There are some things that I assume I’ll never have to write, but then humanity goes and disappoints me. One of those things is: Oh my God, please don’t take a shit in a sacred temple at Machu Picchu you absolute degenerates.
Yep, six tourists were recently arrested for heading into the Temple of the Sun and walking off into a restricted area. Once in the restricted area, they decided this was the perfect place to poop, as well as somehow managing to break a piece of stone off the wall and crack a part of the floor.
The regional police chief, Wilbert Leyva, has said that “The six tourists are being detained and investigated by the public ministry for the alleged crime against cultural heritage.” They could cop at least four years in prison if they’re found guilty.
Machu Picchu was built in the 1400s by the Incas, and the Temple of the Sun is a particularly holy place. Historians reckon that only priests and other high ranking Incas were ever allowed inside the Temple of the Sun, and there’s a window there that lines up perfectly with the sun during the winter solstice. Basically it’s incredibly cool and definitely not a place to poop.
Of course this isn’t the first time people have been caught being idiots at important cultural sites, and depressingly it probably won’t be the last. There was the couple who boned on the top of the Great Pyramid of Giza, the guys who were arrested after taking pictures with their butts out at Thailand’s Wat Arun, and the genius who swam across the Hoover Dam and somehow didn’t die.
I mean hell, we only closed the Uluru climb last year, and that was just defacing a cultural monument on a mass scale.
Obnoxious tourists are a pain, but if you’re the sort of person to poop in a temple, then I’m going to make a suggestion: go home.
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