Dominic Sandbrook

So Pizarro sends his brother Hernando to this shrine at Pachacamac on the coast.

And it's good for us that he did because some of the guys that went with Hernando wrote these fantastic memoirs of the conquest.

So a guy called Miguel de Estete.

And they write these really, there's some of the first kind of really lyrical descriptions of the South American landscape.

they obviously not been to somerset in january clearly not so um they go to the sanctuary and estete said it was basically the top of an adobe pyramid and he was very underwhelmed by it he said it was very dark and it didn't smell very pleasant a very small rough cavern seeing the filth and mockery of the idol we went out to ask why they thought highly of something so dirty and ugly

And actually, there was no treasure there at all.

If there was any treasure, the priests had hidden it.

And the Spanish, they just smashed the whole place up.

And is there a universal flood?

No, not at all.

So Hernando then sets off back to Cajamarca.

And actually, the distances in this story are absolutely mad.

So Hernando has just traveled 800 miles.

He's got 800 miles to go back.

And he's going back to Cajamarca.

And then he discovers that there's a place called Xauxa.

Atahualpa's commander-in-chief, this guy Chalcuchima, is blocking the mountain road with about 35,000 men.

Now, Chalcuchima is the most experienced of all Atahualpa's generals.

He's basically the sort of the grizzled veteran character in a sort of fantasy novel or something.

I served your father, you know, that kind of thing.