fact a load of cobblers. What this fraud actually did was pay a local guy a pittance to tell him where it was, and then basically just walked up there. When he arrived, there were already two families living in the ruins and farming the area around it!! He then reported his “discovery” back to the Western world, and was credited as the person who found it. There is a significant amount of bitterness among the local people about this guy, who then returned with a bunch of “experts” and proceeded to name all the building as they saw fit. So on the official map there’s a building called “The Guard House”, even though there were never any guards there; The Kings tomb, even though no-one was ever buried there; and the “King’s quarters”, even though no one ever slept in it!! It was a classic case of Westerners turning up and applying their values to something of which they had no knowledge whatsoever and they helped themselves to a fair few relics in the process!! This is one reason why we

didn’t want to have a guide explain everything to us, as if the truth is known, no-one really knows what the purpose of it was, and so no-one really knows what any of the buildings were for!!

Rant over, We walked just fast enough through the various parts of the ruins to keep ahead of the Inca Trail tour groups, and just took the place in. The location of the ruins is what really makes this place so special, set on a small plateau atop a pinnacle shaped mountain, with huge drops back down into the valley on both sides. Truth be told, if it wasn’t located where it was, it would be just another set of ruins which would not be considered all that special. In fact really, most of the ruined buildings look like stone cottages from the Yorkshire Dales with their roofs missing!! That said though, it is where it is, and it is really an astonishing place, and Inca terraces are impressive wherever they