Tambomachay
Rock-cut Inca fountain with twin stone channels delivering a steady, unexplained flow year-round.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Tambomachay above Cusco follows American hydrogeologist Jerry Fairley as he tries to solve a puzzle the Inca had already solved five centuries earlier: no one has ever found the spring feeding its two carved stone channels. It walks through his fieldwork on the surrounding limestone and masonry, and what the Inca may have understood about filtering and controlling groundwater without iron tools or written mathematics. Stand at the lower platform to watch the water split evenly into its twin falls before it settles in the stone basin.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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