Back to Cuzco

We woke up before 5am this morning because we went to bed at 7 (Nita) and 9 (Sandra) last night. We decided not to try to do anything particular before lunch, but just take it easy, pack, read, and so on.

We met the gang at 11:30 for lunch at the hotel restaurant. Sandra is still coughing a lot and pretty dragged out, but she had an appetite at lunch, which suggests she might be getting better. After lunch, we walked to the train station to catch the train back to Ollanta.

 

The entrance to the hotel

 

Sandra on bridge over Urumbamba River outside hotel

 

The train ride was similar to the one out. We had coca tea served to us. But this time, they had a dancer come out in costume with a mask (sort of a jester outfit) and dance in aisle. He pulled one woman up and danced with her. And then he came over and danced with me. It was just kind of hop on alternating feet-type dance. We didn't get a photo unfortunately, but one of our group mates did, so maybe we'll post that later.

After the dance the train attendants did a fashion show for us, modeling some alpaca and vicuña wraps and sweaters. Afterwards they tried to sell them to us. The vicuña is amazingly soft and very very expensive. (Like a vicuña coat might coast $5000). But it was all very entertaining and we got to touch the vicuña.

We got off the train and then got back on our bus to Cuzco. That drive took a little over an hour and a half. We really enjoyed one last look at the beautiful countryside. As Sandra says, you know you're in a different country. We drove up out of the Sacred Valley onto the high country with patchwork fields and adobe houses, women in tall hats (a different type of hat for every region), and our last look at the snow-capped Andes.

 

 

When we got back to Cuzco, they were having the Octavo, which is when the saints go back from catedral to the churches were they come from. Some of the streets were closed off for that, so we had to stop further out and switch to a smaller bus that could get through the streets we had to get through and drop us off at the door of the hotel.

At the hotel, the bag we had to leave behind was already in our room, so we only had to collect keys. It was about 5:30 at this point. We said all our goodbyes to our tour mates and to our guides. Then we rushed to our room and ordered room service for dinner. I couldn't wait to get out of the pants I've been wearing for four days now!

Tomorrow we head to the Cuzco airport and back to the U.S. We have an overnight flight, so won't get back to Seattle until late Saturday. We're ready to be home now. I sure hope someone invents teleporters soon!

All in all, we were very pleased with our trip. We got to see a lot of the countryside of Peru, experience some of Cuzco's celebrations, and learn about the lives of the people of Peru. And of course we got to experience Machu Picchu. It was all really wonderful and we are very glad we came.

 

 

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The Sun Gate

This morning we went back to Machu Picchu. We left the group to do our own hike. Sandra is still sick, but she feels better in the mornings. We decided to walk slowly and see how much she could do. We first went up to where our assistant guide Freddy said was the best photo spot. It was a beautiful spot. Here's a photo of us from that spot.

Then we kept going up. We'd go up 5-10 steps and then rest a while. We figured if we got too tired, we could just turn around. We're over more in the agricultural section of Machu Picchu rather than the temple section where we were yesterday, which gives us great views of the rest of the complex. Sometimes we were climbing through more jungle-like growth as the photo below shows.

 

 

After a while, we made it to the cross-roads where we decided to climb towards the Sun Gate. The Sun Gate is the entrance to Machu Picchu from the Inka Trail which goes over the mountains 26 miles. On the summer solstice the sun comes up in the cleft between two ridges where the Sun Gate is. (On the winter solstice, the sun comes up in a cleft between two other peaks.) You can see this cleft on the far left of this photo from the entrance to Machu Picchu. If you enlarge the photo, you might be able to see the trail angling up from the right up to the cleft.

 

The Sun Gate from Machu Picchu entrance

 

 

The trail to the Sun Gate is mostly pretty wide and paved with stone. Still, it's pretty steady uphill. We continued our slow pace and tried to sit and rest in the shade every so often. We both expected it to be chilly up here early in the day, but by 9am when we started, it was already very warm and humid. We saw some beautiful views of Machu Picchu and the surrounding areas, including Agua Calientes way down in the narrow valley between the mountains. Along the way, we saw terraces tucked into little spaces on the mountain. It's really amazing how the terraces allowed the Inkas to use every bit of space. The photo below shows us at an Inkan structure way up on the trail to the Sun Gate with Machu Picchu far below.

 

 

On the way up, we passed some of our tour mates who had started at the same time we did and who were coming down. They gave us some encouragement and we kept going. The last little bit had some pretty rough stairs and "beautiful views" (steep drop-offs), but at last we made it to the Sun Gate and had beautiful views of the Machu Picchu and also the mountains on the other side of this ridge. We spent a few minutes just resting at the top and then took photos to show we made it.

 

At the Sun Gate. Machu Picchu below

 

At the Sun Gate. Machu Picchu below

 

In the photo of Machu Picchu below taken from the Sun Gate, you can also see the windy road we had to take up the mountain to get there.

 

 

We started back down and the sky was clouding over. We worried a little bit about there being a thunderstorm, but there never was and we appreciated the cooler air for the walk down. It took us about 2 hours to get up to the Sun Gate, but only an hour coming back. Going downhill is a lot easier and for the most part this is a good stone paved trails, except for the places with those rough stairs with beautiful views. When we got back down to the Machu Picchu complex, I couldn't believe we were back so fast. Then there were all the stairs back down to the entrance. But we were pretty exhiliarated that we had made the hike and back.

After that we rode the bus back to Agua Calientes. We had asked Freddy to draw us a map of how to get back to the hotel, because the times we had gone before with the guides seemed so hard to remember. He assured it was easy and straight (which it really wasn't), but we did manage to find our way back to the part where it is straight to the hotel. We stopped at a little restaurant for lunch and then wandered in the huge mercado there finding some things to hang on our seasonal tree.

Needless to say we are pretty worn out. We had a great day and feel like we really got to experience Machu Picchu. Sandra held up, although she was pretty worn out (as was I). We went to our room, showered, put on robes and decided we would have room service for dinner. The tour dinner starts at 8pm and that's really too late for us to eat as we are usually getting into bed to read at about 8:30-9. It's especially hard when we are so exhausted.

Tomorrow we have the morning here and we haven't decided yet what to do. But we don't have to get up early and that is nice. Then we head back to Cuzco in the afternoon.

 

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Machu Picchu!

Today was the day we got to see Machu Picchu.

Sandra was still feeling pretty puny, but determined to get to Machu Picchu, which is the whole reason we planned this trip. We had to pack two days worth in our small bag and send our other suitcase back to Cusco because the train only allows one 11-pound carry on. We left Yucay at 7:45am and drove 40 minutes to the train station. Then we boarded the Peru Rail train that runs to Machu Picchu.

 

 

Machu Picchu is only 27 miles away, but it takes the train an hour and a half to get there. I think that's because now that you can get to Machu Picchu by bus or car, people mostly take the train for the experience. So they go slowly so you can enjoy the scenery and they can serve you a snack and sell souvenirs. They did stop once to let the return train pass us. For snack, we just had coca tea since we expected an early lunch. I also asked for a little taste of the Peruvian soft drink Inka Kola, which I've been wanting to taste, but I don't want a whole bottle. It's not cola colored; it's neon yellow. It tastes like slightly citrus-y bubble gum. Two sips were enough.

The scenery outside was beautiful. We were following along the Urumbamba River. It's sometimes wide and placid and sometimes rocky and more energetic. This is the dry season, so it would be much wilder in the rainy season. There were snow-capped mountains peeking over the tops of the nearer steep mountains. And in many places, we could see Inkan ruins. In one place there was a bridge across the river where the foundations of the bridge were Inkan even though the bridge roadway has been replaced in current times.

The plants changed as we got closer to Machu Picchu. It's pretty dry in the parts we've been touring so far, with few trees and scrubby plants. Along the way, the plants became more lush with more trees and bromeliads in the trees. I wouldn't call it exactly lush, but working it's way towards that. I presume that continues until the Urumbamba gets to the Amazon and the rain forest.

We arrived at Aguas Calientes where our hotel is, but sent the baggage to the hotel and got on a bus to go directly to Machu Picchu. The bumpy bus ride from Aguas Calientes is on a steep, narrow dirt road with lots of hairpin turns and sheer drop offs. This lasted for 30-40 minutes. When we reached the parque, we stopped at the cafe at the top for lunch. Then at last we were going into Machu Picchu.

It was a short hike up and down some terraces like we've been seeing many times before and then there it was.

 

Sandra and Nita at Machu Picchu

 

For this trip, Diego our guide showed us around and talked to us about the history of the place and how it was excavated by Hiram Bingham. Unfortunately, there were lots of problems with how he ran the excavations so that artifacts were not recorded in situ and so for many of the rooms, it's unclear what their purpose might have been. So much of the information about what things were are speculation.

The photo below shows what they call the Temple of the Sun. That's because the window you see captures the rising sun on June 21 (winter solstice). There's another window on the catty corner side that captures the rising sun on December 21 (summer solstice). I like the way this building made use of the natural rock that it is sitting on.

 

Temple of the Sun, Machu Picchu

 

The photo below shows a cave at the base of the Temple of the Sun.

 

 

The Temple of the Condor utilized the natural rock as part of the condor image: the two "wings" are the rocks forming a V on either side and the head of the condor is the rock on the floor below. Above the wings are niches that would have fit mummies. The Inka believed when people died, they were carried on the back of a condor to the next world. They were buried with food to feed the condor because otherwise the condor would drop them. There are also some caves under this temple, but they cannot be excavated because of concerns that the building might collapse.

 

 

Temple of the Condor

 

Like many of the places we've seen, you can tell the importance of different buildings by the stonework. That's true at Machu Picchu as well. There's a big difference between the every day quarters, the temples, and (the most special) the quarters of the Inka (the chief leader). The quarters of the Inka was the only room that had a room off of it that might have been a bathroom. It's a small room with a drainage hole. The photo below shows a section were ordinary walls are on the right and nicer walls are on the left.

 

 

The room below was probably important as there is some nice stonework here. The room would have been open to the sky and there were two very round "bird baths" in the middle. Bingham thought these were places were maize was ground, but the bottoms are flat, not rounded like grinding stones. And they usually have water in them. So later theorists called these "Espejos de Agua" "Mirrors of Water." But they might also serve an observatory function as many other features do. It could be that at certain times, the water would reflect certain constellations in the sky.

 

 

The stone below exactly mirrors the shape of the mountains behind it. Mountains were sacred to the Inka.

 

 

We saw lots of llamas wandering around on Machu Picchu.

 

 

The next photo is of the common folk section of Machu Picchu. The year-round population of Machu Picchu was about 300 people, but these people were mostly caretakers of the place. When the Inka was in residence, there were about 1000 people. This place took about 60 years to build (Inka collected taxes through labor from subjugated groups by having them work on projects like this). But it was only used for about 40 years after that. At that point, the Spaniards came and conquered the Inkas.

 

 

We really enjoyed our first visit to Machu Picchu. It's hard work as there are lots of stairs to climb and many are narrow and steep with "beautiful views" as Diego calls them (translate: sheer drop offs). We'll come back tomorrow, and spend some more time on our own.

As we left the park, we got to stamp our passports with a Machu Picchu stamp.

Then there was the bus ride back, only this time, downhill (yikes!). Then we walked a ways to our hotel. It's the Inka Terra hotel and is on this lush property with a bunch of little casitas where the rooms are. It's super luxurious with shower sandals and bathrobes. REI (who organized this tour) certainly uses fancy hotels. The hotel folk will take you bird watching or to visit the orchid garden or their tea plantation. You can also go see some Andean bears they have on the property that are part of a project to repopulate the bears and release them into the wild.

We took showers and rested until dinner at 7 in the hotel cafe. Then bed!

 

 

 

 

 

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Ollantaytambo, Weaving, and Hiking through the Andes

Today Sandra decided not to come on the hike because she was still not feeling well and she would like to feel better for Machu Picchu. So I was on my own today.

We rode the bus to Ollantaytambo. This was to be an important temple, but it was never finished likely due to small pox (which reached Peru before the Spaniards), civil war, and the Spaniards. The temple is at the top of a terraced area on a mountain.

 

Ollantaytambo

 

We hiked up the steps (starts in the middle of the terraces above) and had to rest 2X on the way up. In the photo below, I am looking down from near the top. You can see there are lots of stones laying around at all levels of Ollantaytambo showing that it was never finished. Some of the stones at the top were in the process of being polished and you could compare the smooth sides where they had been polished with the rougher sides.

 

 

As you get closer to the top, the stones get more carefully laid and they get bigger. The picture below is me at a gateway on the way to the temple part.

 

 

The protuberances in the stones below act as a sun dial. You can see the shadows they cast, but I don't know what time they are saying it is. It may be that when certain shadows converge it means it's a certain time of year.

 

 

At the very top are huge stones that were brought up from a neighboring mountain. The stones below are the biggest we've seen. They have protruberances that some think are incomplete carvings, such as a puma and an Inkan cross.

 

 

Below is a view of the stairs we came down

 

 

There was one incomplete fountain at the top, but there were several fountains that were running at the bottom. The one below features an Inkan cross (three stair steps in each quadrant).

 

 

Our neext stop was my favorite: the Chinchero Center for Textile Arts. This school was founded by a woman who was concerned that the traditional ways of spinning, dyeing, and weaving yarn were being lost. In the school women learn to make the Chinchero patterns and how to spin, dye, and weave the cloth. A lot of schools have sprung up in other regions to teach girls and women how to make traditional textiles.

We arrived and they sat us on benches while one woman narrated each step of the process. She let us feel wool from vicuña, alpaca, and wool. They work primarily with alpaca and some with wool. There were women weaving and spinning all around us the whole time and the narrator would have some of the women step forward or us move to see what each was doing. First she showed us how they spin the thread, using a drop spindle. But the single thread isn't strong enought so they re-spin two threads together in the opposite direction to make a two-ply thread. The women below are plying two threads into one.

 

 

We then got to see how the weaving was done. The warp threads are set up on a big frame and when these are complete, one end is tied to a stake and the other end to a belt the woman is wearing. The weaver creates the pattern by how she chooses different warp threads to raise or lower as she puts the weft thread through each row. The three women below are weaving fairly narrow fabric. For really wide things, like a bedspread, two pieces are sew together.

 

 

The narrator said that they had completely lost the knowledge of how to use natural dyes, so they had to relearn that. She showed us all the plants, insects, and minerals they use in dyeing. In the photo below, they demonstrating the effects of different mordants. Cochineal is a dye made from insects that live on cactus. They usually dye fabrics red. In the photo, you can see how different the colors are depending on which mordant was used.

 

 

After the demonstration, the women were sitting along the sides the courtyard with their woven products for us to look at and hopefully buy. I bought a small runner of natural alpaca. Even though I love the colors, the variations in the natural alpaca, from light cream to dark brown, are very beautiful. While I waited for other shoppers, our guide took my photo with one of the weavers and her daughter.

 

 

After the Center for Textile Arts, we drove to Maras where the salt pools are. We were very high up and could see lots of the snow-capped Andes that we can't see as well down in the valleys.

 

 

From the village of Maras, it was a two hour hike to the salt pools. This hike was downhill, but not steep like yesterday and on a wide (dusty) road. The salt pools are filled by a mountain spring that is 3X as salty as the ocean. It flows into a series of small irrigation ditches that people can open or close to fill the pools. Through a series of steps of filling and evaporation, the salt is left in the pools and then scraped up and carried out. The salt pools are owned by families in Maras. Families can have one or more pools.

 

Salt Pools at Maras

 

After we viewed the salt pools, we walked across the top of the pools to continue the rest of our hike down to the river. This was the hardest part of the hike psychologically. The trail we were following was very narrow: 12-18 inches, as you can see from my foot below. Plus the trail was covered with salt deposits that looked like snow or ice, so my brain kept expecting that it would be slippery. It was a very harrowing 10 minutes to get across.

 

 

After that, it took us another 40 minutes on the road to make it down to the Urumbamba River. Unfortunately, there wasn't any place we could get down to the river to touch it. We crossed the river on a bridge that seemed like it had seen better days and shook with every step. But we made it across and back to our bus and back to our hotel.

 

 

Sandra was still not feeling very well, but she'd been able to sleep and read a lot during the day. I really missed having her on the trip today.

We had dinner with the group and then packed our bag for the train to Agua Calientes. We can only take one 11 pound bag. Our other bag will go back to Cusco.

Tomorrow we see Machu Picchu!

 

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Entering the Sacred Valley

Today we got up and got ready to go the Sacred Valley. We didn't have noise all night (Yeah!), but Sandra is having a lot of trouble with congestion and coughing, so she didn't sleep well even though it was quieter.

Our bus took us up the mountain past Sacsaywaman and even higher and then out of the Cusco Valley and into the Sacred Valley on the other side. This valley has the Urumbamba River running through. For Inkans dualities were important and it was believed that the Urumbamba River was the other side of the river in the sky: the Milky Way. Thus, this valley is a sacred valley. The Urumbamba eventually flows into the Amazon and finally into the Atlantic Ocean.

Our first stop was the ruins at Pisac. There is a current town of Pisac in the valley floor, but there used to be lots of buildings and a temple on the mountain slopes above current day Pisac. The bus driver took us up to Pisac ruins, so we only had to walk mostly down from ruins (and only a little up). But saying we walked down hill does not cover how difficult the hike was. It was straight down the mountain mostly on stairs that were very irregular and many so high that I had to turn sideways to step off them. Pisac ruins are at about 12,000 feet and the town of Pisac where we were hiking down to is 9000 feet.

Diego, our guide, pointed out how all the mountains around here are striped because they used to be terraced. What we were seeing were the ruins of terraces. The Inkans put terraces just about everywhere, not just for growing, but for building on as well.

 

This mountain is striped with ruins of Inkan terraces

 

The terraces allowed the Inkans to cultivate the sides of the mountains so that when the river flooded, their dwellings and crops were not destroyed. They also served to retain the sides of the mountains, so there wouldn't be mudslides. Each level contained a layer of topsoil, then sand, then small rocks, then bigger ones to filter the water slowly into the ground.

 

Nita and Sandra in front of restored terrace

 

Restored terraces at Pisac

 

On a hillside by the Pisac ruins was a cemetery: holes in the mountainside where tens of thousands of people were buried. In the photo below you can see the holes in the mountainside, but normally, these would not be showing. The holes mean that the graves have been looted.

 

Gravesites on mountainside

 

After viewing the Pisac ruins we hiked up a bit and then over to the temple. First we passed through a gateway you can see in the photo below. Notice the difference in the masonry on the gateway and the rocks just above the gateway stones. Both are the mortarless Inkan masonry, but the bigger, more carefully placed stones on the gateway mark it as something special. (The terracing and much of the other cultural artifacts we are seeing were present prior to the Inkan conquest of this area; but the way they do their masonry is only found in one other place: an indigenous group around Lake Titicaca. This group may be related to the Inkans.)

 

Sandra approaches the gateway to the temple

 

We also had to go through a tunnel. At last we arrived at the Inkan temple. The rooms looked very similar to the ones in Qorikancha.

 

Sandra at the Pisac templ

 

Then we started our trek down. We were hiking on the very side of the mountain with sheer drops and very little guardrailing. The photo below shows Sandra in one of the few flat parts of the trail and the drop to one side.

 

On the way down from Pisac

 

The trail was grueling and we didn't get many rest stops on the way down. I was popping Ibuprofen (should have taken it before we started, but forgot til the knees started speaking) and guzzling water (the air here is pretty dry). We were sure glad we practiced all those stairs in Seattle.

 

Nita hiking on a terrace

 

It was a little after noon when we made it down to the current town of Pisac. We had started out a little after 9 (and of course a few stops for talking and resting). Even after all the stairs we have been doing in Seattle, my knees were really exhausted, but not injured. Sandra held up very well with her cold and the walking. But we arrived at the Pisac market where we had 40 minutes to shop, we spent the first 15 minutes sitting! We did do a little shopping, but this Sunday market is so huge it was a bit overwhelming and we were afraid we would get lost in all the stands. Sandra did find a ring she liked and we also got an alpaca wallhanging and a striped cloth we'll use for a table cloth.

Finally, we headed to Urumbamba for lunch. After about an hour we arrived at Wayna Ranch where they served us this huge meal with empanadas, tamales (no filling, just the corn), anticucho (marinated beef heart on skewers), several types of potatoes (a must at every Peruvian meal), avocado, tomatoes, pork, chicken, trucha (trout), and for dessert, a sweet pudding with a soft meringue on top, caramel dipped gooseberries, cookies, and fruit including fresh tuna (prickly pear). They just kept bringing food out. Most of it was delicious.

Between lunch and the dessert we saw a demonstration of the Peruvian Paso horses that the ranch keeps for guests. The Paso breed of horses has a special gait that keeps three feet on the ground at all times. This allows the horse and rider to go for great distances without getting tired because it's not as bouncy as a trot. This isn't something that is trained into a horse, it is genetic. The Peruvian Paso has been bred to have this particular gait. The video below shows a formation demonstrating the gait with the Paso horses and their chelanes (Paso caballeros).

 

 

The riders tip their hats as they finish their routine

 

The signs for the doors to the bathrooms at Wayna Ranch had a woman and man in traditional Peruvian dress. On a third door, there was the matching sign below. It took me a few minutes to figure out what it meant.

 

After the show and dessert some of our tour mates rode the horses for a bit. Then we got on the bus and headed to our hotel in Yucay, just a few minutes away. The hotel is built on a property that was a historic hacienda that housed a monastery. Our room is in a newer part, but still has a monastery theme (although it is very nice inside). Below is the outside of the door and key to our room. We spent the couple of hours we had before dinner resting.

 

I had to have someone to show me how to work the latch on this door

 

Our room key

 

Sandra checks through the door peephole.

 

At 7 we went to dinner at the hotel restaurant. The food was again delicious and plentiful. We both had trucha because we liked it so well at lunch. And chocolate cake for dessert. We're hoping to sleep well tonight. We're staying here two nights, so we don't have to get up and pack tomorrow.

 

 

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