WEATHER: Cooler and wet 18C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Seeing some Inca Ruins
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Saying good-bye to Roomie and trekkers
BUYS OF THE DAY: A matching birthday ring
WORD OF THE DAY: Snappy Times aka ST
We got to have a sleep in this morning. We weren’t leaving till 9.30am. The guys were checking their last minute things for the Inca Trail and having to get their backpacks and other belongings into the luggage room until their return in 5 days. There is an air of excitement and trepidation at the journey that awaits them tomorrow. I feel nervous for them and I’m not even going.
So into a van for the day we pile. It seems bigger than the last one we had for the Colca Canyon and everyone’s bags were stuffed on the back seat along with Malar, Nic and Kate. We only had to drive 40 minutes out of Cuzco to get to our first stop the Ccochahuasi Sanctuary. It is a wild life refuge for injured local animals. It is a private family owned organization that has dedicated itself to the rescue of animals that have been abused, or that come from the illicit traffic of wildlife. The animal sanctuary was founded in 2007. Since then, they have provided refuge to a wide number of species; a lot of them are in the brink of extinction. One of these includes the Condor Andino, which deserves special attention in order to achieve the reproduction of these amazing birds and then release the offspring. It is their mission to teach the visitors about the causes of the continuing disappearance of these species in Peru and to prevent the purchase of feathers and other products that have been obtained illegally.
As a sanctuary their role is to rescue, rehabilitate and educate. This was an upward battle against black marketers desperate for income, black market buyers who had no respect or concept of the damage they were doing to the environment, farmers pushed to encroach on natural environment creating conflict between wild animals and producing an income. And they did this all with dedication, passion and no government funding. I really admired them!
The highlight of the tour of the sanctuary had to be the Condors. They had 3 of them, 2 adults and 1 baby (still 25kg) and they got them to fly for us in a large aviary. They are magnificent birds and to see them in flight was AMAZING. They are MASSIVE!!!! They flew right over our heads, it was so cool and they let us take heaps of photos of them. The baby Condor, when I got my photo taken was trying to peck at my socks and Seamus took a hilarious photo of me pulling the funniest face. I should make it my profile picture! They also had hawks, 2 puma’s that they saved from a nightclub in Lima, macaws, deer and an eagle to name a few. If you want to check out their web site or make a donation (via PayPal) their web site is http://www.santuariocochahuasi.com/
Our next stop was 45 minutes away to the town of Pisaq. We dropped off Mark here in the town as he was going to arrange lunch and we continued on to the Pisaq Inca Ruins, known as Inca Pisaq, which lie atop a hill at the entrance to the valley. The ruins are separated along the ridge into four groups: Pisaqa, Intihuatana, Q'allaqasa, and Kinchiracay. Intihuatana (the Temple of the Sun) includes a number of baths and temples. Intihuatana, a volcanic outcrop carved into a "hitching post" for the Sun, is the focus of the complex. The angles of its base suggest that it served some astronomical function. Q'allaqasa, which is built onto a natural spur and overlooks the valley, is known as the citadel.
The Inca constructed agricultural terraces on the steep hillside, which are still in use today. They created the terraces by hauling richer topsoil by hand from the lower lands. The terraces enabled the production of surplus food, more than would normally be possible at altitudes as high as 11,000 feet. The narrow rows of terraces beneath the citadel are thought to represent the wing of a partridge (pisaca), from which the village and ruins get their name. The birds are also common in the area at dusk.
With military, religious, and agricultural structures, the site served at least a triple purpose. Researchers believe that Pisaq defended the southern entrance to the Sacred Valley, while Choquequirao defended the western entrance, and the fortress at Ollantaytambo the northern. Inca Pisaq controlled a route which connected the Inca Empire with the border of the rain forest.
According to the scholar Kim MacQuarrie, Pachacuti erected a number of royal estates to memorialize victories over other ethnic groups. Among these royal estates are Pisaq (victory over the Cuyos), Ollantaytambo (victory over the Tambos) and Machu Picchu (conquest of the Vilcabamba Valley). Other historians suggest that Pisaq was established to protect Cusco from possible attacks of the Antis nations. It is unknown when Inca Pisaq was built. Since it does not appear to have been inhabited by any pre-Inca civilization but it was most likely built no earlier than 1440. The Spanish explorer Francisco Pizarro and the conquistadores destroyed Inca Pisaq in the early 1530s. The modern town of Pisaq was built in the valley by Viceroy Toledo during the 1570s.
Once we arrived at Pisaq Inca we walked to the base of the Inca Ruins where Ruben told us in a nutshell about the Inca Empire and what happened. We then continued to walk to the top of the ruins and I have to mention again how glad I am NOT doing the Inca Trek. If this was a taste of what is to come for the guys over the next 4 days, they are going to deserve a medal when they finish. It was tough going, with uneven steps and heading up it was really had to breathe with the physical exertion. You can see a little bit of worry on some of the group’s faces and what they know is to come. But I know they will all do fine and it isn’t where you finish but that you did your best and made it to the end. There were great views from the top and certainly worth the effort. The Inca’s were certainly a very smart race that is for sure. So what goes up must come down, and whoever said it is easier to come down was wrong. Once again uneven steps, loose gravel and midget steps you really had to watch where you were walking the whole time. There are no safety barriers around the ruins, so if you were to have a massive trip, you could literally go straight over the edge – see ya later and thanks for coming! I wonder how many Inca’s did actually fall over the edge by accident in their time. Interesting question. After an hour at the site we got driven back into town for lunch.
The restaurant that Mark picked was an alternative kind of place, in a good sense, and all the food on the menu looked amazing. It is all made fresh from scratch, so we ordered what we wanted, I got a stir fry Alpaca dish, and then we got given free time for 40 minutes to explore the markets directly outside the restaurant till our meals were ready. I used some more ‘birthday’ money to buy a matching ring to the birthday bangle I bought in Arequipa. I should probably check just how much ‘birthday’ money I have left, as I have certainly bought quite a few items with it over the last week. There is so much silver. Most of it looks like the same stuff at each stall in each city, but you do need to comb through it to find that ‘original’ piece. This is where Kate and I also are very similar; we are both attracted like magnets to all the silver everywhere we go. We do have different opinions on what we each like, I’m big and chucky and she is a bit more refined, except for my Morocco ring which is still safely planted on my finger.
We left Pisaq at 2.45pm and kept moving further along the Sacred Valley to our last stop for the day Ollantaytambo and another Inca Ruin site. It only took us around an hour to get here and just as we pulled up it started to drizzle a little bit. Great my wet jacket and umbrella are back at the hotel. It wasn’t a hard rain, and as like any other country that has fast changing weather there were locals selling those useless plastic ponchos that will keep you dry for a millisecond until the wind picks up and the plastic gets blown all over the place and you still get wet anyway. Useless things they are. So I said no thanks to the poncho selling ladies and sucked up the drizzle as we climbed our biggest ‘mountain’ of stairs so far on the trip. I just stood at the bottom and looked up and thought just how fit these Inca people were. It was I rekon nearly more than a 45 degree angle. So with some determination and with a mission to get to get the job done we climbed the 100+ steps to get to the top and yes I was heavy breathing and had to stop once to catch my breath, but I still made it to the top in good time and for the 50th time thanking myself for not booking on the Inca Trail. Thank-goodness.
Ollantaytambo is a town and an Inca archaeological site 60 kilometers northwest of the city of Cusco. It is located at an altitude of 2,792 meters above sea level. During the Inca Empire, Ollantaytambo was the royal estate of Emperor Pachacuti who conquered the region, built the town and a ceremonial center. At the time of the Spanish conquest of Peru it served as a stronghold for Manco Inca Yupanqui, leader of the Inca resistance. Nowadays it is an important tourist attraction on account of its Inca buildings and as one of the most common starting points for the three-day, four-night hike known as the Inca Trail.
Around the mid-15th century, the Inca emperor Pachacuti conquered and razed Ollantaytambo; the town and the nearby region were incorporated into his personal estate. The emperor rebuilt the town with sumptuous constructions and undertook extensive works of terracing and irrigation in the Urubamba Valley; the town provided lodging for the Inca nobility while the terraces were farmed by yanaconas, retainers of the emperor. After Pachacuti's death, the estate came under the administration of his panaqa, his family clan.
The valleys of the Urubamba and Patakancha rivers along Ollantaytambo are covered by an extensive set of agricultural terraces which start at the bottom of the valleys and climb up the surrounding hills. The terraces permitted farming on otherwise unusable terrain; they also allowed the Incas to take advantage of the different ecological zones created by variations in altitude. Terraces at Ollantaytambo were built to a higher standard than common Inca agricultural terraces, for instance, they have higher walls made of cut stones instead of rough fieldstones. This type of high-prestige terracing is also found in other Inca royal estates such as Chinchero, Pisaq, and Yucay. A set of sunken terraces start south of Ollantaytambo's Plaza de Armas, stretching all the way to the Urubamba River. They are about 700 meters long, 60 meters wide and up to 15 meters below the level of surrounding terraces; due to their shape they are called Callejón, the Spanish word for alley. Land inside Callejón is protected from the wind by lateral walls which also absorb solar radiation during the day and release it during the night; this creates a microclimate zone 2 to 3°C warmer than the ground above it. These conditions allowed the Incas to grow species of plants native to lower altitudes that otherwise could not have flourished at this site.
We also got around an hour at this site before heading back down. We went a different way with different steps and I have to say at least they weren’t discriminate in the Inca times to short people or tall people. The stairs were all varying heights, and considering that the Inca’s are quite a short race, I’d like to know how they actually climbed some of the steps, they were massive. Nic and I got halfway before she said that she hadn’t even looked up since leaving the top, and she was right, we were so focused on watching where we were walking we hadn’t even looked up. So we did stop to take in the half way pint before continuing to the bottom.
The trekkers are staying here the night and the ‘non trekkers’ were getting a ride back to Cuzco for 3 nights. So we walked from the ruins to the homestay where they were going to have their last restful sleep for 3 nights. After saying our goodbyes and good lucks and a hug for Kate and Malar, we hit the road for the 2 hour drive back to Cuzco. It was just after 7pm when we arrived back into town and Paul and Lizzie were going to head out for a bite to eat, but I declined and headed straight for my room and I was in bed and the light off at 9pm. Call me grandma, but I was so tired, maybe there is some altitude-ness rubbing off on me. I am also finding that every time I eat a meal, it goes straight through me, this has been happening for the last 3 days, so I think that is an obvious symptom of altitude as well. I feel okay; it is just annoying that I have to make a dash to the hotel each time I eat. TMI (too much info)? It is an awful feeling.
So I am wishing my crew the best of luck as they set off tomorrow morning at 8.30am on the Inca Trail. It certainly takes courage and determination to even try the trek and after the ruins and walks that we have done in the last few days I only hold admiration for each and every one of you for taking on the ‘mountain’. I promise I won’t be fresh as a daisy at the top on Tuesday when we see you guys emerge.
Promise.
No comments:
Post a Comment