Having attended a talk by the famous explorer John Hemming at the Parabola Arts Centre in Cheltenham as part of the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Sunday I was inspired to write a blog.
Being chairman of the Anglo-Peruvian society, famous author of the Conquest of the Incas and once a director and secretary of the Royal Geographic society John Hemming is a real inspirationalist and fascinating gentleman.
During the talk he spoke about Inca Masonry which was absolutely fascinating and took me back to my trips to the south of Peru to sites such as Sacsayhuaman and Korikancha.
In addition he briefly covered new interpretation of sites and recent discoveries which I found incredibly interesting as to the new theories of the purposes of sites such as Machu Picchu, Choquequirao and Pisac were royal estates for Pachacuti who transformed the Inca empire in Cuzco and his sons.
John Hemming highlighted Chinchero, Raqchi and Vilnacota (Sacred Valley of the Incas as his personal favourites and mentioned the work of american archaeologist and newspaper editor George Squier.
I queued on his book signing for the release of his 2010 book Monuments of the Incas and we spoke about my trip to the North of Peru as it turned out I was following in his recent footsteps in April on my recent trip to Peru.
Shortly Vincent Lee archaelogist and author shall be travelling to meet up with John Hemming and Hugh Thomson author and explorer famous for the White Rock who is leading a trip for Steppes to Espiritu Pampa next September to celebrate the centenary of Hiram Binghams discovery of Machu Picchu.
A week prior to the talk whilst leaving Peru it was hot off the press in Peruvian newspapers that Huayna Picchu is being excavated again as they have just found a phenomenally large area which has just been discovered, thought to be the storage areas and just in time for Hiram Bingham's centenary in 2011.
Contact Emma to discuss a trip to Peru or regarding Hugh Thomson's Espiritu Pampa trip September 2011. We have more centenary trip ideas which I am presently working upon....