A Day in Inca Country

For the first time in what feels like weeks, I got to sleep in. Even though we woke up in our Ollanta (short for Ollantaytambo) hotel at 8AM, it was still better than the 5AM we've been doing for the last three days. After taking our time to brush our teeth, take showers, and pack our bags, we ate the free albeit mediocre breakfast provided by the hotel.

Ruins at Ollantaytambo

When we first walked outside of the hotel in the morning, we were absolutely amazed at the beautiful mountains, valleys, and ruins all around us. When we were walking to the hotel from the train station last night, it felt like we were in a pretty remote village in the middle of the forest in some relatively flat area. Our entire perspective on the city of Ollanta was radically changed when we saw these mountainous ruins, the town square, and a market directly outside of our hotel's front entrance.

When walking through the marketplace and after we took care of all of our business at the hotel, I realized how much Spanish I learned from being in the country for only four days. I only knew a very limited set of words from Spanish before coming here (I'm learning French in school), but now I feel like I could survive in one of these rural villages where very few people speak English. It really shows how quickly you can learn a language if you're immersed in it. Though we didn't end up buying anything in Ollanta's marketplace of Incan souvenirs, we managed to haggle with the vendors for some decent deals.

The only real attraction we wanted to see in Ollanta was the city's Incan's ruins. Ollanta is a significant city because it is one of the few large settlements of almost entirely Incan people and buildings. Most of the buildings in the city, including our hotel, were built by the Incans almost 500 years ago and are still used by the descendants of the Incans today. Supposedly, 80% of people in Ollanta today speak Quechua, the language of the Incans.

In the marketplace next to our hotel, there is also a door to the Incan ruins that dominate the hillside above the city. After we paid the entrance fee, we were greeted by a few people offering tours of the ruins. We eventually decided to take one who offered a comprehensive tour at a reasonable price (and seemed to speak English pretty well).

As we started to make the climb through the terraces toward the ruins above, our guide explained to us how Ollanta was split into three main sections during Incan times: the commonpeople area (which is still inhabited by 4.000 people today), the agricultural area (where there are still fields growing a variety of foods today), and the sacred Incan religious area we were climbing up to. On the hillside that led up to the temple of the sun below, there were terraces, similar to the ones at Machu Picchu, but they were only used to decorate the path to the temple with flowers and other pretty vegetation. Although the terraces are no longer irrigated since the Spanish destroyed the water channels several hundred years ago, it was easy to imagine how beautiful the temple area must have looked in the past.

Something interesting our guide pointed out to us that our guide at Machu Picchu failed to clearly describe was how the Incans mastered the art of earthquake-safe construction techniques. Almost all Incan buildings and doorways were built in a trapezoidal shape (larger area at the bottom than the top), so when earthquakes hit, the structure could support itself. In this sense, the Incans really were ahead of their time, especially since geologists from Japan were actually surveying the ruins to perhaps research better ways to protect buildings from earthquakes. Ollanta has been around for 500 years and has suffered dozens of earthquakes, but almost no buildings have been destroyed.

At the top of the hill one area where the trapezoidal design was very apparent was at the temple of the sun. There, the doorways and the altar wall of the main building (the rest were looted by the Spanish) all had a clearly trapezoidal shape. For the Inca people, the sun was the most important religious symbol as it really was and still is the reason that life can continue to exist. Although most commonpeople could never actually visit this sacred temple, it was still a very important place, visible to the whole town below, where animal sacrifices would be made on solstice days to please the god of the Sun.

The Sacred Valley, looking toward Cusco

From the sun temple, we could also see some absolutely beautiful views of the three valleys that intersect at Ollanta. To the north, toward Machu Picchu, we could see one direction of the Sacred Valley of the Incas, as well as a distant snow-capped mountain. To the south, toward Cusco, we could see the other direction of the Sacred Valley and the Urubamba River. Lastly, to the southeast, we could see what is known as the Jungle valley, which is smaller valley but has its own little microclimate that allows for a beautiful, lush jungle to thrive.

The next significant part of the ruins was the guardtower and storagehouse. To get to this pair of buildings (which was the first we saw from the view in our hotel courtyard in the morning), we had to walk across a very narrow (3 to 5 feet wide) ledge where the mountain rose vertically on one side, and the mountain dropped nearly vertically about 100ft on the other. My father, who has a fear of heights, was very nervous along the way but successfully made it across. The storagehouse, which was the only building in the ruins with two floors, was used to store things like potatoes, grains, and other provisions in case there was a drought of some sort. Its strategic position in a non-easily accessible place next to a guardtower ensured the safety of the goods inside.

The last section of the ruins, which we reached after descending the hill with the religious ruins, was a "resting place" or "hotel" for people visiting the Incan city. This area contained several famous fountains that were used by the people of the city as their main source of running water.

The trek through these ruins was much easier than the one at Machu Picchu, and the tour guides were very informative and helpful, so I think that visiting Ollanta before or after the ruins at Machu Picchu is necessary in any trip to Peru. The city is located in such a beautiful part of our Earth that it's simply too good to be missed. While Machu Picchu showed the full extent of beautiful Incan territory and architecture, it was at Ollanta where I really learned about the culture and history of the Incan people. Before hiring a taxi driver off the street who would take us to Cusco, we had a large lunch at the Mayupata restaurant. There, I tried some famous Cuscean pizza with a huge mix of interesting meats and peppers.

For our drive to Cusco, we planned for one one-hour stop at the still-existent Incan village of Pisac. The first leg of the drive to Pisac followed a paved road that follows the Urubamba River. Similar to the train ride, the drive gave us wonderful views of the Sacred valley of the Incans, the Urubamba River, and the towns and villages along it. Something quite cool that I found out on this ride is that the Urubamba is actually one of the first of many tributaries of the Amazon River.

The Market in Pisac

In Pisac, we did not have time to visit its Incan ruins, but we did get to explore the main square area to buy a plethora of souvenirs for our trip. I got a set of pan pipes (a traditional Incan instrument), my brother got a medallion of the sun god, my mother got a miniature hand-woven dress that can be framed, and my father got a letter opener with some traditional Incan art.

The latter leg of the drive to Cusco was a lot more intense than the first, since we were ascending the mountains on zigzagging roads for almost 30 minutes. Although very slightly nerve-wracking, the views the ride provided of the nearby valleys, a wildfire in the mountains, and eventually the city of Cusco, were quite incredible and certainly worth it. Throughout the ride, even though the driver didn't speak English and we don't speak much Spanish, we were able to communicate with what we learned and found out that our driver makes the Cusco - Ollanta drive 2-3 times every day, so we knew we were in good hands.

Once we arrived at our hotel in Cusco at around 4:30, we had pretty much completed a full day, but we were not yet done. For about an hour and half, we explored Cusco for the last time, and actually climbed to a higher part of the town which provided us with a beautiful panorama of the city. At 6:30, we were ready to eat dinner, where we wanted our first taste of guinea pig, an almost exclusively Andean dish.

Unfortunately, all restaurants require a reservation one day in advance if you want a full guinea pig, but we found one quite fancy restaurant with an authentic Incan wall and open kitchen (Restaurant Incanto) that served a half of one. In addition to the absolutely delicious cooked Guinea pig, I had some pretty tasty chicken strips with some Andean chili. Everyone in the family got to try and see how scrumptious this unique Peruvian meal is, including my usually picky brother. It was pretty sad to realize that I probably won't have any more guinea pig meat for a long time, but I guess it will be a nice treat if I ever come back to Peru in the future.

After dinner, we almost immediately walked back to the hotel after getting one last souvenir for my brother (a hat that says "Fries with your guinea pig?"), and were quite exhausted on arrival. What we covered in a 12 hour period felt like two or three days of intense travel. This trip to Peru is probably the most physically intense one I've been on.

Tomorrow, we'll have our first "lazy" day of rest where we don't do too much, but it will be a break well deserved. After sleeping in until about 9AM, we'll eat breakfast at the hotel and then catch up on emails and other work until we have to leave at 11:30 to catch our flight back to Lima. By around 4PM, we should be back in our hotel in Lima. From there, we have no definite plans, so I'll leave it at that. Maybe since we finally have some time tomorrow, I can start posting some of our pictures from the trip for all of you to see.