Peru Travelogue, Part 3 The Sacred Valley & Machu Picchu

Peru тАУ Empire of Hidden Treasures

A four part travel article on Peru, South America
Part 1 Lima
Part 2 Cusco
Part 3 The Sacred Valley & Machu Picchu
Part 4 Puno & Lake Titicaca

Machu Picchu is an ancient Inca city built on the ridge top between two mountains at the farthest reaches of the Sacred Valley. It was never conquered by the Spanish because it was never found. It is unknown what happened to the people that were living there before that and so unlike other Inca sites, Machu Picchu was never destroyed or plundered and so has been restored quite well with most of the original stones. Built in 1450 at the height of the Inca Empire, it was only really in use by the Inca for 100 years at the time of the conquest. Hiram Bingham, an American lecturer from Yale uncovered the ruins again in 1911 while searching for another mystical lost city of virgin women.


There are quite a few trains running between Cusco and Machu Picchu and we opted for the Vistadome even though the Expedition train, after having seen it, would have been just as good. The tracks from Cusco were wiped out a few years back and so it is necessary to take a taxi or a shuttle to the next town of Poroy to catch the train where it begins now. Once out of Poroy at 3500 meters, the train travels steeply downward to Ollantaytambo at 2800 meters and the Urambamba River. To descend the 1100 meters in such a short stretch, they use a zig-zag method for bringing the train safety down the side one of the mountain ridges. Even the future of this line, as you can see from the photo, appears uncertain.



The Vistadome allows us to marvel at some of the great Andean peaks through Urubamba and up to our only stop in Ollantaytambo. There are also two highways through the Sacred Valley that could also get you to Ollantaytambo and probably much faster than the train to this pointтАжbut from here to Machu Picchu, the train is really the only real option. This is essentially the route leading down from the Andes toward the Amazon basinтАжalthough we wonтАЩt be traveling that far and Machu Picchu is the end of this line for the train. This is also the beginning of the famous Inca Trail that allows you to hike in through spectacular landscape and by Inca sites only seen from the trail. This (the photo below) being the starting point for the Classic trail onwards into the Valley.



After Ollantaytambo, we continue heading downwards on this leg of the trip with the scenery becoming greener and more lush as we descend into the jungle and approach Machu Picchu Pueblo. The town is also known as Aguas Calientes and is situated at only 2400 meters, low enough not to notice altitude symptoms anymore. The terraces that dominated the landscape in the high Andes continue on into this region with Inca ruins at various stages of restoration or abandonment now etched into the jungle cliffs along side.



We booked our hotel on Booking.Com at the Sumaq Machu Picchu, one of the best options in town and the closest to the mountain base to get us up to the top first thing the next morning. When we got off the train, the Hotel staff was waiting for us with porter service for our bags. As this train doesnтАЩt really allow you to bring proper luggage, we had left most of our gear back in CuscoтАжso the porters had very little work with our two carry-on bags. While we were checking in, the hotel also made arrangements for us to visit the site the next day and that includes purchasing our entrance tickets, buying our tickets for one of the first buses the next morning and sending one of the porters out to hold our seats in the morning so that the bus can pick us up at the door. Otherwise weтАЩde be lining up with everyone else in town much earlier than the 05:30 pick-up time.

ItтАЩs taken us over 4 hours to get to Machu Picchu Pueblo by train, so weтАЩve planned to stay a few nights and spend the rest of the first day walking around town. Most of the guidebooks describe Machu Picchu Pueblo as being ugly and so I was surprised to find that despite all the concreteтАжthat it had a bit of charm. It is straddled over a small river and tucked neatly in the wedge of this narrow valley. They even have a hot spring at the top of town, hence the original name Aguas Calientes. We had some beers and some lunch and a few laughs with the girls trying to pull hungry tourists inтАжa restaurant ploy you see in every Peruvian City.





The hotel package we arranged included half board, or breakfast, dinner and drinks at various times. The national drink of Peru is the Pisco Sour made with pisco, key lime, syrup, ice, egg white and Angostura bitters. Their beer, Cusque├▒a available in a lager, a Red or a Black malt beer is actually quite good. PeruтАЩs close proximity to Chile and Argentina makes great wine selections and excellent cuts of great steaks quite affordable and they did a tremendous job here in this hotel restaurant.



The buses start running at 05:30 AM and the site opens at 6 AM. The bus ride up costs about $20 return and takes a half hour each way zig-zaging up the side of the mountain. Even though the sun starts to rise around that time, it doesnтАЩt hit Machu Picchu itself due to the steep mountains around the site until closer to 7 AM. The sun starts out in the morning on the biggest side (right see photo) of the site in the morning and the smaller side (left see photo) in the afternoonтАжalthough both are quite pretty. It is not uncommon though, for the clouds to build up in the afternoon or for there to be a light shower so being there in the morning is definitely best for photos.



[youtube:278yeo7y]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7vuLXullv8[/youtube:278yeo7y]

The Machu Picchu Sanctuary is quite large, encompassing over 32 500 hectares and can easily take an entire day or two to see most of it. The Orient Hotel offers a very expensive sit down lunch option at their hotel at the top or there's some great affordable sandwich options also available at the gate including well managed washroom facilities. Your entrance ticket, with your passport will get you back in. Some sites where you are using your Cusco Pass may also require you to show your passport. If you have the page, they will even stamp your passport with their Machu Picchu stamp. A passport is required at Machu Picchu.



All along the mountain side, you will see terraces for growing crops. This is also something you will see throughout the country, the Inca being an agriculturally based people. Many of these terraces are not used anymore and so you can see the scope of civilization in the past was once much, much bigger than it is even today in Peru. The Inca were farming much more of the land back then, than what is being used for farming now and the labor to build all of these terraces throughout the country at that time must have been incredible.




Throughout Machu Picchu there are guided pathways that take the visitors through the site with very limited signage. A guide could tell you the history of the site, why it was built and all the speculations about the people including what happened to them in the end for this site to have been abandoned. Another great thing about the pathways is that it keeps people from climbing on things they shouldnтАЩt and it keeps much of your photographs of the site, people free. Machu Picchu is one of the 7 New Wonders of the World with the Great Wall of China, Petra, Chichen Itza the Coliseum, Christ the Redeemer and the Taj Mahal.



The next day we booked a mid-morning train up the valley and back to Ollantaytambo again with Perurail. One of the frustrations with Perurail is the inability to select specific seats when booking ahead online as they appear to be assigned randomly. This never turned out to be a problem for us though as we were able to switch on one occasion, were reassigned back together once and were randomly given the best seats for this leg of the trip. Sitting in the front on the train, I was able to video our journey back up into the Andes.

[youtube:278yeo7y]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT5vICfvJbU[/youtube:278yeo7y]

WeтАЩve planned to take our time through the Sacred Valley, hoping to catch as many sites as we can. In this area of Peru, the indigenous population vastly outnumbers the non-indigenous. Many of the towns still function as they did in Inca times, such as Ollantaytambo. The train station is about a kilometer from the center of town, but an easy walk or a very cheap tuk tuk ride away. The town itself is spectacular and well worth the stop. The Inca built structures high up on the side of the mountain to take advantage of the cool winds for storing food throughout the seasons. While these arenтАЩt still being used today, they are an impressive sight in the afternoon sun. This is also the site where giant stones have been carried great distances, being rolled over tree trunks up great ramps. These great stones, accurately carved and fit together have been named тАЬWall of the Six MonolithsтАЭ.







In Ollantaytambo the aqua ducts continue working as they always have, sending water from the mountains down each street in small canals beside each house. The water moves incredibly fast that includes 90 degree turns at street corners. The property for each house is marked off with a stone wall that comes to the street and so all the streets are likes walled cobble stone alleyways, giving the town an even more unique look. And of course, once the tour buses have left for the dayтАжwe have the town to ourselves with the local Inca people. There are great restaurants in Ollantaytambo including my favorite the Tawa Chaki.



When you are in the Sacred Valley, including Cusco and Machu Picchu, it is necessary to purchase a Cusco Tourist Pass, not only to see many of the sites in Cusco but also those throughout the Sacred Valley. If not, youтАЩll be paying a hefty one time admission charge at each of the sites you visit. WeтАЩve decided to hire a car and a guide to take us over a difficult pass in the valley from here to see the sites Moray and Salenas,

The drive to Moray and Maras is spectacular, from the views of the glacier tucked between two giant Andean peaks. WeтАЩve traveled a great distance up today by car and you can see that it's snowing just above us over the glacier.



The range we go over next is flatter, but still quite high and which is where the Inca decided to build Moray. Moray is an ancient agricultural laboratory, a series of microclimates created by building different levels of growing surfaces, representing the different regions of the country and each divided by precisely 5 degrees Celcius. This allowed the Inca to experiment with genetics, developing better varieties of species as well protect certain species in case of drought or severe weather, typical for Peru. For example, while we were here a freak snow storm up near Puno wiped out some of the crops in that Region.



It has taken us several hours to get here by car on a dirt road barely big enough to allow two-way traffic to squeeze by in each direction. We continue onward through another Indian town called Maras. The car gets stopped as a herd of sheep traveling the other direction surrounds the car while they pass by.



Tucked in a large crevasse of a valley nearby is the ancient Inca salt mine, Salinas de Maras. It is called that because it belongs to the people of Maras. Each resident has their own plot in the mine where they mine, dry and harvest their own allotment of salt. This has allowed the people to sustain their way of life and to reinvest the profits into the nearby town of Maras where they live. This has been the way of life for these people and these families since Inca times, and is rather ingenious. The salt from this mine is quite famous, if not just in Peru then somewhat around the world. The salt as a condiment is sought after for cooking and the pink bath salt quite expensive, even here in Peru. Some of the residents have set up small shops where they sell the salt in various forms cheaper than you would find it anywhere else. Some have even made the salt into small intricate sculptures.

The salt oozes from the ground in small steams filling various levels of ponds. Even if you dip your finger in the small stream the salt tastes wonderful. It also contains healing properties for many skin conditions including eczema and psoriasisтАжsomething the Inca also knew and used it for in the dry mountain air.



Chincero is famous for their weaving and their dyes. The tapestries from this town are of the best in the country due in part to the vast amount of colors they have been able to create. They use dyes made from the local plants and another Inca process passed down through the generations. The women, like the women from every other Indian village in Peru wear their own unique dresses and colors and these women wear one of the most beautiful.



Great fortifications and terraces guard the only passable valley an army could pass through on the way from Cusco or the way to Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu. Had small pox and disease not already wiped out most of the Inca population before the Pizarro and his conquistadors arrivedтАжthe battles that were waged through these valleys later in the time of the conquest likely would have swung the other way.



The Sacred Valley remains the modern day spine of the Inca civilization today. The people continue to exist in the towns that existed here before the conquest, many hanging on to the old traditional ways while also adapting to the modern conveniences. A dozen teenage boys huddle around a single friend who has managed to get his hands on a small portable video game as though he had just invented fire. Lone women sit alone out in distant fields or along remote mountain sides with their dozen or so sheep or three or four cows.

Much like the Maya, this is a people that have persevered through history and have been able to carve out their resilient lifestyle from an otherwise formidable environment through ingenuity. Like their Maya cousins to the north theyтАЩve done that through an understanding of agricultural techniques, the knowledge of the skies and time and with their incredible ability as large scale builders. While Europe was still in the Dark Ages from the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th Century to the 15th Century and the time of Columbus, great civilizations were already flourishing in the Americas building great cities such as Cusco, Machu Pichu, Chichen Itza, Teotihuacan, Tenochtitlan, Tikal and so many more. A great deal of the riches found throughout the Americas financed the Renaissance period that followed in Europe. It also supplied new sources of food, taste and comfort for the rest of the world including corn, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, chili peppers, berries, pineapples, turkey, duck, chocolate, vanilla, tobacco and cotton.

Of course seeing even one of these great wonders of the world is a must for anyoneтАЩs bucket list.

Surfcrest



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