The Marcahuasi "Hut"

Winding back the clock the Hut of Daniel Ruzo, continues waiting for us. We must preserve it!

On the Marcahuasi plateau there are three places that the tourists prefer to camp: the Amphitheatre (the Marcahuasi Hotel), the Hut (where the difference between truth and mystery often confuses us), and much further to the south of the plateau at the Fortress, for its silence and enchantment.

The Hut, where Daniel Ruzo lived, wrote and cooked up his hypothesis about Marcahuasi. He spent many years next to the Monument to Humanity, contemplating the many faces, the shadows, and the shouts. With this sculpture he made this place known throughout Peru and the rest of the world.

Every tourist in Marcahuasi wants to have the perfect photo, unique and exclusive. The Monument to Humanity gives you this opportunity.

We can agree with some or all that Ruzo said about this place, but what is certain is that thanks to his diffusion of information about Marcahuasi many tourists now arrive here. That is a major recognition of his investigation here.

The Hut was constructed in a strategic place on the plateau. Here you find a large quantity of sculptures, such as the Monument to Humanity with its many faces, the Llama, the Chinaman, the Hippo, the Lion, the Condors, the Tortoise, the Monkey, the Toads, the German helmet, the sacrifice table, etc.

Curios hippopotamus, protecting the Monument to Humanity; a sculpture that is often overlooked by many tourists.

In these days we continue using the Hut and it is very useful, particularly for those tourists that come up without adequate information. I've camped in the hut and nearby on my trips, full of anecdotes and unique experiences, and besides to have the company of the Monument to Humanity is a significant privilege.

When there is no space to sleep in the Hut camping nearby is a good choice.

The Hut brings many memories of Daniel Ruzo, hiding his mysteries and confusing the tourist. This is another world with its own history, its ruins, sacrifices, your discoveries, the night and the strange revelations. This is how you find yourself in the Hut.

Everything found in Marcahuasi are links between man and nature. These ruins are a memory, connecting the past with the present.

A visit to the Hut doesn't take long, an exclamation, a stare when arriving and upon leaving, but the impression and the satisfaction of having seen it will last with you for the rest of your life. Here you find the present, here is the truth, and where you find what you want to find ...

When you camp in the Hut you can take a free yet imaginary trip to the world of Daniel Ruzo, to the enchantment that he had with Marcahuasi, making him construct the Hut and spending days, nights, and indeed years solitary with the cold, the rocks and the mystery. In the Hut we live an unexplainable triangle between the ascent, the people and the sculptures. Sufficient to not deny the reality that here we started loving Marcahuasi. Everybody gives in here, like in the case of the singer-songwriter Jaime Franco Bazo who sung "The Hut, you are magic, mystic, and mysterious ..."

"Green, blue. Red" or so said some tourists at four in the morning. I also saw these circles of colours, but at 6 in the morning and also many years later. I invite you to camp here ...

When we find ourselves at the Cross, placed here by the people of San Pedro de Casta, a place from where we can see the routes we could take to return, the long route and the short route, the road going to San Pedro de Casta, and indeed going on from there. Here we remember everything, the ascent we made, we feel a type of champion for everything we've done and lived. At these beautiful altitudes we take amazing photos, where the air doesn't intimidate us, and the scenery leaves us delirious with such beauty.

This scenery is part of the adventure, beautiful memories, to love and believe in the sacred mountain.

The Hut is a crucible of eternal memories, of undisturbed questions, where you can't distinguish the limits of the history and the myths, because here you find enigmatic knots that hold us captive, just like they did with the pioneer Daniel Ruzo.

The best parts of every trip are the emotions that we experience. To be in this place, next to the cross, is like having a new spark about what Marcahuasi is and what it gives us.

Read the original post (in Spanish)
Next Post: Interview of Peter Schneider
Photos : John Ysrael Guevara

Graffiti in Marcahuasi

The scrawl that you can find on the rocks at Marcahuasi made by some visitors is an unrepairable damage. These "hight altitude graffiti artists" write their name in the rocks confusing the place with the streets of their city. This vandalism threatens the sculptures and nobody does anything to protect them.

Rock scrawled on by modern high altitude graffiti artists. How do we clean this? It's unrepairable.

This ugly fondness of painting and scratching the rocks isn't recent, because in the 80's when I went up for the first time I found lost names compromised in the process of destruction of the rocks, that at one point seemed to be the names of the calls of Marcahuasi.

Man always wants to leave something permanent wherever he goes and the petroglyphs, geoglyphs and pictographs are strange techniques that were used and show us, from the dawn of time. If the ancient graffiti artist represented what they saw and lived, the youth of today demonstrate something more complicated, for the difficult times that we live and reveal our frustrations and rejection. However this does not give us license to destroy Marcahuasi.

This image is a petroglyph, a sign or warning of something, perhaps the "missing link".

The lovers of the sacred mountain ought to get involved in caring for nature, because the rocks cannot talk or protest about the pseudo-graffiti artists. We ought to respect their petrified silence because Marcahuasi is an eternal presence.

The images recorded in the rocks of Marcahuasi, through the petroglyphs, geoglyphs and pictographs are messages from a generation that is signalling something to us. Perhaps these ancient expressions were the graffiti of ancient man.

The names recorded in the rocks of Marcahuasi could be memories of some love, a date with the mountain, a demonstration of our identity, or some rebellion for not finding what we wanted, or even some odyssey that was lived. No matter which of these is the real experience behind the graffiti, it is a testimony that they came here.

The mystical cross, a pictograph recorded using some strange pigment. What is the message?

The constant threats that the rocks of Marcahuasi suffer. The same tourists with their disorganised visits, scrawling, the rubbish, and the cruellest of all, the inclemencies of the weather. Every time we go to Marcahuasi we are indebted for the destruction that we cause. We enjoy the bonfires, but the unsupportable bombard not only destroys the rocks but also pollutes the legends and mystery of Marcahuasi.

"The dance of the octopus". An ancient expression, a mystic ritual. There is a free pass to write on the rocks, and destroy them, but who can save them from this scrawled beating? How do we repair the damage? How to save this natural marvel? How to sow a seed in the heart of the visitor of a love for Marcahuasi. I feel like a disabled person in this respect. Help me to recover from this petrified shock.

If painting, scratching and recording on the rocks was and is a human instinct, and if ancient man used it to communicate with his gods, why does man of today do it?


Read the original post (in Spanish)

Next Post: The "hut" of Daniel Ruzo
Photos : John Ysrael Guevara

I want to return ...

He wasn't an envoy sent by Tony Blair, nor by Prince Charles, and not even a businessman from Chelsea, or from those rock dinosaurs Rod Stewart or Paul McCartney. Not even an anglican missionary. Andy Jefferson is a typical Englishman that arrived in Peru in July 2010, not only to see Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca, Colca, Nazca, Chan Chan, and Huaraz, but also especially to visit Marcahuasi.

Andy Jefferson - "The Lord" 

We go to Marcahuasi, with the same motivation as always, but the journey is a series of surprises. The silence of Andy, was like some of the immense abysses that we travel past, or like the monotonous noise of the buses that took us there. I don't know if he had his emotions imprisoned, but from his mouth we had no expression of complaint or euphoria. I only know that the heat of the sacred mountain grew more and more, and the adventurers rucksack he brought from England was full of questions for this meeting in Marcahuasi.

San Pedro Casta lives the national holidays to the rhythm of the arrival of the tourists, the square full of backpackers, similarly the tourist office, and the loudspeakers repeated : "Please community, we need 2 horses, and 4 donkeys ..."

I see no red bus! There's no Big Ben around here! Where am I ? 
No Andy, you're in San Pedro de Casta we told him "Ah, ok, ok!" 

Andy, in one glance, took in and grasped this madness of the call to Marcahuasi. But he continued silent, not asking anything, just accepting what was passing around him, cold like the bitter winters of his land, and cold of another sort was waiting for us in the amphitheatre.

We left the town very late, because Ysrael and Carlos wanted it like this! [editor : because they arrived late]. The route varied with everything that it handed to us ... the route of portachuelo (long track). Andy took the lead, and nobody in the group passed him, his pains, his tiredness, and his ... only he knew what. We arrived at the "marcahuasi hotel" by night, full of backpackers, full of shouting ... I don't know if it was of happiness, of pain, or of madness.

"With every experience there is suffering, and for any suffering there is something good later on". This is what Andy said when he had removed the burden of the ascent.

The next day, between jokes and laughs, we prepared the "brunch", and then we headed to the ruins of Huacracocha and the hut, where the Monument to Humanity waited for us. A sculpture that silenced Andy even more, his appreciation was censured; I think he asked and they responded in silence.

He said, "Uuuuuuhhhh, y ..." and then stayed quiet, petrified like the shout of this mysterious cyclops. 

Then we walked via the Lake of Huacracocha and the cliffs, cliffs that filled Andy with fear, like an English joke ... nobody understands it ... perhaps in his country they remember that cliffs are a place to fill you full of emotions and questions.

"Marcahuasi is different for everybody. It's a place of discovery" (Andy) We returned to the amphitheatre tired, thirsty and hungry. We cooked rice, with onion and tuna ... and also cooked our ideas and theories of what is, and was, Marcahuasi.

When the night invades the amphitheatre, when the inner warming starts to have an effect, the bonfires start to surrender to the cold, Andy, forgetting for an instant his origins, and we are reminded of Jose Antonio, Jose Antonio of the beautiful Chabuca Granda, and we finish the night off with a salsa of Grupo Niche, singing and dancing ... that, that's it, cheers Andy. That is the westerner we wanted to see ...

"I liked spending a night in the amphitheatre" affirmed Andy.

We still needed to got to Cachu Cachu and the Fortress, so that's where we went. The journey was seasoned with photos and lots of enthusiasm, when we arrived at the fortress, "This is a place with significant mystery, who lived here, and why, there was sufficient defence back in the fortress, no?" For something? Andy made this immense question in that blanket of mystery and silence. This lives and hides in Marcahuasi.

We returned to the amphitheatre to recover, and spend our last night, a night full of conversation, of music and singing. There we met Marco Antonio, a friend of these altitudes, a type of free paparazzi, self-styled searcher for UFOs.

To end the trip to the sacred mountain, Andy left these reflections about San Pedro de Casta, Marcahuasi and the tourists :
- "I believe that San Pedro de Casta ought to do much much more to attract and cater for tourism, in books, and tourist guides of Marcahuasi there is very little information to see all of these sculptures, at the most appropriate time of day etc"
- "Marcahuasi, for me, has it's place with a deep mystery in its rocks and ruins ..."
- "There was a lot of rubbish left by tourists, some caring for Marcahuasi, but others not. Some with a lack of respect for this sacred place".
- "Who can solve the insatisfaction of the tourist, the lack of information?" Asked several times on the plateau.

"Sat in the amphitheatre, if you look down, at the ground or at some point a short distance away, but not fixedly, relax yourself and your muscles, you can see air currents, or something of that form, ... only if you relax completely and let the moment take you, air currents? or something similar. The important thing is I saw them, and felt it". 

Our English medium affirmed it like this. Must be true, no? 

Andy returned to his country on the 17th of September, perhaps missing his steak with "English-style egg" (half raw) [editor : a peruvian belief that people in England eat half cooked eggs, God knows where they got that idea], but left with the promise to return and perhaps compromise himself with some of his reflections. In Marcahuasi, the law of giving and receiving is important. Andy, that the sacred mountain has captivated you with its mysteries, and they will accompany you, as Marcahuasi demands.

"I feel nostalgic for Marcahuasi - I want to return"

You have to look at both sides of the equation; the national tourists, and the foreign tourists. Of the believers and the non-believers of the Marcahuasi mystery. Of those that go up a single time, and those that return continually. Andy's visit, like that of many others that came or will come from afar, is valient, and these are the primary free diffusors of the sacred mountains significance. For that it's great to share our knowledge of Marcahuasi, and with all of those that arrive at the plateau, to not only admire it, but also to make it your own. It's the case of Patricio Marambio (Chile), Alan Mathew (USA), Peter Schneider (Switzerland), and many others that have no problem in identifiy themselves with Marcahuasi.

Thanks Andy Jefferson, for the diffusion that you do for Marcahuasi, and for allowing me to write of your visit, of many silences, and surprises; surprises for the delight of this backpacker world of Marcahuasi.

Photos from the experience
-Andy and the mystical cross

"Here on the mystical cross I felt a tremble en my hands - there was something - I'm sure of it -" said Andy, after the ritual of concentration and meditation.

"There are many interesting places, especially the Monument to Humanity, the fortress, the chulpas and the lake of Cachu Cachu" the English lord emphasized.

"Another hot drink?" - "Yes, thanks..." replied andy - "It's Marcahuasi tea" -replied Marco Antonio. "Ok, it's good, just like the tea from my country" - said Andy.


-Andy and Carlos ... washing plates with the water ....

"Save the water Andy, or do you want to go down and bring more back up again?" - advised Carlos, "For me that wouldn't be a problem, whereas for you, I think it may be more difficult gordito..."


- Andy and the Huacracocha ruins ...

The chulpa ruins of this necropolis of Huacracocha were something that he liked a lot, but demanded their preservation, and more respect from those who visit them.


Next Post: Graffiti in Marcahuasi
Photos: John Ysrael Guevara