Sacred Ruination

We headed out on another tour early in the morning.  Day 1 – Sacred Valley to Aguas Calientes.  Day 2 Machu Picchu.

I know we’ve talked about how tired we are of seeing ruins.  Having said that, southern Peru is kind of ground zero for ruins, and there are some pretty good ones.

The Sacred Valley has only had this name since the 1960’s when some PR person in the government tourist agency decided that it would be a more touristic name.  Even so, the Inca, and previous groups, seem to have treated it as such, and the river running through it had the name of Sacred River.

Our first stop, as it is on most tours here, was to the silversmiths in the town of Pisac.  They had pretty nice things, and we saw how the silver is made a turned into jewelry.  We headed out to the Pisac ruins, which were once an agricultural village.

It is hard to imagine how this was built, as there couldn’t have been more than several hundred residents, and it was built in the space of a few years.  The guide explained that no slave labor was used, rather people worked for the government in lieu of taxes.  So four months of hard labor equated to several years of taxes.  There were groups of 15,000 men and 5,000 women who would go around and build stuff.

Here is Pisac:

Ruins at Pisac

Terraces of Pisac

Looking down at part of the sacred valley – given all the mountains around here, one can see why they thought any flat land to be sacred

The mountain in the far distance contains an agricultural station where there are over 3400 types of potatos being grown (not a typo – 3400)

Terraces of Pisac

Ruins at Pisac

Mountain springs fed water to the irrigation system

If you look closely, you can see a kid (lower left) bleating to mom (on the rock in the left)

We moved on following the Urubamba River, to Urubamba where we had lunch.  Then on to Ollantaytambo.  There was another set of ruins.

Ollantaytambo

Look at the military structures on the side of the mountain at Ollantaytambo

Military structures on the side of the mountain at Ollantaytambo

Ollantaytambo

Terraces of Ollantaytambo

Exquisite stonework

Terraces of Ollantaytambo

This is where we took a tuktuk to the train station for the train to Aguas Calientes.  This is the town where the buses go to Machu Picchu.  The only ways to get there are by trail.  We opted for the train.