient Incan empire.  As I visited the sites of Choquekirao, it gave me the feeling of walking through time.  We spent a whole day in the ruins just walking around and that whole time we saw maybe only a couple tourists.

However, I fear that Choquekiraw will become another Machu Picchu within the next decade.  We saw many preparations for such an event along the trail.  There was a first night camp being constructed with many buildings including a bar.  More restoration efforts are occuring everyday.  I can only imagine how beautiful this place will look when all the ruins hidden by the jungle are cleared out.  I am afraid the end result will be inevitable.  Many tourists will flock to see the ruins more beautiful than the famed Machu Picchu, maybe a road will be built, and something will be lost.  It will lose some of the mysteriousness of what remains hidden by the jungle.  It will lose the majestic tranquility.  No longer will it feel like you are walking through time, but only walking through another popular tourist attraction.  I feel so blessed to visit and revel in the purity of this place before its transformation into the next Machu Picchu.

Fabrice and I hired two of our porters from the Inca trail to take us to these ruins.  We also intended to take two horses for each of us to ride, but after the porters packed so much equipment with the anticipation of having horses, we were forced to take two more with us if we wanted the experience of riding for five days.  So our crew consisted of two porters/cookers, 4 horses, and a horse boy that came to take care of the horses.  Since both of us are traditional minimalist backpackers, it felt very strange having a whole entourage devoted simply to our five day excursion but I´m not about to complain.  The service was absolutely amazing.  The porters treated us to a fancy, tasty 3 course meal every time we ate.  A tea time was also included each day before dinner which consisted of tea, hot chocolate, crackers, cookies, wantans, and a ton of popcorn.  They even ordered the horse boy to help them prepare meals, wash dishes, and so on which we found very entertaining.  We just imagined him saying in Quechua ¨I´m only a horse boy, I don´t work on the frickin´ Incan trail!¨  We were pretty sure he despised us.

Riding horses was a great experience as this was only the third time in my life riding horses and my first time riding them for more than one day at a time.  Horseback riding is defenitely something I want to do more of as there is simply an indescribable feeling when its only you and the horse galloping on a trail in the middle of nowhere.  You and the horse blend into one being as a peacefulness overwhelms you, like that oneness was predestined. 

We arrived to Choquekiraw on the second day of our trip.  We ditched the horses at the camp below and hiked up to explore the ruins a little bit before the sun went down.  When we got to the main plaza at the top, we noticed that a television crew was there taking a lunch break or something.  Fabrice was informed before the trip started of a really amazing place below the ruins by one of the younger porters from the Inca trail.  He was dissapointed to find out it was prohibited to see as it was only for Archaelogists.  However, the dissapointment was short lived as we apparently caught a major break.  The Australian television crew had special permission to have full access to all the sites for the day and we got there permission to go down and see that place.

This place I´m talking about are the terraces with the white llamas.  A worker there took us and a guy from Holland down to the terraces.  As we walked down and talked to this guy we found out that we were the first tourists to EVER see this area.  It is normally restricted to only Archaelogists but only because the television crew had the rights for that day and gave us permission, were we able to see it.  And so, with pure luck, we became the first, of I´m sure millions of tourists to follow, to see this amazing site.  There were 22 white stoned llamas covering the terrace walls.  There are 100 terraces in this area but only parts of about 23 have been cleared out thus far.  These terraces were only discovered two years ago and there is still much work to do before it can be open to tourists.  The worker that took us down did not know when it would be opened.

That was all of the ruins we saw on the second day as we planned on setting aside the whole third day for exploring.  So the next day we saw everything.  We walked to the top of the sun temple where we were able to take some great pictures of Choquekiraw from above.  We walked up to the higher part of the ruins and I saw the tallest walls of any Incan ruins I had seen.  There was also many structures that looked like very long, random hallways.  We were very perplexed by the architecture at the top part.  After that we followed a trail through the jungle a little bit to see where it led and after realizing it probably went to some distant city, we turned around and then waited for lunch at the main plaza.  The porters met us there with lunch and then took to being tourists themselves as it was there first time in the actual ruins.  Apparently they had done the trail many times but never went up to see the actual ruins because of the entrance fee.

After lunch, we began our jungle excursion…what we like to call the Hiran Bingham experience.  Hiran Bingham was the guy who discovered Machu Picchu.  He was trekking through the jungle when he ran into a high wall, thus discovering the sun temple of Machu Picchu.  Since most of Choquekiraw remains hidden in the jungle, it´s possible to try to walk through the jungle (try is the key word) and discover Incan stone walls like they were first discovered (or perhaps discover them for the first time).  So, we began our jungle walk.  Let me tell you something, walking through the jungle is very, very hard.  Everywhere we got stuck in vines, got scrapped up from sticks, and got stabbed by plants.  There is no good way to walk through a jungle, you just go and hope to make progress.  We were rewarded by many stone walls.  Sometimes we would be walking on top of one and not even realize it.  Other times there would be one right in front of us and after a few minutes of being stuck, we would realize it was there.  It was incredible how the jungle was able to easily swallow up what once was a great Incan city.  It made me wonder what else could lurk in the vastness of the Peruvian jungles. How many ancient cities are still undiscovered?  It is amazing how the structures of such a great civilization could be lost, only because of nature.

After the jungle trek, we walked down to our camp where our porters had made us a cake.  After that we still had our regular tea time and 3 course dinner of course.  The next 2 days we spent coming back.  The last stretch of our trek, Fabrice and I raced our horses while another crazy horse carrying some of our equipment joined in.  All three horses were in full gallop neck and neck and it was an exhilirating experience.  Unfortunately, I was on the old horse and Fabrice was on the really good horse so my horse died and I watched his horse and the other horse go at it.  I eased my horse to a steady walk, taking in the experience as the horse boy ran to catch up. 

After we took a cab to the main road, we saw one more ruin as were waiting for our bus.  I only mention this because in this ruin was a boulder that had a three dimensional map of the whole Incan empire.  I had never seen anything like that before and wondered why the Incans so despised paper that they would go through all that work in carving a boulder.  Seriously though, I thought that was pretty cool.

During the bus ride back to Cusco, I reflected on my experience.  The ruins of Choquekiraw were more than just another ruin to me.  In it, I saw a place in transformation.  A place gradually turning from a forgotten city into a major tourist destination.  I saw the powerfulness of nature and how, in the end, even mighty civilizations can be forgotten, swallowed up like a grain of sand in the mighty ocean.  How many other great human achievements have been forgotten, vanishing with time?  How many other great things still lie out there never to be discovered?  There is a magic to the ruins of Choquekiraw that causes one to think like this.  Soon, many tourists will flock to this once mighty city, and the magic will disappear.  It will still be beautiful and inspirational but one will forget what the ruins were like before they were restored to greatness, that they were once just a footnote in the great vastness of the jungle.  Instead, people will see it as only another Machu Picchu. 

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