Sacred Valley, Ruins and Legends

March 7th we arrived in Cusco/Cuzco/Qosqo depending on who you talked to. We had a direct bus from La Paz that took us around the bottom of Lake Titicaca and up the valley to Cusco. In Cusco we would get involved with two types of Spanish "schools" but I will leave that for Kasey to write about. This blog I hope to inform, those who would like, a bit about the Sacred Valley. These are mostly weekend trips that we did, and we had a great time on all of them.

Here we go:

oops, for most of these we needed to pay entry, so we bought a 10 day tourist boleto that would count for all but one of the sites.

SAQSAYHUAMAN or as we gringos call it "sexy woman"

Cusco really took shape when the ninth Inca (King) Pachakuteq started reorganizing and rebuilding a lot of places, he also started the expansion of the empire. His city Qosqo would take the shape of a Puma (a sacred animal) and the fortress of Saqsayhuaman would be the Puma's head. The site now overlooks the city from the north and was the site of a rebellion by the last Inca. This site has three tiered walls with some massive stones. Each of the walls have a zigzag that make them look like teeth. These walls and other buildings were ransacked by the Spaniards to build their houses (thy also just destroyed the temples and sacred areas) but the main walls have mostly been un-moved by weather or earthquakes, pretty spectacular in their construction, And in size of the stones used!

Saqsayhuaman has a large field where the native people still celebrate Inti Raymi, 'The Festival of the Sun.' There is also some 'slides' on the backside of a quarry looking area where the Inca probably had some fun, slipping down the rocks on their feet or maybe in their ceremonial dress (; Saqsayhuaman was the closest site to Cusco.

QÉNQO

Just up the road from Saqsayhuaman, we find the ceremonial site of Qénqo. This place was smallish, but held a semicircular ring around a massive stone (altar or something), and cool cuttings from the rockface. There was also a few channels at the top of the rock outcrop that had been made to drain the sacrificial blood, chicha or water down from a nother altar. And lastly there was a tunnel that had an flat stone cutout, a shelf in the stone and burial chambers. Seemed like a very spiritually centered place, and like most of these places we were left guessing about what we'd just seen or walked around.

LANLAKUYOQ

Not much of a ruin but a really cool playground of rocks, tunnels, narrow slot 'canyons', crevases, and shafts. I couldn't find much online about this place so I assumed it was a mining area, a playground for the little warriors, or a place to run to and confuse, scare, and ambush the would-be conquerors. I felt like I was wandering in an Indiana Jones film..

TAMBOMACHAY

These were apparently some pretty awesome baths to go to in the olden days. Incas would come here to bathe in the sacred and forever clean waters before doing a ceremony or big festival. it doesn't look like much now but water still flows out of the hill and down the channels built by a once great empire. I guess the other thing was that Kasey and I rode up there on a bus with a capacity of about 25, and I think there was at least 50 on te bus, so literally squeegeeing ourselves out of the bus into the downpour was an experience in itself. We didn't really need to see the baths when we were already soaked (;

PUKA PUKARA

Puka means red, Pukara means strength or fort, so PukaPukara is 'Red Strength' or 'Red Fort'. This site would have been a check point or rest place for people, messengers, merchants going from Cusco to the Sacred Valley or vise versa. It sits on a rocky prominence and would be easily defended from three sides. I think the Inca built many of these smaller forts or lookouts to help guard their territory as they were never without enemies.

MORAY 'crop circles'

The complex at Moray has been described a agricultural laboratory for the 'scientists' of the empire. There were over 4000 different kinds of potatoes, and I've heard numbers from 57 to 250 types of corn or maize. This site has over 20 levels of terraces in at least 4 different 'indents.' Archeologists have found multiple soil types at the different levels, and there is a 20C difference from bottom to top terrace. With different soils (carried in from all over the empire) and seeds from different regions, they were able to acclimate seeds and plants for foreign areas, get special characteristics for certain plans and modify others so they would grow in the high plains of the Altiplano. Basically ancient horticulture!

These plants all needed water so they irritated the levels too, but what to do about the bottom levels, wouldn't they just fill with water? They either dug down and created a drainage system or there is a natural occurring drainage at the bottom so that no matter how much rain the bottom level never floods!!

SALINAS (not realy a ruin site but cool anyway)

Near Moray, there is a spring that spits out salty water, actually 7% salt, that's twice as much as the oceans. Here the people have built rice paddy looking 'holds' for water. The water comes from the spring and is split up among 5000 or so shallow 'pools' and as the sun bakes off the water a salty crust forms. This salt has no iodine but does have small amounts of iron, magnesium, and a few other minerals, making it healthy and a commodity for Peru. The mines aren't running in the wet season as too much rain makes the water less concentrated in salts and evaporatiisn't effective enough to produce salts. The Incas may have used this site too to make salt as they needed it to dry their meats and other products for longer storage.

And now the big ones in the Sacred Valley proper.

PÍSAC

The site of Písac sits above the town of Písac. Písac (the town) now survives on the tours that come to town, the market on Sundays sprawls through every nook and cranny spreading from the central square. This square contains a very old tree that legend says Pizarro roped his horse to when he came (1533?) making the tree near 500 years old. Believable as the tree looks as its seen a number of years. Our guide also told us that the church holds mass in Quechua, the only one to do so in the region, every Sunday after normal service.

Písac the ruins, sits high above the markets and square, and we took a ride on the tour bus ;). Like Saqsayhuaman was the head of a Puma, Písac was built to resemble a 'pisaca' a type of partridge found in the valley. The site has many terraces, for agriculture and erosion control. They grew the best corn, white maize, here in the valley, and Písac would have been another stopping place to rest the llamas, get more food etc. to continue the journey. The main temples and storage for drying food were at the top of the spine where Písac layed across. Temples on top because they were easier to protect at the top, and closer to the gods and Apus, and storage houses because the wind kept the food dry with the wind and not soggy.

Písac would have protected the southern valley, Ollantaytambo protected the northern valley. Another interesting fact is that the walls across from Písac hold some thousands of tombs, many of which have been looted, but its still interesting to see an Incan grave 'wall.'

OLLANTAYTAMBO

This site keeps to the animal theme, and we find it in the shape of a llama. From the town, Ollantaytambo rises up the rockface like a pyramid, these terraces were for style only, no agriculture was done here, only beautification. Ollantaytambo was built with stone from across the river. National Geographic came to test a theory for how stones were moved (we found out how they cut stones at Machu Picchu). It would take some 7 thousand villagers or workers pulling ropes to move some of the more massive slabs, an they rolled them on wood rollers and/or stone ball bearings as big as bowling balls. They used ramps, like the Egyptians, to get the stones up to the cliffs and higher rockfaces. When they had accidents with big rocks they left them where they lay, in fields, because putting that stone up in a temple or other structure was seen as bad luck.

Ollantaytambo also has a few faces in the rocks, one has a man-made corona (crown) representing Apu Tunupa, a pilgrim knowledge giver in Incan Mythology. Another face, the north face has what is known as the 'inca face' and the winter solstice sunrise appears from this face when looked apon from the temple of the sun on top of Ollantaytambo. One of the temple walls has some unique architecture, 6 large slabs are spaced by smaller narrow slabs which could move and break during an earthquake and be replaced, rather than replacing a huge slab.. Many of the temple areas and structures were smashed to bits to promote Catholicism from the Spaniards.

CHINCHERO

Chinchero is the last stop on our tour, the main temple here has been overlayed by a massive church, but many of the terraces and walls can still be seen. We went on this part of the tour on a Sunday and the church had just closed, but we still got the lana demonstration. Wool from llamas, alpcas, and sometimes vicuñas is not ready to weave just yet. Ladies of the surrounding villages demonstrate how they wash the wool using a root that has saponins, which naturally clean the dirty wool. The next step is to spin the wool into various thickness depending on what you're making, then dye it. For this last step they use anything from plant leaves, flowers, roots and even a bug that lives on cacti, smooshing this bug gives a deep reddish/purple, a few drops of lime and the color turns bright red, put salt on it and it turns orange!! With this they can make many different natural colors to make their mantas, and clothing. A table runner sized piece of work would take 1 - 1.5 months to weave!

One final fact:

The Inca became such a wide spread empire not just from conquest but from integration. They picked the best parts of each culture they came in contact with and used these skills to enhance their knowledge or boost their warriors. Nazca for their astronomical knowledge. Tiwanaku and Chavin for their architectural genius. Huari (Wari) for their battle skills. Others for their knowledge in potery, weaving, crops, etc. Too bad the Spanish came along as white bearded men, or we could be looking at a completely different region..

Ollantaytambo, the sun god smiles

Moray

Písac from the temple area

Salinas, salt "mines"