Cachi, Salta, Argentina (far NW)

25:00S   66:10W   2210masl     4hrs wait for a car + 3hrs hitchhike N from Angastaco

Cachi is a lovely mountain village under the snowclad 6300m Nevado de Cachi. There are some good walks up the pretty valleys and to pre-hispanic ruins, almost all of which were occupied by the Incas. The Cachi archaelogical museum is excellent, and (tired of the new generation of pro-Inca, anti-Spanish sentiments currently popular in the tourism industry in Perù) it was with quite some glee that I read the Cachi museum`s description of the Incas as conquistadors. I`m a fan of the Incas, but any accusation you may wish to make against the spanish, should also equally be applied to the Incas - both were seeking gold and silver and an expansion of their empires with what is now popularly regarded as inadequate respect for the "primitive"  cultures that stood in their way. Frankly, the spanish were often more tolerant and considerate, and to call the battle between Pizarro`s 170 conquistadors and the 20,000 Cuenca Incas (who, by the way, had just ransacked Cuzco in an Empire takeover) in the Spanish Conquest of Perù a "massacre" is unlikely to lend much credibility to the intellectual capacity of our current generation. It should have been a Spike Milligan moment (¨There we were, 6 against 1000, and boy, did we make mince meat of the six¨), but Pizarro outsmarted his overconfident conspirers. Poetic justice always wins in the end, and this generation`s need to impose guilt on our British or Spanish ancestors will no doubt be repaid by some future generation. Think before you cast more nasturtiums, and listen to the words of the great: ¨Judge not, lest you, yourselves, be judged"!