Raqchi, templo de Wiracocha

This guide to the temple of Wiracocha at Raqchi, near Cusco, opens with a single standing column, one of twenty-two that once carried a vast roof, and works backward to the legend behind the site. Local memory names it Cacha, where a ragged stranger was met with spears and stones by the Canas people, and where scorched rock nearby is said to mark what came next. The guide weighs that story against a geologist's more mundane explanation involving the Kinsachata volcano, then follows how the Inca later rebuilt a shrine on the spot into one of their empire's largest roofed buildings. It's a story about a god the locals attacked, and generations spent trying to make amends.