Today’s adventure included a tour of Incan ruins on the outskirts of Cusco. We got picked up at 7:30am and began our trip.
We traveled upwards to see the entire view of Cusco. At one point the city was laid out to look similar to a Puma. The city itself has quite a far reach, as it has served the Inca capital for centuries before Lima became the official capital.
The mountains surrounding the city show the ancient Inca agriculture traditions of what looks to be steps down the mountainside. The Incas would level out the mountain to grow potatoes and corn. The soil is very rich and the Incas would rotate the crop each year to keep the soil rich. To expand their farming land within the mountains, they would use these stepped gardens on the side of the mountain. All in all, we went to three ruins.
We went to the Sacred Valley where the recent floods had swept through the valley and killed 100 people. The valley itself is a picturesque scene with a river divided by a green valley that’s surrounded by giant, sharp mountains.
We initially stopped at a llama/alpaca farm. Bridget and I were even able to feed one of the alpacas. There was a baby alpaca that followed us a bit, and then Bridget seemed to think that we needed one to play with the kitties. This alpaca farm was also home to the native weavers (not Ron and Chris) as well where they were making rugs and blankets. Even the local children are pretty social and cute. They seemed to all love to smile for the camera.
We carried on, and our first ruin stop was Pisac. Here, we saw our first glimpse of the ingenuity of this ancient culture. Thousand pound blocks of stone were elegantly carved to be placed within one another. The Incas had even built a way to lock the interconnected stones together by carving holes in one rock and locking them with the outward catch of the other. No one knows how the Incas carved these stones with such precision. The architecture is still quite impressive even by today’s standards.
The site showed some of the ancient houses, and the path wrapped around through a tunnel next to the mountain side. We got a close view of the agriculture mountainside steps. We also learned about the sacred condor (overseer of heavens), puma (overseer of the modern world), and snake (overseer of the spiritual/underworld).
The second sight, Ollantaytambo, was built on a steep mountain. Walking up the stairs, I noticed that we were definitely high up in elevation. After about 10 steps, I started to breathe heavy. The site was still being excavated, but they had found many aqueducts and fountains that the Incas had built. There were also more elegantly carved stones that had stood the test of time. The site towered high above us, and was simply impressive.
After a few more picture stops of the magnificent views of the Andes mountains, we ended up in our third and last Inca site for the day, Chinchero. This place had plenty of hand made crafts where Bridget bought some Alpaca gloves.
We then left for the day and grabbed dinner at an American restaurant, Jacks, which Bridget heard was cheap and had amazing food from her friend. Jack’s delivered. I had a BLT, and it was delicious.
