Tag: Cusco

Machu Picchu: The Citadel

Posted on by Lark

Now that we’ve talked about Inka Pachakuteq and the history of Machu Picchu and have explored the outskirts of the site, it’s finally time to explore the citadel! That’s what they call the main area of buildings onsite even though “citadel” gives more of a fortress vibe, and we’ve already covered the fact that historians think Machu Picchu was most likely a royal estate. That, at least, is the assumption that we’re going to go with as we walk through the site and learn about what the different buildings were potentially used for. Again, everything I say may or may not be true. Thanks to the Incas’ lack of a written language, best guesses are sometimes all that historians can make. So, here are a bunch of best guesses about the ruins at Machu Picchu! Just insert a “maybe” before each statement I make from here on out.

Everyone looking tired but happy after finishing our morning hikes!

The site can be divided into two main sectors, farming and urban. The farming sector consists of the terraces, many of which are still unexcavated. Vegetation grows quickly in the cloud forest! There are also some buildings around the terraces that may have been used to house farmers, but the majority of the buildings are located in the urban sector/citadel.

After you enter through the ticketing area, you walk up lots of stairs and past lots of farming terraces until you finally get your first glimpse of the urban sector. There are a bunch of different viewpoints from which you can get a low-flying bird’s eye view, and at one of these is the “watchman’s post” or maybe “the hut of the caretaker of the funerary rock” or “call it whatever you want because who knows”. This three-walled structure has a great view of the citadel and the surrounding valley and is one of the few buildings with a restored thatch roof. Remember that this type of roof would have been standard, so based on that alone, the urban sector would have looked very different. Just outside, there’s a large “funerary rock”, carved into an altar and used for embalming and mummification… or maybe used for animal sacrifices. In the nearby field, a number of skeletons were excavated which is part of the reason for the mummy theory. In that case, the hut would have potentially been used in the mummification process as well.

The “upper cemetery” where they found a bunch of graves. You can see the funerary rock at the far end of the field, plus the “whatever it is” hut just behind the rock. (Side note, some of the pictures in this post, including this one, are from my first trip to Machu Picchu. There were a few things that I wanted to show that I didn’t have pictures of from this visit, so if you notice that the weather randomly appears to have changed between pictures, that might be why.)
Funerary rock
I’m going to give you a little preview of our route. We started at the hut that’s out of frame to the upper right. We’ll enter town through the main gate, which is where that big group of people is gathered. From there, we’ll walk through that first group of buildings and then stay to the left to visit the plaza (the dirt patch), go up the Sacred Hill behind it (with all of those narrow terraces). Next, we’ll cross the main grassy plaza to the very back of the site where we’ll see a Sacred Rock, and then we’ll head back towards the starting point through the buildings on the far side of the main plaza. (If that made no sense, sorry! I tried. Ignore me and just continue reading.)

A dry moat separates the outer buildings and farming areas from the urban sector. Through the main gate (that used to have a door with a locking mechanism!), you enter into the upper part of town which contains support buildings like storehouses and public buildings and the remnants of a quarry that likely supplied much of the stone for the buildings. What an exciting welcome to town, right? But it makes sense not to put the really important stuff right next to the city gate, just in case (Lara speculation).

The dry moat runs along that staircase in the front, and the main gate is just out of frame to the left.
The rock quarry as viewed from the Sacred Plaza

Downhill from these structures is where things start getting interesting. Not surprisingly, the most unique building in the city is the Sun Temple. It has a curved wall with that classic imperial stonework, and it’s built above a giant boulder. The top of that boulder was carved into an altar that was used for animal sacrifices (to read the future in their entrails… ick). This was also where the Inka would come to drink chicha (corn beer) with his “father” the sun, as the Incas believed that the Inka (king) was descended from the sun god, Inti (side note: to keep the royal bloodline pure, each heir had to be a son of the Inka and his sister).

The Sun Temple. There are windows facing to the north and to the east. The east window is aligned to the sun position on the winter solstice.
See the carved rock that makes up the floor? That was used as an altar.

The Incas mummified their dead and treated them a bit like they were still living, so underneath the temple is a “royal tomb”, basically a cave where it is believed that the Inka’s mummy was kept. Even after Inka Pachakuteq died, it is likely that his mummy was brought back to Machu Picchu, kept beneath his father’s temple, and given food and drink (not quite sure about the logistics of that).

Near the sun temple are the royal apartments, aka the residence of the living, pre-mummified Inka. The spring on Machu Picchu Mountain was first directed through the Inka’s apartment so that he could have the freshest possible water, and from there, it flowed through a series of ceremonial fountains. The residence consists of a central patio area surrounded by two large and two small rooms.

Beyond the rock quarry and royal apartments is the main sacred area for the town. A small plaza is bordered by two temples and another room that could have been the priest’s dwelling. You can tell that the temples are important buildings just by looking at their quality stonework.

One of the fountains that used to flow with water from the spring. The water would still flow through here, but it’s been redirected for tourism purposes (bummer).
View from the quarry. Straight ahead, you can see the Sacred Plaza with its two temples, and behind that is the terraced Sacred Hill. Another temple, the Moon Temple, is located on the back of Huayna Picchu, the tall mountain peak that you see straight ahead.
The main temple has only three walls. They’re not sure exactly who this temple was dedicated to, especially since the Sun Temple is elsewhere, but clearly it was someone important! You can see that the collapse in the corner isn’t because the rocks shifted. The bottom rock is actually sinking into the ground, so it’s likely some sort of foundational problem. That could have been caused by an earthquake, or it could have been a water-related failure.
This is the Temple of Three Windows. Can you guess how it got its name? It likely was covered by a gabled thatch roof with the side nearest to us left open.
With the main temple!

The sacred spaces continue up “Sacred Hill”. There are more temple-like buildings with high-quality stonework, but again, the exact use of each space isn’t really known. At the top of Sacred Hill is one of the only remaining “Intiwatana”, or “sun fastener”, stones. This carved rock was used during the winter solstice celebration, Inti Raymi, to symbolically tie the sun to the earth. Inti Raymi was a festival to ask Inti not to abandon his people, to move closer instead of farther away. Otherwise, the stone was also used to measure the solar year and keep track of important sun dates like equinoxes and solstices. It was not, however, a sundial or solar clock. The Incas didn’t have clocks as they didn’t measure days in hours and minutes. This hill was also the priest’s pulpit. He could stand high above the main plaza and address the people gathered below.

Walking up Sacred Hill. You can see the Sacred Plaza in the bottom left, with the main temple closest to us and the maybe-priest’s-house across the plaza from there. And then there’s the rock quarry, and the hut where we started is perched up on the terraces near the top of the picture.
Intiwatana. Originally, it was probably polished… the rain is giving it a decent shine in this picture. I’m imagining a granite countertop-level shine.
The entrance to the site is on the far end straight ahead, and Sacred Hill is the one to the right with all of the terraces. The terraces on Sacred Hill are very shallow. This shows that they were mostly for protecting against erosion and were also used as decorative gardens, not for actual farming.
Looking up the side of Sacred Hill. You can see those shallow terraces at the right edge of the picture. From this angle, it’s pretty clear why they decided this needed some erosion-prevention terraces!
I like this picture because I think it really shows how important the terraces are to making this site a viable location for building. Without those terraces, there’s no way that the site could have handled the weight of the buildings, and erosion definitely would have caused some serious collapses. I also like looking at the main plaza and seeing the effort that went into creating such a large, flat space.
Sacred Hill is up to the left. The main plaza, in the middle, was used for festivities and ceremonies.

Across the lawn, right in front of Huayna Picchu, is a “Sacred Rock”. It’s clearly important because a stone pedestal was built around it (it’s a natural projection of the mountain), but what were people worshipping there? It supposedly could look like a puma or a guinea pig, but personally, I don’t see it. Another possibility is that it was simply a representation of a sacred mountain peak. Mountains were believed to have spirits that were considered protectors of the people. I’m going to go with that because I can definitely see “mountain” in this rock.

You tell me… puma? guinea pig? or mountain? This rock was probably polished as well.
It seems like a pretty cushy existence to be a Machu Picchu alpaca. They just wander around, eat, and get fawned over by tourists.

Finally, moving back towards the main gate but on the other side of the main plaza, there are TONS of buildings. These were apartments for support staff, storehouses, and other utility spaces. There are various interesting features sprinkled throughout these rooms, including these two “water mirrors”. Some guess that they were used to reflect the night sky and study the stars, but that seems silly because why look down at a reflection when you could look up at the real thing? Oh well, at this point, what’s one more unsolved mystery?

Water Mirrors. Does it not seem a bit silly to use these for astronomical purposes? To use these liiittle water pools rather than the big night sky?
I’m obsessed with the way that they integrated these ginormous boulders.
I don’t know why things like this still surprise me, considering I know how skilled the Inca stonemasons were. But it’s so seamless!
This is a nice wall.

On the way out, you walk through one of my favorite parts of town. I don’t know what it was used for… maybe just more support buildings? But the reason I love it is because there are large boulders all over the place, and the buildings are built right into/onto/around them. It’s so cool! There’s one in particular that’s very important, the Temple of the Condor. There’s a huge rock at the center that somehow looks like a landing condor? Condors, pumas, and snakes were sacred animals for the Incas, so it was likely an important religious space.

This is the world’s least helpful photo of the Temple of the Condor, but clearly I was more focused on the ridiculousness of the wall on top of that slant than on the entirety of the condor-shaped rock. I’m pretty sure that the head is the part on the left side of the picture, and that crazy slanted rock is maybe one of the wings?
This is what happens when you do most of your learning about a site AFTER you visit. To be fair, though, it’s very hard to understand what anything is talking about until you’ve been there. I guess that’s one argument for taking a tour, but even so, I think I still prefer exploring on my own.
In the bottom middle, you can see the big rock in the Temple of the Condor. You can also see the hut from the very beginning of our tour in the top middle!

By the time we were about halfway through the citadel, we were all more than ready to call it a day. Mom and Dad actually said before we even entered the town that they felt like they’d already seen enough. I insisted that we walk through, but I understood their exhaustion. We had already done a lot of walking! We walked through the exit gates EIGHT hours after we walked in. Eight. Hours. But we did it! We survived! And we did/saw everything we wanted to do/see which is VERY impressive.

Farming terraces along the edge of the citadel. The buildings you see in the distance could have been housing for farmers.
Survived! Mom’s somehow still smiling after 8 hours of walking.

We took the bus back to town and then mostly hung out in our hotel until it was time to head to the train station for our ride back to Cusco. We were taking a train that went all the way back to the city, rather than the other option of having to transfer to a car in Ollantaytambo. Good in theory, but I probably should have looked more closely at the schedule. It’s insane. The train from Machu Picchu to Ollantaytambo takes about 1:45. To drive to Cusco from there would take about 2 hours. The train, on the other hand, took nearly 3 HOURS. How? Well, please direct your attention to the helpful map below. I traced the train tracks in blue.

Have you ever seen such a route??

When we felt like it was time for the ride to be over, we called over the train attendant and grilled him for answers. We could literally SEE Cusco, and he said it was still going to take at least a half-hour to arrive at the station. I was so exhausted that I almost cried. He explained that in order to get down into the valley, the train goes down a series of switchbacks. Switchbacks! For a train! It hits a dead end, they switch the tracks, the back of the train becomes the front, and it continues on until the next dead end. I ranted in delirious Spanish about how silly that was, and he excused himself/escaped at the first opportunity.

Eventually, though, we made it. Everyone was tired of sitting, so we walked the 15 minutes to our hotel and collapsed. Talk about a long day.

Manco Cápac Plaza in Aguas Calientes. Manco Cápac is the legendary first Inka, and it’s uncertain whether he actually lived or if he’s simply a legend. He’s one of the main characters in the legend that explains the beginnings of the Inca civilization.
The ride home also included some entertainment, including a fashion show of alpaca clothing products (surprisingly entertaining) and some interesting dances with this Andean folk character.

Related Posts

Inka Pachakuteq and the History of Machu Picchu – learn about the Inka who built Machu Picchu and how it came to be

Machu Picchu: Inca Bridge and Intipunku (Sun Gate) – take two hikes to interesting features near the citadel

Machu Picchu – come along on my first visit to Machu Picchu, including the hike up Machu Picchu Mountain

Ollantaytambo – explore another royal Inca estate!

Cusco: Q’enko and Saqsayhuaman – admire some impressive Inca stonework at Saqsayhuaman

Ollantaytambo

Posted on by Lark

When we left off last time, our good friend Amerigo had just dropped us off in the Ollantaytambo Plaza de Armas after an eventful morning of driving all over the Sacred Valley. We had a few hours until our train was leaving for Aguas Calientes (the gateway town to Machu Picchu), so we stopped for a quick lunch before heading to the Ollantaytambo ruins.

Ollantaytambo Plaza de Armas
If you look straight ahead, you can see some of the agricultural terraces rising up over the city.

Ollantaytambo was a royal estate, including a town for Incan nobles and religious areas. Its name comes from a combination of “Ollantay”, a character in a classical Quechua play, and “tambo” which, as we learned at Tambomachay, means a resting place for travelers, offering lodging and food. It was a fortified town, surrounded by protective walls and watchtowers. The streets are designed in a grid, and the Incas engineered a system to channel clean water through the streets to be used by the inhabitants. The modern town is built on the same foundations, and sometimes even within the same buildings, as the Inca town and has some of the oldest continuously inhabited houses in South America.

The town, as seen from some of the terraces.

Agricultural terraces extend both down from the town to the Urubamba River and up the nearby mountains. The geography, especially around the terraces to the river, creates microclimates on the different terrace levels. These terraces have average temperatures a few degrees warmer than those at the town level, and this allowed crops to be grown that normally wouldn’t survive at such an altitude.

One set of terraces dominates the town, and these lead up to “Temple Hill” where the main temples were located. They look very steep and intimidating. Mom took one look at the seemingly endless stairs to the top and told me to go ahead with Benjamin and Jocelyn so that she and Dad could take their time. It wasn’t just an illusion… the terraces in Ollantaytambo actually are steeper than others in the Empire. They were built to a higher standard than most, and this follows the same pattern that we’ve talked about before where more important buildings/sites can be identified by the construction quality. These terraces match what was built at other royal estates, with higher walls between levels and the use of cut, rather than rough, stones.

Approaching the religious sector through a plaza that was surrounded by the most important buildings during Inca times
Do you see the diagonal of the stairs, kind of like a white line running along the left edge of the terraces (from bottom left to upper right)? Above that diagonal is Temple Hill, with the Sun Temple just about in the middle of the picture.
Just a few stairs…
You can also see two levels of stonework quality in the terraces in this picture. The ones rising up to the right are the “regular” terraces (though still nicer than most), and the ones straight ahead are on Temple Hill. Can you see how much less noticeable the joints between the stones are for the Temple Hill terraces? And even in the straight-ahead terraces, they get nicer from bottom to top.
Does this angle make the terraces look steep? Eek!

Temple Hill is topped by the Sun Temple because, as you may remember from our discussion of Qorikancha, the sun deity was the major Incan god. As it appears now, the temple seems to be incomplete, though whether it was truly unfinished or was destroyed by the Spanish is another question.

This is actually a pretty good picture to see the contrast in the stonework. The terrace on the left of the picture is on Temple Hill. Those on the right are not.
Temple Hill is on the right. These terraces were probably more for protecting against erosion than for farming.
Another view of the Temple Hill terraces with their pretty stonework. In the top middle, you can see the Temple of the Ten Niches. It used to have another wall that no longer stands, and they’re not sure exactly what it was for… but my professional guess is that that’s where they kept their golden corn.

The major feature of the Sun Temple is a towering wall formed by six pink granite boulders. These were brought from a quarry about 5km away, probably via log rollers, and then were somehow hauled up the mountain to their final resting place. The route from the quarry also includes a river crossing, and it is believed that the Incas diverted the river in order to move the stones across the riverbed. Insanity. Between the quarry and Temple Hill, other giant pieces of pink granite lie abandoned. These are called “tired stones” which I think is absolutely hilarious because whether it’s true or not, it makes me laugh to imagine a bunch of people struggling to move a giant stone, then looking at each other like, “This is exhausting. Why are we doing this??” and just leaving it there.

Pink granite monstrosities. You can still see some of the symbols… There’s one in the middle that looks like steps and is a symbol representing heaven, earth, and underground.
Taking a deep breath and enjoying the altitude

Above the terraces, there are ruins of structures that were likely military barracks, storage rooms, and such.

Surrounded by roof-less buildings
Hm… not really sure how you’re supposed to get up there…
Can’t get over this view of the town!
Or this view that makes me feel like I’m looking off the edge of a cliff…
Taking another of my million pictures of the town
Dad + me!
Mom did eventually make it up the stairs!

Away from the groups of buildings, there are others in more isolated positions on the mountainside. These were most likely storehouses for the food grown on the terraces. Their high-altitude locations, with lower temperatures and more wind, helped to guard against decay. They have openings for ventilation and for the entrance and exit of grain. We were confused by the first storehouse we came across because it seemed like it used to be a two-story building. It’s hard to explain, so check out the picture below. Jocelyn and I are in doorways that enter from higher up on the mountain. Benjamin is down the mountain. Why are there doors leading to a 12-foot drop? There’s no indication that there used to be a floor that no longer exists. Well, the storehouse explanation solves that mystery. The “second-floor” openings were for pouring the grain into the storehouse, and the “first-floor” openings were for removing it. Pretty smart, right?

Grain storage!
Looking out at the town from the inside of the storehouse
Flowers growing on the storehouse’s thatch roof.
This was the path that we had to take to the storehouse, accompanied by this very encouraging sign about the possible danger of a landslide.
Along the way…
Thank goodness they have that rope to keep you from falling off the edge… very effective, I’m sure
That barely-visible roof peak in the middle of the picture is the storehouse we were standing in
More storehouses on the mountain across town. You can see the path to get there, zig-zagging up the mountain

At ground level, there’s a series of ceremonial fountains that were used to worship the water god. They’re still flowing today, fed from the nearby Patakancha River, the same one that brought water to the town’s streets. The river is also used for irrigation in some of the terraces, and there are terraces that still function and are in use today! Kind of amazing for hundreds of years later. Unfortunately, as many of the Incas’ aqueduct systems fell into disrepair under the Spanish, this isn’t the case for most across the former Empire. I guess the Spanish were more focused on extracting gold and silver rather than on agricultural development.

I can’t get enough of these waterworks
This is the top view of the fountain from the picture above. Does this remind you of the water channels at Maras Salt Mines?
Probably something important?
It amazes me that these fountains still function after so much time
Looking towards Temple Hill from the waterworks
Around the grounds

The ruins in town are often called “Ollantaytambo Fortress”, despite not actually being designed to serve a protective purpose. This is similar to the confusion with Saqsayhuaman and may stem from the fact that both were ultimately used for a defensive advantage in battles against the Spanish invaders. Ollantaytambo was the site of a particularly exciting battle as it was one of the few that ended in an Inca victory. Led by Manco Inka, the Incan forces made a stand there in 1537 after fortifying the eastern defenses, in the direction of Cusco (which the Spanish had already conquered). Besides using the steep farming terraces to their advantage, the Incas redirected the Urubamba River to flood the plain and slow down the Spanish cavalry.

Despite this victory, Manco Inka then fled deep into the jungle, reasoning that Ollantaytambo was too close to Cusco to be held for long. There, he established a small Neo-Inca state that managed to survive until 1572.

If you have to engage in a battle, this seems like a decent position to be in.
Not a bad spot for keeping an eye on the town
Bird’s eye view of the grounds

Personally, I think Ollantaytambo is underrated. Everyone just uses it as a pass-through town, and while I can’t really say much because that’s what we did too, I would love to go back and spend more time there. If you like to hike, there are some super cool hikes in the area… like you can hike to the quarry where they got the stones for Temple Hill, or there’s an abandoned Inca town called Pumamarka nearby. Well, I guess this just means I’ll have to go back to Peru again. Darn!

When we finished exploring the site to everyone’s satisfaction, we had more than enough time to get to the train station. Talk about a well-planned day! (I’m patting myself on the back.) The train ride to Machu Picchu is one of my favorite things. You’re riding beside the Urubamba River for most of the way, and the mountain views are spectacular. I took some pictures, but they’re terrible because of the moving train and the dirty train windows (and also because I have a gift for taking pictures a split second too late… so instead of a view, I get a giant tree trunk in the way)… but just try to imagine.

Everyone enjoying some social time while waiting for the train
Train snacks!
Sorry in advance for these pictures
But you can kind of see how awesome the scenery is
Don’t look at the blurry trees in front… they’ll make your eyes cross. But look at those crazy peaks in the background!
Aguas Calientes!

In Aguas Calientes, we bought our bus tickets for the next morning (from the town center up to the archaeological site), checked into our hotel, ate dinner, and went to bed. We had to rest up for our 5AM departure time the next day for our visit to Machu Picchu!

The restaurant we went to was fancy (by my standards, at least). This appetizer came on a giant piece of salt on a rock… they don’t do things like that at my usual haunts.
Aji de gallina is one of my favorite Peruvian dishes, though this version is a little bit flashier than what I’m used to. But it’s basically chicken and potatoes in a cream sauce and is eaten with rice.

[Check out my old post about Ollantaytambo HERE.]

Moray and Maras Salt Mines

Posted on by Lark

Like any “travel day”, the morning of our day-long transit to Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of Machu Picchu Mountain, was a bit hectic. Our friend Amerigo the taxi man (who we met on the way back from Saqsayhuaman) had trouble finding our hotel, but it was okay because he was running EARLY. A Peruvian. Running early. I’d never heard of such a thing.

While Amerigo’s punctuality was surprising, his confusion certainly wasn’t. Our hotel was accessed by walking THROUGH a school. If this sounds like the strangest thing, yes. He called us to say that we gave him the wrong address, that it was a school and he couldn’t find parking because of the morning drop-offs. We told him we’d be right there, grabbed our bags, and weaved our way out to the street, through the crowds of students gathered in the school’s courtyards. Can you imagine something like that in the States? A school with a bunch of strangers walking through at every hour of the day? Yeah, not a chance.

The plan for the day was simple. We left Cusco at 8AM, right on schedule thanks to Amerigo’s early arrival. We had a 3PM train to Aguas Calientes from Ollantaytambo, a town about an hour and a half from Cusco. Along the way, I wanted to stop at two other sites, Moray (an Inca ruin) and the Maras Salt Mines. That gave us seven hours for the drive and sightseeing which seemed like plenty.

Sacred Valley view. The drive from Cusco to Ollantaytambo is very pretty!

As we headed out from Cusco, Amerigo started asking about our plans and if we were staying overnight in Ollantaytambo. I told him no, we were taking the train. He asked if it was the 6:00PM train… nope, the 3:00. He freaked out. He said that we didn’t have enough time, that we should have left hours earlier if we wanted to make the 3PM train. I said that I was pretty sure we were going to be fine. He was adamant, and I started to worry. Was there some road condition or change from my last visit that I didn’t know about? Jocelyn put it into google maps, and the total driving time came back as 2.5ish hours. I didn’t want to insult Amerigo with a “well, google maps says…”, but I was SO confused. And terrified that I had made a huge mistake.

Moray, our first stop of the day.

To this point, his driving had been as un-Peruvian as his early arrival… safe and rational. From then, though, it was like he flipped a switch. He morphed into a maniac racecar driver, testing his car’s limits and passing people left and right. A bus tried to run us off the road as we passed it (seriously, what is the deal with these drivers?!?), and we breathed a collective sigh of relief when we didn’t die. I thought Mom was going to hurl. Even though Jocelyn and I were used to Peruvian driving, which is of a similar style even when you’re not in a rush, this was a little scary. I appreciated his determination to get us to our train on time, but it really wasn’t necessary.

Thanks to Amerigo’s breakneck speeds, we got to Moray earlier than expected. I tried to talk to him again after we got out of the car, thinking it would be easier to sort out our misunderstanding face-to-face instead of with Jocelyn and me yelling in Spanish from the back seat. Maybe I was missing something? Or maybe he was planning for more stops than I wanted? Nope. Our conversation resulted in no further clarity. He insisted that we didn’t have enough time and would miss our train. I said I didn’t understand and walked away baffled.

He asked us how long we needed at Moray, and I guessed maybe 20 minutes? 30 minutes? Not too long. He didn’t look like he believed me. There are a few different routes for exploring the ruins: a 2-hour loop that goes around the entire site, a 1.5-hour loop around the main area, or a 1-hour loop to see the highlights. The highlights are sufficient, and looking at the path in real life, I had no idea how it could possibly take an hour. Is that the crawling time? The tortoise time? I don’t know. I usually trust my judgment, but again, I thought I must be missing something since Amerigo didn’t believe me and the sign said it took an hour. We took our time because while I didn’t want to stress him out more, I also didn’t want us to rush through the site for no reason.

The not-very-accurate map of the site, showing the different loop options (also, who made this sign? It’s very confusing because there’s a photo of the site in the background, but it doesn’t correspond to the diagram and is just super misleading. Ignore the background image. Look at the line diagram). We took the yellow loop which goes around the big circle thing in the middle.
Does this look like a 1-hour walk to you?? We went down the path that comes in from the left and up the path on the right.

Moray is an Inca site unlike any other. The Incas modified the natural topography to create a series of terraced depressions. The leading theory is that this was essentially an agricultural lab where the Incas tested various plants to determine which were best suited to grow in the different parts of the empire. How did this happen all in one site? WELL, this is crazy. Thanks to the depths of the depressions and the orientation in relation to the sun and wind, different climate conditions are created on different terrace levels. The largest depression, for example, is about 100 feet deep, and amazingly, there’s a massive annual temperature difference between the top terrace and the bottom – nearly 27°F (15°C)! Also, soil testing has revealed that different soils were transported from near and far to Moray. With this, the Incas were able to use this one research lab to test the performance of their crops across their diverse empire, from the sea-level desert around Lima to the high-altitude Andes and the tropical Amazon. They determined which crops grew best where and modified them to thrive in various conditions.

If that isn’t impressive enough already, the terraces themselves were engineered to include an irrigation and drainage system. Even today, hundreds of years after they were built, the terraces never flood, no matter how heavily it rains.

Headed down the path… seriously, so cool!!!
Can you see the stairs sticking out of the terrace walls?
It’s kind of like an optical illusion. I can’t imagine building this place!
Dad + me
Hundreds of years do tend to take a toll… looks like we have a bit of a landslide on our hands.
This is the largest of the “labs”. Isn’t it a masterpiece?

We took our time walking the 1-hour loop and were back at Amerigo’s car in 35 minutes… He seemed no less stressed as we headed to our next stop, Maras Salt Mines (the site of my multiple mountain biking wipeouts last time I was in Peru. This visit was slightly more relaxed and involved far less bleeding), but thankfully, there wasn’t much opportunity for maniac driving on the winding back roads we took to get there.

The fam!
This is one of the smaller labs next to the one we walked around. I don’t know what the deal is with the piles of stones, but I assume they were gathered together as the site was being excavated/restored? Maybe?
The lab with the worst view. Kiddingggg check out those mountains!

The Maras Salt Mines, unlike the Wieliczka Salt Mines that I visited in Poland, are not underground mines like you’re probably imagining. More accurately, they’re evaporation pools. An underground, salty stream brings water to the site naturally, and it’s distributed among the thousands of man-made, terraced pools by a series of channels. This kind of mastery of water has “Inca” written all over it, but unlike most Inca masterpieces that lie in ruin today, Maras is still being used for its original purpose! Actually, salt production at Maras dates back to the Wari people, a pre-Incan civilization, but the Incas improved and expanded the production area. The setup looks intricate, but the process itself is fairly simple. Salty water fills the shallow pools. The water evaporates. Salt is left behind. This fill/evaporate process is repeated a few times, more salt accumulates, and then, the salt is harvested.

Pools stretching as far as the eye can see… and my gosh, what a beautiful view! (I mean the mountains… but also the pools are kind of awesome.)
I know the mountain slope helped with the construction of the pools, but still, what an undertaking!
Just think… every single one of these pools had to be constructed. The channels between them were formed. The walls built out of stones and mud. The ground compacted down by hand to make it easier to harvest the salt. Repeated thousands and thousands of times.
Some of the channels that distribute water to the pools.
Check out the salt buildup on the walls
The crew (plus me behind the camera!)

As you might expect, this works better in the dry season when the water evaporates more quickly. This results in higher quality salt, either pink or white in color. In the rainy season, the salt is more likely to have a brown tint to it. The best salt is exported, and the rest is sold in Peru. Even the lowest quality salt can be sold, and while it may not make it to someone’s kitchen table, it is used in industrial processes, agriculture, and raising livestock.

We were there in December which is the beginning of the rainy season. I’ve never visited in the dry season, but apparently the pools are much whiter thanks to the more rapid evaporation.
Benjamin, Jocelyn, me, and Mom
It’s kind of hard to grasp the scale of the site, even when seeing it like this.
Like, that last picture didn’t even show all of the pools. They’re endless!

When we’d seen enough, we headed back to the car for the final leg of our journey with Amerigo, from Maras to Ollantaytambo. We met him at the car, and this was the point when he realized that we were not actually going to miss our train. We had more than enough time, in fact, and he resumed driving like a rational human. I breathed a sigh of relief, happy that I wasn’t crazy.

The road to/from the salt mines.

We said our goodbyes to our friend Amerigo as he dropped us off in the main plaza in Ollantaytambo. It was 11:30AM, earlier than expected, thanks to the maniacal speeding. We had more than enough time to eat some lunch and explore the Ollantaytambo ruins before our train left at 3. To be continued…

Cusco Adventures: Q’enko and Saqsayhuaman

Posted on by Lark

Last time, we left off on the side of the road after being released from the world’s craziest colectivo. (This time, get ready for a long post and lots of pictures!) The driver dropped us off across the street from our next destination, Q’enko (ken-koh), a large and formerly important rock. “A rock?” you ask. Well, yes, but this is no ordinary boulder. It is limestone and is what’s known as a “karst” landscape, or an area of soluble rock that has dissolved over time to create an irregular formation. Or so I’m told.

Q’enko in all of its karst glory.
Q’enko is the rock on the right, above the grass, and Cusco is in the distance.
Sikllakancha. Nope, I don’t know what it is. But those are some nice rocks, amirite?

Q’enko is not the original Incan name for the site, rather it’s the Quechua name (Quechua is an indigenous language commonly spoken in the Peruvian Andes). That’s the case for many of these sites, with the original names either lost or in disuse. Anyway, the Quechua name, meaning labyrinth, twisted, or zig-zag, has been around since the 1800s. There is, as you can probably guess, an abundance of theories about Q’enko’s use, but they all consider it an important religious ceremonial site. Part of the challenge of understanding the Incan culture results from the Spanish campaign to destroy anything that had to do with pagan religions. Idols made of precious metals were stolen; rocks carved for religious purposes were destroyed. There’s limited information to work with, but at least they didn’t find some way to destroy the whole site.

Dad coming through the rock.
A very strange place.

There are still carvings visible on top of the rock, along with some zig-zagging channels that liquid could flow down. Theories for what liquid may have been used: corn beer. Or maybe animal blood. Basically the same, right? An interior chamber was used for sacrifices (human sacrifices were NOT typical in Incan society, in case you were wondering). There’s some other stuff on top that was probably used for charting the sun. Lots of things happening in/on/around this rock!

The way into the sacrifice chamber
The sacrifice chamber beneath the rock. That’s maybe the altar on the left?
I liked this little guy… kind of looks like a Nittany Lion!

The group started grumbling about being hungry when we arrived at Q’enko and nearly staged a mutiny when I said it wasn’t lunchtime yet. Geez! Traveling with a group is such a pain! I’m kidding, I’m kidding! But it wasn’t even noon yet, and I only had the most perfect picnic spot picked out and had been waiting for two years to use it. No way was that getting taken away from me. Patience, people!

Q’enko rocks!
The path from Q’enko to Q’enko Chico, our lunch spot.
Q’enko Chico, Cusco, and the eucalyptus forest
I just love those mountains.
Headed to Q’enko Chico (little Q’enko), probably used for religious purposes as well.

After everyone moaned and groaned their way through Q’enko and down the path to our lunch spot (with a sprinkling of accusations that I was trying to kill them), we finally arrived. WELL. The group’s attitude transformed. Everyone told me that it was worth waiting for, that the view was great and the rocks were nice to sit on. I KNOW. That’s why I picked it! Moral of the story is, trust me!

Q’enko Chico with a neighboring eucalyptus tree forest. These trees aren’t native to Peru. They came from Australia and were originally planted to be used for firewood.
Again, I wonder what this used to look like. I’m sure those walls weren’t always crumbling!
That’s one big rock! And a bonus pup.
Lunch spot views!
Eucalyptus forest

The bad news was that the sky grew increasingly threatening as we ate, and I crossed my fingers that the rain would hold out just a little longer, through our last stop at Saqsayhuaman (sak-say-WAH-man), the most expansive set of ruins. We walked there, got directions from the park rangers, and within minutes, it started POURING. Welp. So much for crossing my fingers!

The weather radar showed the storm passing in an hour, and the group started discussing staying vs. heading back to town. I really wanted everyone to see the last site, but we weren’t going to wait out in the open, and there’s nowhere to take cover… except… we spotted two roofed areas among the ruins. Our only hope. Benjamin and I looked at each other and made a beeline for them while everyone else followed behind.

Well, if only the route there was direct! We had to go up a few levels which meant finding stairs while pretending that we knew exactly where we were going to avoid losing the confidence of the group. Finally, we reached the right level! The end was in view! Anddd we stopped in our tracks in front of a sign strung up across the path. “No pasa”. Soul crushing. Dad caught up with us, looked at the sign, said “heck no”, and stepped over the rope without hesitation. It was hilarious. And that was all the encouragement we needed to follow suit.

Hehehe do you see the rain, streaking across the picture?
Dad, Mom, and Jocelyn looking happy to be under cover.
Doing some random internet fact read-alouds to entertain the group.

This ended up being the best decision we made all day (thanks, Dad!). Our hideout wasn’t particularly comfortable… we were all contorted and had to stay quiet to keep from attracting the attention of the park rangers who were just out of sight under the adjacent roof. But we were dry, and no way did we want to get booted out into the rain!

Zig-zag walls! Spot our heroic shelter. We were under the top left corner of the right roof. The park rangers were underneath the left roof, all the way on the left side.

Finally, about 45 minutes later, the rain slowed, and we decided it was time to make moves. As we climbed out, one of the rangers under the other roof started blowing his whistle (which is what they do when people are doing something they shouldn’t), and we kept moving, with no hesitation or glance back. Benjamin said he thought it was directed at someone else, but either way, I have no regrets.

Back in legal territory, we took a quick spin around the ruins. Saqsayhuaman is considered one of the most impressive Incan sites. Machu Picchu is so famous and popular mostly because of its location, not as much because of its construction. Saqsayhuaman, on the other hand, is an incredible architectural feat. The name is, of course, Quechua, but the meaning is debated with the most likely options being “marbled falcon” or “marbled head”. It is said that the city of Cusco looks like a puma/cougar/mountain lion, and Saqsayhuaman forms its (marbled?) head.

Faking smiles… just kidding. We were actually happy because we survived the storm without getting drenched. Jocelyn is totally rocking that poncho (jokes aside, she was the most prepared and probably the driest. And the most fashionable, clearly).
What a beautiful place for a city!

Construction began in the 15th century, led by one of the most famous Inkas (kings), Pachakutec. He was responsible for many of the great Incan building projects, and this one took 50 years. You may be wondering – how did they have the manpower for a project like this? The Incas didn’t have slaves, and records claim that 20,000 men worked on the project. Since there was no money in their society, taxes to the government were paid in either labor or goods. This “labor tax” is what made so many of these grand, labor-intensive monuments feasible.

I’m telling you, the stonework here is some of the best.
Like seriously. I still don’t understand how they did this.
They say that the Spanish were so impressed by the construction quality that they thought the Incas must be in cahoots with the devil because there’s no way that mere mortals could build like this.
With the shoddy stonework that the Spanish were used to (re: all colonial buildings in Cusco. Yuck), no wonder they thought this level of skill and precision was above the capabilities of mankind.
Mom and Dad looking nice and dry(ish).

While Saqsayhuaman is often called a “fortress”, it is believed that its primary function was religious and it was well-defended due to this religious importance, not because it was meant as a fortification. However, it did have its moment when it was used as a stronghold in the 16th century during the Spanish invasion. Following the Incas defeat, the Spanish disassembled and buried the site to keep it from being used for that purpose again. Over time, many smaller stones were taken and used for other buildings in colonial Cusco, including the Cathedral. Even into the 20th century, people could pay to use the site as a quarry for their own personal building projects. At the base, three imposing wall layers remain largely intact, thanks to the massive scale of the stones (one is nearly 30 feet tall and weighs 150 tons!). At the top, there used to be three towers, and only the foundations of those remain.

Check out those big rocks!
The base of one of the towers. One tower was round in shape, and the other two were rectangular.
Mildly obsessed with this view.
More foundations at Saqsayhuaman that make you wonder what used to be there.
Three layers of zig-zag walls.
I mean, come on. Those mountains are fab.
Standing on top of the zig-zag walls and looking across at another maybe-sacred, giant stone that’s part of the Saqsayhuaman complex.

Pachakutec also created Inti Raymi in 1412, a festival dedicated to the sun god Inti and the celebration of the Inca New Year. It was held on the winter solstice until pagan religious celebrations were banned by the Spanish in 1535. In 1944, the festival was revived and is celebrated at Saqsayhuaman each year on June 24th, featuring a theatrical representation of the Inca ceremony and festivities.

Even though everyone was feeling pretty drained after the rain, I did want to make sure we got the full experience… including my favorite part, the rock slides! (Admire my avoidance of the bottom-of-the-slide puddle.)

Rock slides!

And my second favorite part, the weird tunnels!

The entrance to the tunnels… well, that’s not true. This is the exit, but we walked through the wrong way (whoops).
Headed into the darkness
The short tunnel
…and the long tunnel
See the church just above the tree/bush/grass line? Okay, now look for the other church on the same square, a little to the left of there. That’s the Cathedral with its stolen stones, sitting on the Plaza Mayor, the main plaza in town (and also sitting on the foundations of an Inca temple that was destroyed to build it).

And here are other various pictures from around the ruins.

Something.
Some rocks that were probably important for something. Actually, this front circle area was definitely important because, as you can see, the stones are much more precisely cut than those other stone walls in the background (I think those are actually restored walls, but either way, the following statement is still valid). The Incas put more effort into more important buildings which is part of how you can tell that Saqsayhuaman was a very important place… so many of the rocks have those important-building-tight joints.
An amphitheater-like area that was used for something ceremonial and religious and important. Probably. Or maybe this is where they had the Inca version of gladiator fights (not a real thing).
I don’t know for sure, but I would assume that the bottom stones are original (the ones that fit together perfectly) and the ones above were rebuilt during restoration. This is a common thing to do during restoration because you want to rebuild enough to show what used to be there/make sure that it’s structurally sound, but you don’t want people to be unsure about what is original and what is not.
Another thing that shows a structure’s importance is these “pillow” stones. Instead of the stone faces being mostly flat, they are rounded. This is much harder to do, and so it is reserved for the most important buildings.
I’m not going to guarantee this statement, but a lot of times, when there are bumps on some of the stone faces, like on the bottom of that big stone near the front, they were used to connect sheets of precious metals to the walls, like what I talked about at Qorikancha. So maybe these stones also had some gold sheets on them. Or maybe I’m totally wrong.

Okay, THEN we’d had enough ruins for one day. I planned for us to walk back down to town from Saqsayhuaman, not remembering that the path isn’t exactly ideal… downhill with uneven and slippery rocks. We made slow progress until the end of the rocky part and breathed a collective sigh of relief when we hit a normal street.

We initially walked past a guy standing at the bottom offering taxi rides, but then I looked at my parents and changed my mind. Jocelyn and I conferenced to determine a reasonable taxi price, and I asked him how much to the central plaza. 10 soles. I said okay… and by the way, we have five people. He tried to raise the price, but we rejected that and got in the car telling him we’d pay 10.

I thought we’d have to squeeze with 5 people, but it turned out that his little car had two back rows. Perfect! As we rode back into town, he asked about our other plans and listed some other places he could take us. Hm… I already had our schedule planned out, but we actually DID need to hire a taxi. I asked if he was free the following day and how much he would charge for my itinerary. It was in line with the price I was expecting, so we accepted! It kind of felt like fate with his perfectly-sized car and open schedule. And it was a huge relief to get that settled!

The rest of the night was low-key. Back at the hotel, we got ourselves organized. We were leaving in the morning for an overnight trip, and thankfully, the hotel was letting us leave some bags there which meant we could travel lighter… but we did need to repack everything and pull out the stuff we wanted to take with us. We took a break to get some alpaca burgers for dinner and then headed back to the hotel to finish getting ready for the next day’s adventures with our new BFF, Amerigo the taxi man!

Cusco Adventures: Tambomachay and Puka-Pukara

Posted on by Lark

I had all sorts of plans for our full day in Cusco. Essentially, I wanted to follow the same schedule as my first time in Cusco because I thought that it was a good intro to Incan ruins. There are four major sites within about 20 minutes, driving, from the center of Cusco. Last time, I tromped all over the city searching for a public bus to drop me at the farthest one and then worked my way back from there. This time, the lady at the hotel convinced me it wasn’t worth the pain to take the bus when a taxi was only 20 soles ($6), or 40 for the two we needed. The group seemed to agree which I guess is what happens when you travel while actually having an income. Weird, I don’t know what that’s like.

I asked her to schedule them for a couple of hours later (and I was really proud of myself… this all happened in Spanish. The woman’s daughters speak English, and she was going to call them to help with our conversation until I told her I wanted to try. She was really nice about it and spoke clearly and gave me a big confidence boost. Good way to start the day!), and she gave us directions to a grocery store so we could buy supplies for lunch on the go. On the way, we stopped at the famous 12-sided stone, another example of Incan stoneworking excellence, though after the 14-angled stone from Qorikancha the day before, it’s just another rock. Kidding! I still think it’s awesome. Seriously, Incan stonework is a detail-oriented, precise, engineering-minded person’s dream.

With the 12-sided stone. Count the sides and check out those tight seams! It’s pretty darn amazing, isn’t it?
Mom and Dad insisted on a picture with this keystone-shaped stone (because Pennsylvania).
The alleyway. The lower part of the wall on the right is an Incan masterpiece (it’s the wall containing the 12-sided stone and the keystone), and the upper part is the laaame Spanish colonial structure that they built on top. Sorry, that was probably rude. The upper part is the perfectly adequate but disappointingly boring Spanish colonial structure that they built on top. Was that better?
The Plaza Mayor (the central plaza in town)
The courtyard at the hotel. It’s all VERY decorated for the winter holidays, including these incredibly annoying music boxes that played constantly until Dad went and unplugged them because we could hear them from our room hahaha. But it’s also such a nice escape from the city!

We also picked up our tourist tickets along the way. They’re good for something like 12 different sites across Cusco and the Sacred Valley (technically the “Sacred Valley of the Incas” which is the valley at the heart of the Incan empire and has a ton of significant sites), and four of those were the ones we were planning to visit that day. From there, we rushed back to the hotel, grabbed our bags, and were reconvening in the hotel courtyard just as the taxi guys arrived.

Most actual tours of these ruins start in Cusco and work their way out from the city. Since the official Lara-guided tour goes in reverse, there was practically no one around when we got dropped off at our first stop, Tambomachay. Also, part of that might have been due to the weather. It was drizzling when we got there, and the rain continued off and on, in varying intensities, for the rest of the day.

Tambomachay was a place of rest and relaxation for the Inkas (the kings – from now on, I’m going to use “Inca” to describe the people group and “Inka” for the kings. This is just for my sanity. In reality, both are acceptable spellings for both). “Tambo” means that it is a lodge, or a place where travelers can receive food and lodgings, and “machay” means that it is a resting place. It is believed to have been used by the Inkas as a base while hunting and was also a sacred place.

The niches in the wall were likely used for golden idols and maybe even mummies. There are a few fountains, still operational, fed by an unknown source and brought to the site through underground channels. Some claim that the water has certain mystical qualities that grant the drinker eternal youth or fertility (one specifically promises to give you twins).

You can see the fountains on the right side. A park ranger we met at the site told us that the two fountains at the bottom are the ones for having twins, since the water stream splits into two, and the one on top is for eternal youth.
The niches were probably possibly maybe used for golden idols. I’m picturing giant, human-sized, golden corn cobs in all of them (that’s not historically accurate, it’s just for my own personal enjoyment).
Spot the alpaca herd!
Rounding up the stragglers
You can see some terracing continuing out from the main part of the site… it makes me wonder what this used to look like in its former glory. Like we see these few fountains and a couple of walls now, but there’s no way that this was all there was to it back in the day.
The crew, slowly perfecting our selfie game.

Across from the main fountains, there are the foundations of a destroyed watchtower. According to a park ranger we met at the ruins, it was part of a tower network used to spot enemies and communicate with surrounding towers. From the Tambomachay tower, they would have communicated with the people at Puka-Pukara, the site across the street and the next stop on our tour. Like so many other things, the Spanish destroyed it when they invaded. He told us that it was 30m high (100ft)! That seems amazingly tall for the time and technology, but it’s gone now so who knows? And it’s not like the Incas didn’t accomplish other seemingly impossible feats.

A good view of the whole site, with the main fountain area to the right and the tower foundations to the left.
The foundations of the maybe-30-meter-tall watchtower.
This is from Puka-Pukara looking towards Tambomachay. If you see the road, then that parking lot with the building with the red roof, and then go straight back from there, that’s about where the watchtower would have been.

Puka-Pukara, which means “red fortress” in Quechua, was more of an observation post than an actual defensive fortress. The stones used in its construction have a red hue to them, and it’s located on a natural high point with a clear view of the approaching valley. It was meant to protect the sacred Tambomachay and was also a lodge for travelers, offering shelter and food. Well, all of that is the speculated use, at least. It also was maybe a storage area and maybe a barracks and maybe a checkpoint for travelers. But whatever it is, it inarguably does have a great view of the valley.

Puka-Pukara. I guess the stone does look kind of reddish?
We enjoyed the signage at the ruins IMMENSELY. These activities are forbidden and clearly translated into English:
DON’T HORSE RIDING
DON’T SOLD ON THE STREET
DON’T MOUNTAIN BIKING
Do you think they paid someone for this work??
Here we have:
DON’T ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES
DON’T FIRE
And, since they deserved to get at least one right,
DON’T THROW GARBAGE
Their greatest mistake was translating “PROHIBIDO” as “DON’T”. Whether you speak Spanish or not, I’ll leave you to work out what a better translation could have been.
The view from Puka-Pukara. Not bad!
Again, this is what we see now, and it just makes me wish that I could see what it used to look like!
I assume the view, at least, is about the same. Maybe? Well, either way, it’s fabulous.
I’m obsessed with these walls. I want every wall in the universe to be as satisfyingly exact as Inca walls… and this one isn’t even the most precise! This is their “eh, not so important” level of precision! Whatever happened to craftsmanship? They don’t build things like they used to, that’s for sure!
Yup, good spot for keeping an eye out for approaching armies. Or just enjoying the view. Do you think they did? The Incas, I mean. While they were up in their towers, keeping their empire safe, do you think they took a second to look around and be like, “Man, what a world!”
What. A. World.

The next part of our adventure was the only part that I was worried about. The walk between Puka-Pukara and Q’enko, our next destination, is fairly long and not especially exciting. I didn’t want to make my parents walk it if they didn’t have to. There was plenty of mandatory walking in our schedule, so no need to wear yourself out on something that you could do by car! My hope was that we would find a colectivo (public mini-bus) going in the right direction, but you never know when those will come along, plus it was a Sunday which makes “schedules” even more erratic.

Welp. I shouldn’t have worried. About half a second after we planted ourselves on the side of the road, a crazy colectivo came whipping around the corner, and we flagged it down. If you’ve ever seen/read Harry Potter, imagine the Knight Bus, though thankfully a mini-bus doesn’t have quite the same tipping potential. Every colectivo driver isn’t equally terrifying, but this one was absolutely on that level. Mom, Dad, and Benjamin found seats, and Jocelyn and I were left standing in the aisle. That was preferred, really, since we were the most experienced in uncomfortable public transit. It seemed like the driver was doing his best to knock us over, and he nearly succeeded a few times as we had to release our death grips on the seats to dig out some money – 1 sol (30 cents) each! Thankfully, we were only on there for about 5 minutes – enough to give my parents and Benjamin a taste of the colectivo experience but not long enough for permanent psychological damage.

Back on solid ground, we made our way across the street to the next site on our whirlwind tour, Q’enko. To be continued…

Next time, Q’enko and Saqsayhuaman!

Off to Cusco! And a Visit to Qorikancha

Posted on by Lark

Travel day! Our final morning in the rainforest was another leisurely one. After eating 7AM breakfast, we walked to a boat, boated to a bus, and bused back to the tour company’s office in Puerto Maldonado to pick up the bags we’d left there. We arrived at the airport about three hours before our flight. Checking in, checking our bags, and going through security took up about 5 minutes of that time. Exploring the entire terminal took maybe 1 minute. Great! Only 2 hours and 54 minutes left.

The Puerto Maldonado to Cusco flight is one of the best I’ve ever been on. You take off over the rainforest and get one last look at the rivers winding their way across the earth. Then, for the landing, you fly through breathtaking mountains, descending into the valley that is home to Cusco. It’s quite the welcome!

Mountain views!
These mountains just have such good texture to them, you know? I love them.
Almost on the ground…

Besides the dramatic change in landscape, we also experienced quite the change in climate! After three days of hot, humid rainforest air, eternally damp clothes, and sweaty, sticky skin, the crisp, cool air of the mountains was invigorating! Cusco also brought a fun change to our group dynamic. Jocelyn, my friend from Esperanza de Ana, and her brother Benjamin joined us for the Cusco/Machu Picchu portion of our trip! The more the merrier! Well, sometimes that’s not true, but I wasn’t worried about this group. Everyone was easygoing and happy to leave the planning to me. Since I had already been in Cusco (when I was in Peru in 2017), it wasn’t too hard to put together an itinerary of what I felt were the “must-dos”.

We made it to our hotel, said hi to Jocelyn and Benjamin, and took a little time to get settled before heading back out into the world to make the most of our day. This was also the first day of Tour Guide Lara, a title I qualified for by 1. Having a guidebook, 2. Knowing incrementally more about the things we were seeing than the rest of the group, and 3. Having previously visited most of the sites (throwback: you can check out my original post about Qorikancha. We’ve certainly made some photo-quality improvements since then).

The crew in front of Qorikancha

Our destination was Qorikancha, an Inca temple that was converted into a church and convent after the Spanish conquest. I love Qorikancha. It’s an incredible example of Inca construction, and since it was the most important temple in the empire, dedicated to their supreme deity, the sun god “Inti”, the craftsmanship is exceptional. Unlike many other Inca sites, there’s actually a decent amount known about its design and function in the Incan society.

On that note, there’s another important point to make, and it’s the fourth reason why the group was fine with having me as its tour guide: even real tour guides have a questionable quality of information, not because they’re bad guides but because there is so much that is unknown. This isn’t as true for Qorikancha because the Incas were still there when the Spanish arrived, and there are numerous written accounts of what it was like, but for places like Machu Picchu (which we’ll get into later) where everyone was gone by the time it was found, it feels like every “fact” carries a strong “maybe” disclaimer. If you want to know every theory about each stone, hole, etc. then it’s totally worth getting a real guide. If you are happy to know some vague details and have the time to walk around and appreciate the beauty of the site and its construction, you might be better suited to a Lara-guided tour.

Yay!

The general format is this: I read all sorts of information that I’ve gathered from here, there, and everywhere. Everyone gets to participate while we assign the information to what we’re seeing (“Maybe that is the stone they’re talking about?” “I think this is the rainbow temple?” etc.). It might be wrong, or it might be right, but does it really matter? In the end, you probably remember everything better because it’s an active discussion instead of a passive lecture. Sure, some of what you remember might not be right, but what is “right” when it’s 90% a mystery anyway? (This seems like another good time for a disclaimer that I try to make these posts factual but don’t guarantee anything.)

Satisfied customers.

Qorikancha is a fantastic example of the cultural tragedy that was the European conquest of the “new world”. As I said, it was the most important temple in the Incan Empire, and as such, the best of the best was put into its construction. The stone used in the temples is incredibly difficult to work with, and any stone that was less than perfect would not have been included. The sheer effort that went into its construction is a testament to both its importance in the Incan culture and the labor resources of the empire.

Cool shadows on the rainbow temple maybe? We’ll go with that. But look at how tight those joints are!

Even though you can still see the phenomenal stonework, today’s Qorikancha is but a shadow of its former self. Originally, there were hundreds of solid gold sheets mounted on the exterior stone and inside the sun temple. The temple literally would have shone. Inside, temples dedicated to the moon and stars were decorated with sheets of silver. Other interior walls featured other precious metals and stones. Golden corn, golden llamas, and golden babies were used in various rituals, and life-sized golden people and other figures filled the lawn. I can’t even begin to imagine how it must have looked, but it must have been an incredible sight! Then, the Spanish came. They melted down the gold, took the jewels, and destroyed what was left behind. Like I said, cultural tragedy.

This building, now the church, was built on the foundations of the sun temple. Look at how weak the Spanish stonework is in comparison to the crisp precision of the Inca temples.
Moon and stars temples. Imagine those walls covered in silver! This is also where you’ll find the famous 14-angled stone. It’s in the doorway at the bottom of the picture, covered in glass. It’s one stone with 14 edges that line up perfectly with the stones around it, just another example of their impressive stonework
Temples to thunder and the rainbow
What remains of the temple grounds. This is what was filled with golden figures. They also used to actually plant the golden corn during agricultural rituals.
Pretty flowers in the garden
So nice!

I read something that explained the difference in how the Spanish and the Incas viewed these riches. The Incas valued them highly for their beauty and thought they should be displayed for people to enjoy. They didn’t place a monetary value on these precious metals and stones, but since they were seen as valuable, they were used mostly in religious contexts. The Spanish, on the other hand, valued them monetarily which meant that they took the beautiful things and hid them away so that no one could steal them. That seems like a shame, doesn’t it? I wish we operated more on the Inca mindset than the Western one for this.

Serious landscaping
I do love a good courtyard.
There’s such satisfying symmetry.

Other random fun Qorikancha facts:

  • Mummies of the old incas (kings) were housed here and brought out each day to be “fed” via burnt food sacrifices.
  • The golden fountain in the middle of the courtyard used to be covered in 55kg of gold (which sounds like a lot, but I have no concept of how much gold weighs. Okay, I just looked it up, and 1kg gold brick is about the size of an iPhone 6. Geez).
Just imagine 55 solid-gold iPhones sitting right there in the middle. Magnificent! (hehehe)
  • Qorikancha means “golden courtyard” or “golden enclosure” in Quechua. It can also be spelled literally however you want, as long as you kind of end up with the same pronunciation. This is a typical problem with Quechua names as there’s no standard spelling, so you might also see it spelled Coricancha, Koricancha, or Qoricancha. Even “Inca” can be spelled “Inka”. (This irregularity bothers me, so I choose default spellings based on whichever one I like best.)
  • Qorikancha has survived multiple large earthquakes, as have many other Inca sites, thanks to their no-mortar construction technique. The lack of mortar allows the stones to move individually during earthquakes, and they’re so well-fitted that they settle back into place when it’s over.
Pretend the flowers are facing us. I didn’t want to disturb them just to get a better picture.

There’s also some stuff onsite to see that’s associated with the church, but I don’t have much to say about that. Lots of religious art that sometimes intriguingly combines aspects from pre-Spanish cultures with Christian images. To me, though, the building is the most interesting part.

The response when I told everyone to make cool shadows. Kind of weak, but we’ll give everyone a pass as it was our first day all together.
There are some changing art displays in the museum as well. This industrial-vibe nativity is a little offbeat but kind of fantastic.
The white buildings are the convent.
Terraced garden
Arches, arches, arches.

When we’d had enough, we stopped for dinner and then headed back to the hotel. Before going to sleep, Mom, Dad, and I hung up every piece of clothing that we had with us in the rainforest. Literally everything was damp because of the rainforest humidity. The rainforest was great, but I wasn’t upset about leaving its air behind!

Benjamin got an alpaca steak for dinner
Lomo saltado (beef stir fry), a Peruvian classic and one of the best meals at EA.

Last Day in Cusco

Posted on by Lark
Nice muggy picture of the plaza… the weather luckily got a bit nicer.

I didn’t have a very ambitious day planned for my final one in Cusco. Originally, I had been thinking that I would do a day trip to one of the towns close to Cusco like Tipon or Pisac, but considering how I felt when I finally rolled out of bed, I figured it would be a better idea to just take it easy. Pretty much my entire body was aching. Between the hiking and biking, every muscle in my legs, plus my shoulders and back from carrying a backpack, wanted to die. Trust me, it’s an accomplishment that I even managed to motivate myself to leave the hostel.

One of the churches in the plaza, Templo de la Compañía de Jesús. There are two (this one and the main cathedral) and then there are about 4 other churches within a 1 block distance

I decided to do the self-guided walking tour that I never got around to on day 1, and this time, I was sure to avoid every tour salesperson in the Plaza de Armas. I spent some time sitting on a bench in the plaza, then on the steps of the church, then on another bench. I know, really strenuous stuff. I just wanted to have some time to get to know the personality of the city. I spent all of my other days running all over, and I never had a chance to just sit and observe the people and understand what makes Cusco unique, besides all of the mountains and pretty buildings.

The entry hall into the library

After sitting in the main plaza, I continued my stroll, browsed the public library (a popular tourist destination, I’m sure – not), sat in a few other, smaller plazas, watched tourists take pictures with alpacas and get harassed by people selling paintings and necklaces and whatever else, saw schoolkids getting into after-school mischief, visited the market, and tried to imagine myself as a Cusco-ian (or whatever the word would be).

My late afternoon was spent reading in a cozy little plaza by my hostel. I don’t know, I guess some people might think that I wasted my last day, but sometimes it’s fun to do normal things in a new place and pretend for a second that it’s your usual life. The city and I bonded.

Well, I didn’t spend the WHOLE day just wandering. I had a nighttime plan to go to the Cusco planetarium! I love stars, so this was something that I had been looking forward to. The Cusco twist is that besides talking about normal constellations, they also talk about the Inca constellations.

Another church, La Merced, just one block from the Plaza de Armas
Anddd another church, Iglesia de San Pedro
My reading spot… next to another church of course

The planetarium woman started out talking about rivers. Okay, not exactly the introduction I was expecting, but sure. She mentioned that Peru is the most ecologically diverse country in the world. I think I talked about this before, but Peru has 30 out of the 32 climates and something like 84 out of 114 microclimates in the world (don’t quote me because I couldn’t find support for that statistic, but that’s what she said). A number of them are quite fragile, so climate change is a very real issue for Peru as they’re already seeing big impacts on their wildlife. She said that many of the Andes mountains around the Sacred Valley used to be snowcapped about 15 years ago, and now barely any of them are. It was interesting to hear about things from her perspective, based on things she’s seen through her lifetime. Anyway, she tied all of this into how the rivers are the source of life. This is how the Incas saw them as well, so for them, the rivers were incredibly important. Ready for this segue from rivers to stars? The Milky Way was seen as the river of the sky. Aha.

We headed into the planetarium, and she showed us the night sky and some of the “modern day” northern constellations before switching to the southern hemisphere. That was cool because, as I realized, I know nothing about the southern sky, but of course there are just as many constellations as in the north.

Planetarium starry sky
Talking about zodiac signs

Finally, we got to the Inca constellations. Some of them were constellations in the way we see them, by drawing lines between the stars. However, they also saw figures in the dark spots in the Milky Way. To them, the Milky Way was a river in the sky, and the creatures they saw inside were alive (because river = life). Here’s an image of the dark spot constellations:

I swiped this graphic from futurism.com

She said that the most important one is the llama. The Incas believed that the llama came at night and drank from the rivers and streams on earth to keep them from overflowing. When it rains, it’s star llama pee. Who knows? Maybe she was just messing with us, but that’s what she said. I like it though, so I’m going to call it fact.

Moray and Maras Salt Mines

Posted on by Lark

My train left Aguas Calientes the morning after Machu Picchu Day at 5:30AM. UGH for early morning wake ups. I forced myself to stay awake for the ride though because this time, I had a window seat! Easy to do when there are only about 10 people on the train. I tried to take some pictures of the ride, but between the glass in the way and the fact that I’d need an IMAX screen for you to really understand it, they’re not great.

I took better pictures on the train ride this time! Hooray for window seats! Of course, there’s still a window in the way, but this at least gives you a much better idea of what much of the train ride is like.

I decided to plan an adventure for the day, so I signed up for a mountain biking excursion that left from Ollantaytambo. It was just me and the guide, and I learned that mountain biking maybe isn’t my thing… No, that’s not true. I learned that I have plenty of room for improvement. I could totally do it. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.

We drove from Ollantaytambo to Moray, another Incan ruin. This was one of the coolest ones though! First of all, it’s in great condition. Second of all, it’s super nerdy and shows how smart the Incas were. There are three different areas with circular, terraced depressions, and archaeologists think they were used to breed and genetically engineer their plants. Each different layer is at a different altitude and temperature, and this site allowed them to work with plants with varying environmental requirements all in one place. The deepest one has an almost 30-degree F difference between the top and the bottom terraces! They brought soil with the plants and had an irrigation system and a way to drain water out so that the depressions didn’t just turn into lakes.

One of the “labs”

The Incas managed to develop some amazingly strong plants. They needed to, if they wanted them to survive in places like Machu Picchu where the weather is constantly changing and the altitude is so high. It’s a shame that so much was lost when the Spanish conquered them. Most of the Incas were killed, either through war or through new diseases that the Spanish brought like smallpox and measles… I think I read somewhere that only 5% survived (though I potentially just made that up, so don’t quote me). That makes it much harder to pass on knowledge and scientific advances!

This is the biggest one (the one with the 30-degree temperature difference between bottom and top)
Check out the perfection of those curves. Amazing!

From there, we got onto our bikes and started making our way to the salt mines at Maras. It only took me about 2 seconds of biking uphill to realize that maybe I didn’t plan things so well. What idiot goes on a hike that’s ALL STAIRS and then goes biking the next day? This idiot. Those two things use a lot of the same muscles, and my quads were burning. Besides that, the air was still thinner than I’m used to. Between my burning leg muscles and struggling lungs, we made some slow progress. I just kept thinking how easy it would be to do the ride if we were at sea level, but instead, I looked like some biking amateur (how embarrassing).

I love these mountains!!! This whole long valley (stretching for more than 60 miles) is called the Sacred Valley and was an important area for the Incas.

At some point, I got a flat tire. I don’t know how long it took me to realize that I had a flat, but in hindsight, I think the answer to that is “too long”. We stopped, and the guide checked out the damage. If it was me, I would have just replaced the tube, but I don’t know if he didn’t have the right size replacement for my bike or what because he ended up patching it. I see patches as a temporary solution that doesn’t work very well. They especially don’t work well when your tube has more than a couple holes in it. Especially more than 5. Or 10. Or 15. I think there were something like 17 holes in my one tube, and even after all of those were patched, air was still leaking out… just slightly more slowly. I couldn’t even guess how long it took to apply all of those patches, but I have a sunburn on my shoulders to commemorate the eternity spent on that shadeless stretch of trail.

Pre-falls, moments post-tire patching. You know what? I think I need to blame both falls on my tire. Makes sense!

I’m going to blame my couple of spills on the tire, just because I can. Also because I’m not convinced that they aren’t at least part to blame. One thing I learned about myself on the ride is that I REALLY don’t like tight corner turns, especially when the trail is covered with rocks that can shift and slide. The first corner I got to that I felt like I wasn’t going to make, I brought my bike to a stop and tried to put my foot down… but the seat was high, and I was on a hill, so I ended up just falling over from a complete stop with my bike on top of me. It’s a good thing that I’m past the point of getting embarrassed by things like that. I wasn’t hurt at all, but I did need a little help to get the bike off of me.

Fall number two was slightly more dramatic. I was coming around another questionable corner. The terrifying thing about these corners is that if you don’t make the turn, you literally ride off a cliff. So you’re dead. So just know that I wasn’t being completely crazy. This time, I’m not completely sure what happened. I think that I got freaked out at the last second when I didn’t think I was going to make it, braked too hard, and got thrown. I was incredibly calm through the whole thing, though. I remember flying through the air thinking, “whoops… okay hopefully this impact doesn’t hurt too much”, hitting the ground thinking, “well nothing is broken, so now I just have to hope the rocks don’t tear me up too badly”, and laying there afterwards thinking, “hm that wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. I could use a hand though.” Sure enough, I was fine. I had a couple of scrapes and cuts that were bleeding way more than they needed to, but no question it ended as well as it could have (the fall, that is. The ride could have ended better, for example, with me NOT falling).

The salt mines are that light brown strip in the valley

Our second official stop (as in, not including the million flat tire stops and multiple Lara fall stops) was at the Maras salt mines. This is where most Peruvian salt is harvested. It’s been running since the time of the Incas, and the process they use currently is mostly unchanged from those days. Different families own the approximately 3,000 different pools, and they’re responsible for maintaining and harvesting the salt in their pools. Since this is the rainy season, there isn’t a lot of salt in production because the rain makes it harder to make quality, white salt.

I have no idea how the water flow works here, but it’s crazy awesome!

Luckily, there was still enough going on for me to see how it all works. There’s a spring that feeds a salty stream that runs to the area, and that stream is routed into all of these different pools. When a pool is filled, the flow of water is stopped, it evaporates, and the salt is scraped off the bottom of the pool. It’s given a rating of quality, the best stuff is exported, and the rest is sold in Peru.

You can see a little salt production happening, but they said that in the dry season, way more of the pools will be operating and will look white from the salt.

After the ride, I wanted nothing more than to get back to my hostel, take a shower, and lay in bed for a bit. The guide helped me clean my cuts, put me into a colectivo, and sent me back to Cusco, bruised and battered but feeling accomplished (mostly just for not dying). I think I’m going to take a short break from mountain biking experiences. Just for now.

Ollantaytambo

Posted on by Lark

After my day of visiting ruins, I decided to spend the next day… visiting ruins. I had a train to catch to the town at the base of the mountain where Machu Picchu is located (Aguas Calientes), but the train didn’t leave from Cusco. I had to find my way to Ollantaytambo, a town about two hours away, and get the train from there. At this point, I was a colectivo expert, so I wasn’t worried about it. I asked at the hostel where to find colectivos to Ollantaytambo, and off I went! If you even manage to get close, you’re golden. Once you find the right street, there are a bunch of people calling out to you, trying to get you to get in their van. You just pick one, confirm a million times that they’re going to the place you want, and then decide to trust them and get on.

I just thought this was funny… This person is unloading crates of eggs from this truck – and is standing on a layer of them! I never really think of eggs as something you can stand on.

The ride from Cusco to Ollantaytambo is beautiful but also somewhat vomit inducing if you have any issues with carsickness. The road winds up and down, back and forth through the mountains and valley, and view after view was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I was trying to play it cool so that I wouldn’t give myself away as a tourist, but on the inside, I wanted nothing more than to press my face up against the window, unblinking for the entire 2-hour ride so that I didn’t miss a second.

You can see Cusco to the southeast of Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu to the northwest.
Some views from the drive

I got to Ollantaytambo about 2 hours before my train left, so I decided to check out the ruins in town. There are, of course, a million different ruins that you can visit in and around town, but I went to the biggest one that used to be an Inca fortress/temple. It’s one of the only sites where the Incas actually won a battle against the Spanish invaders.

Terraces!

My first thought when I got inside was, “UGH… stairs.” The whole thing is just terrace after terrace, leading up the mountain to where there used to be enclosed structures. The roofs were all thatch, so there’s obviously nothing remaining of those. They’ve been restored in some locations, but for the most part, you’re left to imagine the ruins in their former glory for yourself. There are also some giant stones (I read somewhere that they’re 50 tons, but I can’t vouch for the accuracy of that) that were used in the unfinished temple construction. They were brought over from a “nearby” (5km away…) quarry, and the trip to the site includes a river crossing. You can use your imagination to try to figure out how they managed to move them on dry ground, but to cross the river, the stones were brought to the edge and then the water was diverted around them! That’s crazy!

Those big rocks in the distance behind me are the (maybe?) 50-ton ones that had to get moved here somehow from the quarry.

It only took a couple ruin visits for me to realize that the Incas were masters of beautiful and hard-to-reach sites. This fortress is no exception. When I finally managed to wheeze my way up the stairs (remember that this is at high altitude! I’m not just completely pathetic), I was treated to an incredible view of the town, the valley, and the surrounding mountains. The best way to view the mountains is from another mountain!

I’m sure I’ve said this before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again… but I love the Inca stonework! I think it’s so pretty

Looking over the town

I had plenty of time to check out the main part of the ruins, even with my “stop and take the same picture 100 times” breaks. I still wish I’d had longer though. From the fort, there’s a hike you can do to a temple nestled up higher in the mountain, and I’m sure that it would have been worth the extra climb (if you consider another pile of rocks, another view of the same mountains, and some solitude worth it… which I totally do). Plus, it would have been cool to have a time to see some of the other ruins around town.

This is the view at the beginning of the hike up to the temple that I didn’t have time to do. Looks like it would have been a pretty awesome view, huh?
Some formerly roofed structures
Not bad…

Casual stroll along a path that wraps around the mountain
This is a good view of the terracing
Here’s a building with a recreated roof, so keep this in mind when visualizing how the rest of the ruins must have looked

Oh well, I had a train to catch, and there was no way that I was going to miss it. There are a few different ways that you can get to Machu Picchu with the most common being either trekking (aka walking A LOT through the mountains) or taking the train. I think a trek would be awesome, but with my limited time in Cusco, I decided to spend it doing other things. Despite requiring far less effort, the train ride was still incredible. It was like something straight out of the movie “Avatar”. I’ve said that about other places in my life, but I’ve never meant it more than I do right now.

Let me try to set the scene. There are cloud-topped mountains towering over the train on either side, plus a river running beside the tracks (the water is very brown but no matter). Everywhere you look is green and full of life. You pass from the low highlands ecosystem at the beginning of the ride into the cloud forest ecosystem. I didn’t even know that was a thing, but can you think of a more mystical name than “cloud forest”? In reality, it was just as mystical as in theory. I’ve never been on a shorter 2-hour train ride. Seriously I could have stayed on that train for another 10 hours and been totally okay with it.

Serious train situation
Cloud forest… mystical, right?
I want to know who you have to bribe to get assigned the front seats!

But alas, we arrived in Aguas Calientes, and I set off to find my hostel. It’s the off-season at Machu Picchu right now, so I lucked out and got my own room, complete with all-natural “raging water” white noise from the river outside. Perfect for getting lots of sleep!

[Check out my other post about Ollantaytambo HERE.]

Tambomachay, Puka-Pukara, Q’enko, and Saqsayhuaman

Posted on by Lark

After visiting Qorikancha, my adventure really began. I wanted to see the four major ruins outside of the city. They’re all within about 16 km of the city center (road distance, not direct distance), so it’s not crazy far but definitely enough to not want to walk it both ways (plus it’s uphill). I heard through the grapevine that it’s possible to take a bus there, even though the ruins aren’t an official stop. (I don’t even know why they bother having official stops because you can usually get off wherever you want.)

I considered this my first true Spanish test, and I was determined to pass. The girl at the desk in my hostel said I should just rent a cab for the day, but why should I when there’s another perfectly good way of getting there? Plus I would feel rushed if I knew a cab was waiting for me, and I like to take my sweet time wandering around.

I found my way to what looked like a bus stop after a taxi man tried to convince me to hire him and I told him I was fine taking the bus. I tried to look like I knew what I was doing, but apparently the bus stop isn’t at the little hut with a bench and is actually like 50 feet away. Silly me. The taxi man sassily filled me in while trying to use that as proof that I should really just take a cab. Thankfully, after about 8 minutes of waiting at the random piece of sidewalk he pointed me to, a woman asked me if I was going to Pisac (the bus I needed to get to the first ruin), I nodded, and she directed me onto a bus that didn’t say Pisac anywhere on it. How is anyone supposed to figure these things out??

Well, luckily for me, it all worked out. I told the driver as I got on that I wanted to get off at Tambomachay and headed to the front of the bus when we got close. He let me off right in front, and I only had to pay 2 soles (about 60 cents)!

Tambomachay

Let me start off by saying that when it comes to Incan ruins, everything is pure speculation. 95% of the time, no one knows for certain what something is, why it’s there, what it was used for, etc. For example, Tambomachay. All that’s certain is that there are aqueducts and canals that feed water into a pile of rocks that looks like a fountain. Maybe it’s an ancient bath, maybe it’s a water temple. The name is Quechua and means “resting place”.

Cool trees on the way up to the fountains
The fountains. You can see water still running in the bottom left of the picture
The full extent of the ruins

The ruins were fine, but I was more interested in the scenery. I’m a fan of taking random paths and seeing where they lead. There was one that went up behind the fountain, and I followed it up into some terraced gardens and around the mountain (hill?) to a secret view of the valley. I say secret because I didn’t see another person ANYWHERE, and at a tourist-filled site, that’s an extra special treat. For a few moments, it was just me, peaceful green-ness, and a herd of alpacas grazing in the far distance.

 

My secret valley

 

 

Looking towards Puka-Pukara
Once I managed to drag myself away from the view, I headed across the street to ruin #2…

 

Puka-Pukara

Puka-Pukara is in the upper right

One guess is that this was a military base, but maybe it was a hunting lodge, guard post, and stop for travelers. The name means “red fort” because the stones look red in some lighting. It’s another “the ruins are kind of cool but the thing that makes the stop worth it is the view” situation. Some people had guides who I assume told them more information than that, but like I said, it’s probably 95% made up. I’m more than happy to just embrace the mystery and be impressed by the Incas’ site selection skills. They sure knew how to pick a site with a view.

 

View from the “fort”

There’s an almost 5 km walk between Puka-Pukara and the next ruin, and I was not interested in walking if it could be avoided. Lucky me, a colectivo (mini-bus) was driving by right as I left the site, and I flagged it down and hopped in for a 1 sol ride to…

Q’enqo (ken-koh)

Q’enqo means “labyrinth”, and they think (“they” being whoever it is that comes up with these theories) that it was a religious something. It’s a huge rock with passageways and channels carved into it.  I wish I could have gotten a bird’s eye view because it’s way more interesting from the top.

One of the passageways through the rock
Q’enqo is that giant rock in the upper right with the rounded top
Q’enqo from the outside

I used my same “follow whatever random path you see” strategy and ended up on a huge rock overlooking the town of Qenqo. I could also see Cusco in the distance, and no matter how many times I do, I still am amazed by the view. This and my other detour were probably my two favorite parts of the day. Hooray for exploration!

View from the favorite perch
The town of Q’enko

I walked from Qenqo to the next ruin, passing through “Qenqo Chico” (small Qenqo), which I didn’t even know existed. This was my third favorite part of the day… another unplanned detour. There’s another overlook of the city and plenty of big rocks to sit on. I stopped for a minute to eat a snack and soak in the view.

Q’enko chico
How cool are these rocks?!

Saqsayhuaman

Saqsayhuaman from a distance

The pronunciation guide for this ruin is that it sounds a bit like “sexy woman” (sack-sai-WHA-man). It means “satisfied falcon” and was a big military fort. It was one of the last Incan strongholds during the Spanish invasions. After the Spaniards conquered the fort, they took many of the stones build houses for themselves. The biggest stones are still left.

 

There are alpacas grazing all over the place
View from Saqsayhuaman
A wall. Check out that awesome Inca stonework

 


Fun fact: there’s a big zig-zag wall on the fort because the ninth Inca ruler saw Cusco as having the shape of a puma with the zig-zag walls as its teeth. Also, there’s a rock slide there. As in, smooth rock that can function as a slide… and people are allowed to slide down it. I think it’s hilarious. I also apparently have very good slide pants because I flew down with literally no way of slowing myself. My hands did nothing and my sneakers were worthless.

Good view of the zig zag wall
Rock slide!

After wandering Saqsayhuaman for a couple hours, I was wiped and ready to get back to my hostel. I walked down the path to Cusco (which they say that you can walk up to the ruins if you want… only if you’re crazy, in my opinion) and felt like I teleported into the middle of a forest. The walk was beautiful, but if I was going up, my thoughts would have been focused on not passing out.

The path back to Cusco

By the time I reached the bottom, my head was pounding. I’m not sure if it was an altitude-related problem or just a dehydration problem, but I downed some electrolytes and painkillers and flopped on my bed until I felt functional again. Altitude sickness can be a big problem for people going to Cusco from lower altitudes. Cusco is at 11,152 feet of elevation. For comparison’s sake, Denver is at 5,690 feet. People all react to the altitude differently and can range from no symptoms to headaches, dizziness, and vomiting. I thought I was superhuman because I felt fine on my first day. I guess this means there’s a chance that I am only human.