April Adventures: Sacred Valley

The next day in Cuzco we joined a large tour bus of tourists to check out the Sacred Valley.  The Sacred Valley is basically the area between Cuzco and Machu Picchu, in the valley created by the Urubamba river (you will see lots of this river in our hike pictures), and includes many Inca ruins.  Because they are fairly spread out, it seemed easier to join a large group on the tour than try to do it ourselves on public transportation.  However, because there were 32 people in our group and some spoke only English while others spoke only Spanish, by the end of the day we were tired of hearing our guide say everything twice and tired of how long it took to get 32 people to do something (i.e. get off the bus) but I think in the end we were glad we had done it that way.

After we left Cuzco, we stopped for a "bathroom break" that was really an attempt to get us to buy touristy stuff.  We ignored this part but luckily JP got to hang out with some llamas:

Here is one other picture from the first leg of our trip, where we stopped to stretch our legs and take pictures and only a few people tried to sell us something:

This is the Sacred Valley, and you can see the river winding through the background. After a while longer in the big bus, we got to our first stop, Pisac:

Pisac is a village that has existed since the time of the Incas, and likely before, but our main focus was visiting the ruins that are situated on the hills above the town.  The ruins we visited were primarily an agricultural project, where the land was sculpted into huge terraces that were used to grow crops for the empire.  The height variety of the terraces meant that they could grow a diverse range of crops in one place, ranging from corn and coca (lower altitudes) to potatoes (higher altitudes) all at the same time.

You can see the terraces here:

Apparently Pisac was also a royal estate and a fort, to protect the sacred valley from invaders from the east.  This is what our Lonely Planet said, and I don’t remember our guide saying much about this part—however, we decided he was not entirely trustworthy when he told our group on the bus that the corn grown in the Sacred Valley is exported to the US, and used to make vitamins, because people in the US don’t eat vegetables like corn anymore, they just take vitamins.  We were sitting near the front and after he said all this we explained that that wasn’t true, that the US exports corn rather than import it, and that people still eat vegetables.  His rebuttal? He spent 3 days in LA and that’s what the people he stayed with told him.  I am not sure the other Americans were paying attention, since no one else said anything, but we were a little bit shocked.

This looks like it could be part of a fort (up on top of the hill where Pisac is located):

Regardless, the ruins are a really pretty place and it is amazing to see how well preserved the site is given that it was built about 500 years ago.

Here we are assessing the scene:

Next, we headed off to Ollantaytambo, which was a few hours west of Pisac.  En route, we stopped in Urubamba, which is about halfway. At this point, we pulled up in front of a buffet restaurant (pronounced buff-ett in Spanish) where we had our “optional” lunch stop.  The lunch was 22 soles (about $7) a person, which is expensive for Perú.  So we bought sandwiches and fruit in Cuzco and sat on the curb and ate that instead.  Our lunch stop was supposed to be 40 minutes but the rest of our group members dawdled in the restaurant so it ended up taking over an hour.  At least we were able to sneak into the restaurant and use the restroom for free while we waited for everyone to be done.

Ollantaytambo is a huge site, featuring more terracing, a fortress, and a temple to the sun god.

I think that these terraces were also used to grow crops to feed the troops stationed here, but we stopped listening to the guide for a while and wandered around on our own.

Here is JP admiring parts of old buildings at the base of the ruins, or maybe just laughing at me.

From halfway up, we could get a closer look at the temple at the top:

The temple is the section of smoother, lighter-colored stones in the upper left of the photo above.  Apparently the stones used to have three-dimensional carvings of animals significant to their religion but the Spanish colonizers destroyed them after they arrived in an effort to stamp out idolatry and convert people to Christianity.

This picture, looking up and right from the temple, shows part of the fortress.  Because Ollantaytambo is on a hill overlooking the valley, just like Pisac, you have a great view of the surrounding area from these hills, so the Incas were smart in picking their military fort locations.

After climbing back down all those stairs, we got back on the bus and headed for our last stop, Chinchero:

This is the only picture we took because it started to get dark right as we arrived. As you can see, though, there is a set of old Inca walls with a big white building set atop them.  The Inca walls were there as part of the Temple of the Rainbow that they constructed.  When the Spanish came, they knocked down most of the temple but kept these outer walls, and built a church on the same site.  The church was very ornate--paintings covered the ceiling, and there were quite a few large canvas paintings, but we couldn't take pictures so you'll have to take my word for it.

From Chinchero, we returned to Cuzco after dark, glad to be off the bus but having enjoyed the sights, if not every part of the day.

Next up: More Inca ruins on our own