AlternateRoute

We got to sleep in a little today before going on a tour to the Sacred Valley of the Incas starting at 8am. Since we are the only 2 people on our tour, we are by ourselves on all of the bits that don’t overlap with other tours. This hasn’t happened yet.

We had the services of Hernan as our guide for the day who first took us to the ruins of Saqsayhuaman (it only sounds like sexy woman), where a very impressive temple sat at the head of the old Incan city, the shape of which was a Puma. One of the stone blocks in the temple weighs 130 tonnes, while another selection of stones gave the outline of a Llama.

Having seen the stone Llama we then went to a Llama and Alpaca Zoo where we saw traditional hand weaving being done with Llama and Alpaca wool dyed with vegetable and mineral dyes made on site. From here we went to Pisac to visit some more ruins high above the valley. The religious buildings were all made with large stones that fitted together perfectly. Below these buildings the hill had been cut into terraces for agricultural purposes, while water was channeled along the contours of the hill from a creek several kilometres away.

We had lunch in the main town of Pisac after strolling through its handicraft market. We then went to Ollantaytambo, which is unique in the world, in that its inhabitants are still living in the Inca houses. There are some very impressive temple ruins, with some buildings made in a trapezoidal shape so all the walls support each other. This makes them almost earthquake proof, but you know if they do fall down, they will always fall inwards.

Further up the hill are the ruins of the fortress from the end of the Inca period. Ollantaytambo was the last place to fall to the Spaniards. Across the valley, a large face was carved from the rock and a building on top represented a crown. This was the face of one of the gods. Also on that very steep hill were other buildings used for drying and storing food. Once dried, the guide said the potatoes would keep for 100 years. This may be true, but don’t put one on my plate just yet.

From here we returned to Cusco via a chicheria, a place where they make chicha, an Incan corn beer. It is made by the traditional method, boiling 3 types of corn in a pot (or at least the germinated seeds of corn) and letting nature take over. It is still and only about 2% alcohol. It came in plain flavour or mixed with strawberry, cinnamon and cilantro (coriander). A quick trip home, followed by a shopping expedition to buy snacks, (instead of dinner) saw us in bed before 10pm.

Tomorrow at 0630 we go to Machu Picchu, which started out as the whole point of the trip. It seems now it will just be one wonderful place among many. Tomorrow also, we meet the rest of our tour group. (Already today at Ollantaytambo we ran into the Québécois group from the rainforest, and Paul the Canadian who we also met at the rainforest, is staying in the room next to us.) I think all companies do the same tours in the same order.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 7th, 2007 at 1606 and is filed under South America 2007.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.