The legend says: On the death of the last Inca emperor Atahualpa at the hands of the Spanish Conquistadors, the Inca queen gave orders for the tunnel entrances to be sealed forever, before she herself committed suicide. Numerous pack trains of gold and jewels were hastily concealed, some it is said thrown into lakes, like the great gold chain which disappeared forever.
I cast me eyes over the shelves of obscure books, looking for something to catch my interest. I found it in a corner, in a glass-fronted bookcase. A thick tome called "Isis Unveiled" by H.P.Blavatsky. Mostly full of obscure and hard to follow texts, one section however caught my attention and I read as follows:
"Going southward from Lima, by water, we reached a point near Arica at sunset, and were struck by the appearance of an enormous rock, nearly perpendicular; which stood in mournful solitude on the shore, apart from the range of the Andes. It was the tomb of the Incas. As the last rays of the setting sun strike the face of the rock, one can make out, with an ordinary opera-glass, some curious hieroglyphics inscribed on the volcanic surface.
When
Among the latter was one in the neighbourhood of
Not far from this spot stand three separate peaks which form a curious triangle; they are included in the chain of the
There is no other access to the
H.P.Blavatsky was the daughter of a Russian princess or so the introduction to her book tells us, and took her name from the army colonel she married, although she separated soon afterwards and devoted the rest of her life to travelling the world and searching out lost secrets, her ultimate work being "The Secret Doctrine" published in several volumes.
But if we disregard Wilkin’s map and start again, heading eastwards from
Now to a race of master-surveyors, builders of stone cities, canals and roads spanning thousands of miles, such a perfect triangle of mountains would surely be an irresistible landmark for a tunnel entrance. Especially when one also learns that the eastern peak of the three is Nevado Sajama - the highest peak in
Today the region around
Ancient legends indicate that mysterious men of a pastoral race and impassive faces called Aymaras, who lived on the banks of
And at
It seems on this point at least Blavatsky was correct, since she said at the base of the rock were found to be the tombs of the Incas… And if we proceed south in the direction she indicated, there is indeed a triangle of mountains near the River Loa which might well contain the entrance to the southern end of the tunnel.
This site up to now has seemed somewhat elusive, but it's location is more logical than that which we would arrive at by pure guesswork. Follow the Rio Loa upstream to it's source and you come to the triangle of mountains. Bordering on the Salar de Ascotan, these mountains contain modern mining operations centered around a peak known as Tres Monos - "The Three Monkeys."
On the death of the last Inca emperor Atahualpa at the hands of the Spanish Conquistadors, the Inca queen gave orders for the tunnel entrances to be sealed forever, before she herself committed suicide. Numerous pack trains of gold and jewels were hastily concealed, some it is said thrown into lakes, like the great gold chain which disappeared forever. Some sealed up in the tunnel system to be lost forever.
Perhaps the Tres Monos - or "Three monkeys" are the guardians of the tunnel entrance, keeping their well known motto... "See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil..."
Kemo D. (a.k.a. no.7)