Nearly 500 years after the collapse of America’s greatest empire, only one bridge remains of the Inca’s extraordinary road system, which is rebuilt with grass every year.
“I believe that since the history of mankind there has been no other tale of such grandeur as that which can be seen on this road, which passes through deep valleys and high mountains, over snowy heights, over waterfalls, through living rock and along the edges of winding torrents.”
– Pedro Cieza de León, 1548
The sound of a conch shell pierced the canyon. Two men in white wool jackets and brightly colored chullo hats placed a glowing fetus of flame on the embers of a fire still feeding on the bleeding heart of a sheep. As they raised their hands to the sky in hopes that the gods would accept the offering, Victoriano Arizapana slung a golden rope over each shoulder and walked to the edge of a cliff.
A hush fell over the sea of hatted men who parted as the 60-year-old man slowly approached the abyss. With a deep breath, Arizapana carefully lowered himself onto four tightly braided cables that stretched across the 30m crevice, each the circumference of a man’s thigh, and straddled them with his bare feet dangling over the sides. Then he poured a few drops of clear cane liquor onto each cable, whispered the names of the four mountain spirits who would decide his fate, and pushed himself off the end of the stone abutment into the enormous abyss.
Arizapana worked slowly, balancing precariously 70 feet above the rushing Apurimac River. With each advance, he reached the smaller ropes overhead to grab them from the tops of the handrails and tied them tightly to the outer cables to join them to the base like balusters. Then he leaned forward so that his torso was parallel to the four braided cables he was balancing on like a seesaw to pass the smaller ropes underneath, joining the four lower beams into a single wobbly plank.
Hawks flew beneath Arizapana’s feet and quickly returned to their nests bored into the sides of the rock wall. It was 55 degrees, and the last throes of daylight were turning the sky pink and splattering the Spanish moss hanging from the basalt wall of the canyon. As the wind picked up, the suspended structure began to swing back and forth like a giant hammock. Arizapana suddenly stopped working and grabbed onto both handrails to keep his balance, causing the loose ropes to fall from his hands and sink into the foaming river below.
In Quechua, Apurímac means “the god who speaks,” and like all apus (mountain spirits), he is a living being who needs to be fed to keep the flame of life alive. Arizapana would not be the first man to be swallowed by the river, and he knew that one wrong move now could be the difference between life and death.
As the cables continued to sway above the gorge, Arizapana remembered the words his father once told him: “Trust yourself, have faith in the apus, and don’t look down.” He reached above his head for a new rope, leaned forward so far that his face touched the swaying cables, and continued diligently fulfilling a duty the men in his family have upheld for more than 500 years: weaving the Q’eswachaka, the Inca Empire’s last rope suspension bridge.
Located at the western tip of South America, tucked between the largest rainforest on Earth (the Amazon), its driest desert (the Atacama) and the highest mountain range in the Western Hemisphere (the Andes), the Inca Empire was one of the world’s most unique civilizations. The Incas developed almost in isolation, expanding their territory from Cuzco, Peru, in the 1430s and ruling for just 100 years until the Spanish conquest of 1532. But through an ingenious system of engineering and strict organization, they managed to create the largest empire ever seen in the Americas: a sprawling civilization of two million square kilometers that stretched across parts of present-day Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina, comprising as many as 12 million people and speaking 100 languages. It was roughly ten times the size of the Aztec Empire and had twice its population. Remarkably, the Incas managed to forge this vast society without the wheel, the bow, money, iron or steel tools, draft animals capable of plowing fields, or even a written language.
Instead, one of the keys to the Incas’ rapid expansion was an extraordinary network of roads used for communication, trade, and military campaigns, known as Qhapaq Ñan (the royal road). Considered one of the greatest engineering feats of the ancient world and enthusiastically proclaimed “the most stupendous and useful work ever executed by man” by 19th-century geographer and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, the Qhapaq Ñan spanned nearly 40,000 km—roughly the circumference of the globe. It extended from Quito, Ecuador, through Santiago, Chile, along two major north-south arteries, along with more than 20 smaller routes running east-west like a giant staircase.
Second only to the Roman road system in length, the Qhapaq Ñan was in many ways even more impressive, traversing some of the most extreme geographic terrain on the planet. This historic highway linked the snow-capped peaks of the Andes at over 6,000 meters high with the steamy rainforests, arid deserts, and gaping canyons of the continent. To do so, the Incas dug massive tunnels through the mountains, lined the valleys with pristine stone pathways, and carved spiral staircases into the cliff walls. Where the land abruptly ended, they used a brilliant system of suspension bridges to leap over canyons and link their road network. But the Incas built their bridges not from metal or wood, but from grass.
At the height of the empire, an estimated 200 suspension bridges spanned the cliffs along the Qhapaq Ñan, each strong enough to support the weight of a marching army. Today, nearly 500 years after the fall of the Inca Empire, only one bridge remains, hanging over the Apurímac River near the 500-person village of Huinchiri in Peru’s southern highlands. In the past, each Inca bridge was overseen by a bridge master (chakacamayoc), who was responsible for protecting and repairing it. Today, the last Inca bridge is overseen by the last living Inca bridge master: Arizapana, the last in an unbroken line of chakacamayocs that he says stretches back to the Incas, like a braided rope.
Arizapana uses the same method to build and repair the Q’eswachaka as his ancestors did half a millennium ago, meaning the bridge only lasts a year and needs to be constantly rebuilt to keep from collapsing. Weaving enough grass to make a 30-meter suspension bridge is labor-intensive. So every year in the second week of June, 1,100 people from four surrounding communities living at over 3,600 meters above sea level gather to cut, braid, and transform leaves of ichu (Peruvian feather grass) into golden spirals as strong as steel. For three days straight, Arizapana oversees every aspect of the bridge’s construction, from measuring the length of its cables and crossbeams to the thickness of its handrails. After the cables have been strung to the edge of the rocky canyon and carefully placed by crews working on opposite sides of the river, the villagers cut away the old, warped bridge, leaving the entirely natural structure to collapse into the Apurímac and slowly decay.
Then, when the time is right, Arizapana murmurs a blessing to Pachamama (Mother Earth) and defends this sacred expression of the Inca’s bond with nature by taking a leap of faith that his ancestors, community, and gods have commanded him to do.
