Mama Sarpay: Part 2

The Apurimac River

All water was in some way sacred to the Incas and, what is more, they were very reverential towards landscapes. A Spanish priest and chronicler called Bernabé Cobo remarked that “there was not a shrine, large or small, whether it be a stream, a spring, a hill, or any other place of veneration, for which attendants and caretakers were not designated.”

Two rivers were particularly sacred to the Incas — the Apurimac and the Urubamba. They run one either side of Cusco and both eventually flow into the mighty Amazon River. Nowadays, there’s a region in…