Follow the Journey

This weekend we got the awesome opportunity to visit the ancient Sacred Valley. The place is brimming with visual history in the form of ruins.

We left in a private bus around 9 in the morning on Saturday. Our first Incan destination was Moray. Moray consists of circular terrace ruins with a mystery surrounding their purpose. Some suppose that it was used as a lab to test out terrace-growing techniques because while they resemble the agricultural terraces found across the Incan empire, they are much more concentrated. Each terrace is its own climate and has its own set of crops – hence the thought that it might have been a lab. Who knows?

We plunged down the tall Incan-style floating stairs to the bottom – no easy task. However, some still had energy to ponder other possible uses for the circles. The most popular explanation, backed by ¨empirical¨ evidence, was that it was a Roman style amphitheater used for gladiator battles with an Incan twist. Since the suggestion received a lot of support, the believers decided to create a reenactment. From there, support dwindled and we made our made up the floating stairs (and we thought going down was hard).

After reaching the top, we piled back in the bus and set off for Ollataytambo. The small city consists of many of the same streets from back in the time of the Incas. We started our afternoon out (after lunch at Heart´s Cafe, really good cause and equally good food, check it out: www.heartscafe.org) with a tour of the town. This is the best place to see Incan city planning in all of Peru. We got to see a square that has been preserved in its original form from Incan times. There is only one entrance into the block and many houses around the perimeter. The house that we toured had skulls of ancestors in them as reminders of morality and a crap ton of cuyes.

Our tour of the city didn´t take long, so before too long we went to the ruins proper of Ollataytambo. The ruins were of a hilltop fortress where an important Incan victory took place in 1536. Masters of irrigation, the Incas defeated their foes by intentionally flooding the plain below. The rocks of which the fortress was constructed were also products of irrigation techniques as they were retrieved from the other side of the nearby river, Urubamba. The rocks were too heavy to be taken across (they were HUGE, the size of a large cow) so the Incas diverted the river around the rocks. Insane!

Even today you can see working canals in the city of Ollataytambo. Part of the group cleaned trash out of one of these canals. Others were too fascinated by the aesthetics of the narrow streets to help. These cobbled streets also date back to the Incan empire so it is understandable.

After a night in a nice hostel, we set off early for Pisac and its famous market. The market was very large and overwhelming. We thought it went on forever… until we popped out the end. We couldn´t see it coming, or maybe we were too busy ogling the brightly colored stalls filled with everything from panpipes to hand-painted plates to ancient money. Before we knew it, it was time to return to Cuzco.

Cuzco, beloved base of operations for both us and the Incas long ago.