Spanish Team Discovers Lost Ruins of Inca Guerrillas

posted on October 24th, 2015 in Andes Mountains, Incas, Recent Discoveries

Vilcabamba Ruins

Map of the Inca Empire and location of discovery

A team of Spanish explorers and scientists, using satellite imagery, discovered in mid-September a previously unknown Inca site some 150 miles north of Cusco. Using computer imaging software, the expedition reached a mountain top and discovered some 50 structures and an Incan cemetery complete with skeletal remains. In addition, near the summit, the team discovered structures that resemble those involved in human sacrifice, or capacocha, found elsewhere in the Andes. According to the team, it’s possible that the site was used by Incas after the initial conquest of the Inca Empire by Francisco Pizarro, during the period of nearly forty years when a rump empire of Inca guerrillas existed in the Vilcabamba area. In 1572, the Spaniards invaded Vilcabamba, captured the final Inca emperor, and beheaded him in the main square in Cusco.

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A Visit to La Catedral, Pablo Escobar’s Prison (Part 1)

posted on October 3rd, 2015 in Colombia, Life and Death in the Andes (New Book), Pablo Escobar

La Catedral Pablo Escobar Prison

La Catedral Prison

From my travel journal: Medellín, Antioquia

I met Pablo Ochoa—not the Colombian drug king, but the name of my cab driver—sitting in the fifth cab in a long line of cabs in Envigado, a suburb of Medellin where Pablo Escobar grew up. I wanted to visit La Catedral, the prison Escobar had first built and then had spent a year and a half in, located about an hour up a green mountainside. The first driver shook his head and said he needed a larger cab. The second shook his head and said it was too far and that the road was narrow and bad. The third and fourth drivers said the same. Pablo—59 years old with gray hair and intense, dark eyes—looked me over suspiciously and nodded.

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