|
|
|
The journey
A journey almost entirely alone, along the world’s remotest roads, meeting history face to face among people living an Iron Age life in windowless stone huts, and speaking the ancient Quechua language of the Incas.
|
|
 |
John's first steps took him across the Equator in northern Ecuador, then down the Avenue of the Volcanoes,
and a night-time attempt to climb the world’s highest active volcano,
Cotopaxi. |
| Following Inca roads, he walked breathlessly over snowy passes
at 15,000 feet, passing by moonlight over lunar landscapes of bare limestone.
For five months, John seldom slept below 10,000 feet, walking 700 miles of a
2,000 mile exploration of the world’s longest mountain range. |
|
|
He followed the
last journey of the Inca Atahualpa, to his death at Cajamarca, and that of the
conquistadors from the coast to the golden temples of the capital, Cuzco.
Final turns towards home took him to the desert lines of Nazca via the mountain citadel of
Machu Picchu. |
The story
Late on a November afternoon in 1532 a Spanish hand pulled an Inca prince unharmed from the throne on which he had been carried to meet a group of strangers presenting themselves as ambassadors of a foreign king. The moment he fell captive, the empire was effectively in the hands of Francisco Pizarro, an illiterate peasant from Spain. He still had no idea that one of the greatest treasure hoards in history was waiting for him, temples lined with silver and gold plate.
I still think this is the greatest moment of pure drama in all history. I wanted to visit the theatre where it happened and explore the Sierra:- the highland zone that runs from Southern Colombia, through Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia into Chile. To know the land properly, I wanted to travel much of it on foot.
|
|
|
