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Updated: June 19, 2025
The tambos, or road-side inns, we stopped at were mostly huts of the rudest kind, with mud walls and floors, kept by Indians, and dirty in the extreme. The entertainment provided for us was boiled chicken and potato-soup, called in the mountains locro. Wooden spoons were served to enable us to ladle up the soup, but our fingers had to be used for the chicken, instead of knives and forks.
All along these highways the 'tambos, or inns, were erected at a distance of ten or twelve miles from each other, and some of them were on an extensive scale, consisting of a fortress and barracks surrounded by a stone parapet. These were evidently intended as a shelter for the Imperial armies when on the march.
Drop in anywhere there is a vacant bed and you are perfectly at home. There is the shower-bath, the ice-water, the veranda rocker you knew exactly what was coming to you, just what kind of bed, just what vegetables you would be served at dinner. It reminds one of the Inca system of providing a home for every citizen, and tambos along the way if he must travel. But it IS the same meal.
This is a caravanserai, destined for lodging travellers; and, as we often experienced, infinitely valuable in a country where the name of an inn is still unknown. The Casas del Rey are to be found in all the Spanish colonies, and may be deemed an imitation of the tambos of Peru, which were established in conformity with the laws of Manco Capac.
The curaca of the Indian town where Pizarro now arrived, received him with kindness and hospitality, and the troops were quartered as usual in one of the royal tambos or caravansaries, which were found in all the principal places.12 Yet the Spaniards saw no signs of their approach to the royal encampment, though more time had already elapsed than was originally allowed for reaching it.
All along these highways, caravansaries, or tambos, as they were called, were erected, at the distance of ten or twelve miles from each other, for the accommodation, more particularly, of the Inca and his suite, and those who journeyed on the public business. There were few other travellers in Peru.
Riding up to the hut, our mules were unloaded, and our hammocks and the packages were taken inside. It was a large shed, far better built than many of the tambos we had stopped at, with thick walls and roof to protect the bark from the effects of the weather. It was already about half full of bundles of this valuable commodity.
Worth and Captain Ward, of the Wonder, greeted Koho, but Worth frowned at sight of the Snider, for it was one of his tambos that no visiting bushman should carry a weapon on the plantation. Rifles had a nasty way of going off at the hip under such circumstances. The manager clapped his hands, and a black house-boy, recruited from San Cristobal, came running.
This people was anciently conquered by the Peruvians, after having taken possession of the northern part of Chili; and on the road across the Andes from Cujo to Chili, there still are some small stone buildings, or tambos, which had been erected for the accommodation of the Peruvian officers and messengers.
It was a post to be coveted by no one, if, as is asserted, a fall was punished by death.37 They travelled with ease and expedition, halting at the tambos, or inns, erected by government along the route, and occasionally at the royal palaces, which in the great towns afforded ample accommodations to the whole of the monarch's retinue.
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