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We headed directly into the teeth of the Horn. Cape Horn, the
southernmost tip of South America, where the raw power of the
Atlantic and Pacific square off in a never-ending battle of watery
domination. The insufferable howling winds, the monstrous
waves white with drunken foam, the icy squalls that numb you
to the bone. And the ice, oh lord the ice! It’s the only place on
earth where all the lies about the weather are true.
Falkland Islands
Ushuaia
After rounding the Horn, most cruise ships don’t go directly west
into the Pacific, but go northward through the channels and
passageways of Tierra del Fuego, eventually passing through
the Strait of Magellan, the body of water which separates the
South American continent to the north from the Tierra del Fuego
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After arriving in Lima and strolling around the central plaza and
soaking up enough Spanish baroque cathedrals to last a lifetime,
we took a plane ride over the Andes to the ancient Inca capital
of Cuzco. Flying to Cuzco is an experience in itself. You rise to
30,000 feet to pierce the clouds, cross over sharp-peaked, snow-
covered Andean mountains, then suddenly below you see brown
dirt, green fields, and terraced farms with rows and rows of (you
guessed it) potatoes. Then the plane lands, and you step out on
the tarmac and realize you are out of breath. You are at 11,800
feet above sea level.
Five hundred years ago, Cuzco was the center of the earth for
the Inca Empire which ran 3,000 miles along the Andean spine
from what is now Columbia all the way to central Chile, which is
the Inca word for end-of-the-earth. (We saw a lot of end-of-the-
earths on this trip.) Then came 1532 and the arrival of
Francisco Pizarro. He had fewer than 200 men, but with the help
of horses (never seen by the Incas), crude guns, an Inca civil
war, small pox, shrewdness, and just dumb luck, seized
everything of value and subjugated the entire Inca Empire of 10
million people. (The conquistadors viewed the Incas as
barbarians for their practice of human sacrifice, and preferred to
shed blood in the more traditional European manner of warfare
and enslavement.)
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Machu Picchu
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