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Prologue

I STILL clearly recall one particularly cold mid-winters morning in July 1983. At the time I was just a twelve year old lad living in a small remote village south of Christchurch, New Zealand. At that time of year the sun skims over the northern horizon on the rare day it does come out at all in the long grey winters. The lucid sun is no match against the overpowering winter chill constantly blasting from the Antarctic. Although standing under the midday sun provides ample illumination, it does not provide any more warmth than the moon.

Too cold to go outside, I found a quiet corner where the icy sun was streaming through the windows to provide just a hint of warmth.

It was in that corner that I discovered a box of old comic books, ragged and yellowed with age. Clearly they had seen better days, but today they opened a doorway to a world far away from the bleak winter, I began to read them, immersing myself into the alternate reality jumping out from those frail pages.

One of those comic stories really jumped out at me for no apparent reason. The characters were sent deep into South America to find a legendary gold mine in the heart of the Andes. On their voyage of discovery, they hiked along narrow walking trails precariously perched precipitously above thundering rivers far below them whilst far above them perched jagged peaks piercing the sky at precarious heights.

Although their perilous journey almost broke their spirits, they discovered lost tribes of the Inca living in stone villages impossibly perched on mountain saddles, spurs and gullies, the architecture strictly obeying the curvature of the natural contours of the mountains which the Inca so revered. The perfection of their villages reflected their innate spiritual relationship with the mountains who they considered to be their timeless guardians. My imagination cast the culture to far greater depths than the comic story, the mountains and the culture of the lost tribes of the Inca paled the actual story of the explorers into insignificance even though they did achieve their ultimate goal of finding a lost gold mine.

Although I had read numerous comic stories in the few short hours the pallor sun shone through the window that winters day, that one story planted a seed that stuck with me for the twenty seven years it took before I would finally arrive in the sacred land of the Inca.

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