Inca Trails

There's some rambling on about Indian Trails on this blog of mine. You can plug in that term in the search field and find me raving about them, the stone firebreaks on both sides of the main trails sometimes pictured by my own photos, sometimes where I've doodled upon some aerial photography from the 1934  or 1965, as well as some that have survived the bulldozers and other heavy machinery.

There's some that other people tell you about:

from: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2011/03/signs-footpaths-and-roads-paleo-to.html

And I've got much more, like roads still used: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2012/11/indian-trailcolonial-fence.html  

And some not used anymore: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2011/11/highfield-zigzag-rows.html

But this image of an Inca Road kinda got to me yesterday because it looks "familiar:"

(from: http://www.peruforless.com/newsletter/news-september-2008-peru-inca-road.php)

Below is another from the same source - and that terracing thing is sort of familiar to me too. A different place in the world, a different group of Native People but still something familiar about it...

http://www.peruforless.com/images/photos/inca-trail/inca-trail4.jpg

Two original drawings:

 (above from 1990 something and the one below from 2011)

Anyway, you can be one of a lucky 500 people per year to get a permit to hike the Inca Trail into Machu Pichu. And you might find a rock pile or two or ten that looks like a modern "stone balancer pile," as I've just decided to call them:

And possibly some ancient ones with "new additions:"

(There are many photos of this particular pile above but what got me this morning was the photo below:)

There's some rather familiar stuff going on there.

Similar things could be found here in "The East" and I've seen similar photos from "The West" (Thank you, Alyssa) of this place that was called Turtle Island for a long, long time...

Here's another:

And a crop that I kinda filtered to try to capture the nature of that stone wall:

So thanks Hol, who ever you are, for taking a couple of photos of some rocks at a place I'll probably never go and posting them up at:  http://holsadventuresouthamerica.blogspot.com/2011/07/lares-trek-we-survived-just.html