The Sacred and the Peru-fane: Seeing the Sacred Valley from a Giant Tourist Bus

Rio Vilcanota, the river that wraps around the base of Mount Machu Picchu, forms a large river valley about an hour from Cusco.  This river valley was the heart of the Inca Empire and today is called “The Sacred Valley.”  We are up early on this day to join a bus tour of the Sacred Valley that we’ve booked through Pachamama Explorers.  Unless you are traveling with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters or touring with the Grateful Dead, riding around in a huge bus is not the best way to experience anything.  Everywhere you go you bring a large gaggle of fellow passengers with you.  You are, in fact, one of the gaggle.  Plus you only get to see what your guide wants you to see in the time frame he wants you to see it in.  But looking at it from the other side, if you have time constraints or don’t want to hassle with the arrangements yourself, it is a cheap and easy way to see the highpoints.  We could have paid more for a smaller more personalized tour of the Sacred Valley – all the way down to hiring a car and driver, but cutting corners here does allow us to splurge a little later in the trip, and in the end, it is okay.

This is our first opportunity to see the countryside around Cusco and we are impressed with how many of the mountainsides are terraced to allow agriculture.  Many of these terraces no doubt date back to Inca times.  After about an hour’s drive we stop at a small tourist market for a bathroom break.  The market is selling snacks and bottled water but the most noticeable merchandise is the colorful rugs, shawls, hats, and other handmade woolen items piled high on wooden tables.  We also notice the vibrant clothing worn by the women, especially the older women, in the market – full skirts, colorful sweaters, and high hats.  After we’d spent more time in the countryside we would realize that this was the traditional Peruvian dress and it while it was less evident in the cities, it was standard in the countryside.

Roadside Market

The public baños at this stop charge a fee. This will be pretty much the case for every other public toilet we will encounter in Peru.  There is a teenaged attendant outside the door who collects my money and then provides me with some toilet paper which he unrolls off a roll in his hand.  When I have used the toilet paper, I deposit it in a small garbage can situated by the toilet – the expected custom.  Toilet paper is never flushed--a practice that, I assume, preserves a fragile sewage treatment system.

We get back on the bus and continue to the small town of Pisac.  There are extensive ruins on the outskirts of Piscac – a hilltop citadel built by the Incas in the mid-1400’s.  The Spanish under Pizarro destroyed the citadel in the 1530’s and the modern town was eventually rebuilt by Viceroy Toledo in the 1570’s.  The ruins at Pisac consist of four groups of buildings, hundreds of tombs – which are now just empty holes in the rock face due to plundering by grave robbers over the centuries, and colossal agricultural terraces. 

Above:  Tombs at Pisac
Below:  Agricultural Terraces at Pisac

Agricultural terraces are standard features at many Incan sites.  They are always impressive in their scale and they have remained intact to the present day because of the quality of their workmanship.  The terraces at Pisac were in use until 2010 when severe rains and flooding caused them to partially collapse.  Terraces are built with rock retaining walls and the area behind the walls is backfilled with layers of stone, gravel, sand, and finally soil.  All the materials for the terraces from the rocks to the soil, are laboriously hand-carried up the mountain.  

Agricultural Terraces at Pisac

The Incas were superb agriculturists and domesticated an astonishing number of plants.  At the time of the Spanish conquest the Incas were farming as many species of plants as the farmers of Europe and Asia combined.  Potatoes were one of their big achievements.  Today there are 3800 varieties in Peru, with a wide range of shapes, sizes, colors, textures and tastes.  In addition to potatoes, the Incas grew corn, beans, sweet potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, cashews, squash, cucumbers, carob, and avocados.  They also produced a variety crops that are only now becoming more commonplace outside of Peru, such as quinoa, amaranth, and cherimoyas.  On top of that, they planted hundreds of interesting plants that have never become widespread including oca, a hardy clover-like plant that produces wrinkled pink to yellow pleasant tasting tubers – a main staple in parts of the Peruvian highlands even today; maca, a plant related to cress that produces sweet, tangy roots; ulluco, a plant that produces waxy red, yellow, and striped roots;  pepino, a large yellow fruit with purple streaks that tastes somewhat like melon; tamarillo, an egg-shaped fruit that looks somewhat like a tomato but has its own unique taste and that grows on a small tree, and a long list of others.  And the Incas also domesticated a number of nonfood plants with their own unique uses – including tobacco, coca, and cotton.

Above:  Unusual Peruvian Fruits and Vegetables
Below:  Terrace Wall

In addition to this wide range of domesticated plants the Incas domesticated animals that included alpacas, llamas, and guinea pigs.  Domesticating this cornucopia of plants and animals was an impressive agronomic feat.  But the Incas also developed the ability to duplicate a variety of growing conditions with agricultural terraces that climbed the mountainsides.  They also developed good agricultural practices that included crop rotation and fertilizer.  All of these agricultural practices combined gave the Incas the ability to feed a population approaching 15 million and to maintain a surplus so large that they had to build and maintain a huge system storage facilities.  And all of this bounty was produced in an inhospitable, cold, mountainous region.

The Spanish destroyed this carefully balanced system, brought in European animals and crops, ignored and even despised most of the local crops – calling them “peasant food” and created a nonfunctional system that resulted in hunger, starvation and a population crash.  The human population in the Andes is probably only now reaching the pre-conquest levels.

But I digress.  The several paragraphs above describe the “why” of the agricultural terraces.  Any settlement required food and food production required terraces.  As we stand on the terraces at Pisac, our guide gives a thumbnail version of this explanation.  Mostly we view them and deem them to be impressive in their scale and amazing when we consider that they were built entirely by hand.

The modern town of Pisac is famous for its large market.  Our tour guide seems to have his own agenda and herds us into a store selling silver jewelry.  We are not allowed any time to see the rest of the market, but silver store does turn out to be interesting.  There is a man demonstrating how to cut and polish shells and stones for inlay work.  And the silver mines are located nearby, so everything is reasonably priced.  Kathy and Madeline buy a number of items.

Pisac Silversmith Demonstrates Polishing Shells and Stones for Inlay Work

We stop for lunch at a tourist buffet outside the village of Urubamba.  The food is tasty and it seems authentic, but the huge institutional building and the parking lot filled with tourist buses seem a bit tawdry and sterile to me.  When it comes to local color and experiencing Peru this is a bit like eating in a Walmart.  We are saved from utter blandness by a duo on Andean flute and guitar who take the stage and play some outstanding Peruvian music.  When they take a break to hawk a CD, I happily buy one.  They call themselves Yawar Inka.  By the time I have filled my stomach with a delicious lunch and my ears with exceptional Andean tunes, the experience no longer seems so insipid. Oh, and the baños here are free of charge – so it’s all good! 

After lunch we drive to Ollantaytambo a small town that has been continuously occupied at least since the 13^th century.  In the 1500’s Ollantaytambo temporarily became the Incan capital.  The Spanish had already taken Cusco and Manco Inca, the leader of the Incan resistance, fortified Ollantaytambo and set up camp there.  In 1536 he defeated a Spanish expedition that was advancing toward Ollantaytambo and then blocked their advance by damming the river to flood the plain.  He did not feel he could hold the Spanish back indefinitely, though, so he finally fled with his followers to Vilcabamba in the rain forest where he founded the “Neo-Inca State.”  The Spanish finally caught up to him in 1572.   They killed Manco Inca, destroyed Vilcabamba, and the Incas passed into history.

Ollantaytambo is home to some extraordinary ruins.  To view them we climb beyond some impressive agricultural terraces to the top of a promontory known as “Temple Hill.”  The ruins at the top may have been a military fort or a religious temple, depending upon which source you cite.  Most likely over the centuries they functioned as either or both.  The large structure at the center of the “temple complex” is the Sun Temple, an unfinished building featuring the Wall of the Six Monoliths, a wall of six large slabs of stone.  That it is unfinished is obvious by the huge slabs littered randomly around the area—building material.  This building is shrouded in mystery.  Who built it?  Was it the Incas?  Or did it, as some suggest, predate the Incas by many centuries?  Or was this one of the many ancient sites actually built by aliens as Eric Von Daniken suggests in his “Chariots of the Gods” series—a theory fervently believed by many in the tinfoil hat set.

Agricultural Terraces at Ollantaytambo

An unfinished “stepped diamond” motif is carved on one of the monoliths -  a design occasionally seen in Incan textiles.  Does this represent the Southern Cross, as our guide suggests, or does it have some other meaning?  This same motif can be seen carved in stone in the Tiahuanaco ruins in Bolivia, which have been dated to around 1700 BC – well before the advent of the Incas.  This design can also be found incorporated into textiles and other objects for sale to tourists in practically any tourist shop throughout Peru.  If you ask the shop owner for an explanation, he will tell you it is called a “chakana” and that it had great mystical and religious significance for the Incas.  In fact, applying the name “chakana” to this shape is a modern invention and may date to no earlier than 2003 with the publication of a “New Age” book entitled “Andean Awakening.” The significance, if any, of this design to the Incas is unknown.  Its significance to souvenir shop owners, however, is monetarily profound.

Above: Six Monoliths at Ollantaytambo
Below Left:  "Stepped Diamond" Motif Inscribed on Monolith

The largest of the six monoliths is 13 feet high, seven feet wide, and six feet thick and weighs over 50 tons.  Some of the other stones scattered around the site are even bigger, so the fact that these huge slabs of rock did not originate here, but were actually carried to the top of this large hill by human muscle is incrdible.  While it is unclear exactly who built the Sun Temple, scientists have been able to piece together some evidence regarding the construction.  They know, for example, that these stones were quarried at a site about 2.5 miles away on the other side of the valley.  The stones were partially carved at the quarry site and hauled to the bottom of the valley to the river.  In order to cross the river, a second channel was dug parallel to the main channel.  The river was diverted into the new channel and the stones were hauled across the dry original channel.  Then the river was diverted back to the original channel and the stones were hauled across the new channel and onward.  To get to the temple site, a giant inclined plane was built into the side of hill – this feature can still be seen from the bottom of the valley today.  The assumption is that the workers would have used log rollers in addition to ropes, pulleys, and levers.  Even then it would take hundreds of men to move one of these huge stones.  There are dozens of stones littering the landscape between the quarry and the temple that never made the complete journey.

From the hilltop we have a panoramic view of the modern town of Ollantaytambo in the valley below and of the mountain Pinkuylluna on the other side of the valley.  There are ruins on the steep face of Pinkuylluna and we are told that these are Incan food storage buildings.  The cool breezes on the mountainside helped preserve the food stored there.  Ventilation systems built into the structures enhanced the effect of the breezes.  The need for such large storage facilities reinforces in my mind what outstanding agriculturists the Incas were to produce such bumper crops.  We also see rock features on the side of Pinkuylluna that resemble a giant face.  Local legend has it that this is the face of Viracocha, the Inca creator god.

Visage of Viracoccha and Mountainside Storage Building - Ollantaytambo

From Ollantaytambo we travel to Chincheros.  While there are Incan ruins here, we do not visit them.  Instead we spend all of our time at Chincheros at a local weaving cooperative.  It is well worth the visit.  The cooperative was formed not only to preserve the ancient techniques of spinning, weaving, and dying fabric, but also to economically improve the lives of the people in the area.

Chincheros is a farming village and the people who live there grow quinoa, beans, potatoes, and barley in a manner very similar to the way their Inca ancestors did.  But this traditional way of life is challenged today by the lure of a more modern life in the towns and cities.  The cooperative has provided an economically viable way to stay in Chincheros.  Traditionally, the men farmed while the women cooked, took care of the children and weaved.  Now, the men and women still perform these traditional tasks, but the women also run the cooperative.  And the cooperative has become the main source of income for the participating families.

We enter the cooperative, a large adobe building on a hilltop, and walk through a showroom filled with a colorful display of hats, sweaters, and tapestries to a courtyard where we take seats on wooden benches and are offered cups of coca tea.  Then we are given an hour-long demonstration by the women of the cooperative on the process of making the knitted and woven products. 

Wool shorn from llamas, alpacas, or sheep is washed using water and the pulverized root of an indigenous plant called sacha paraqay.  The root functions as a detergent, and after just a few minutes of hand washing the wool becomes quite clean.  After the wool is dried, it is spun using a device called a drop spindle – which looks a little like a toy top. It appears to me that the bundle of wool assembles itself into yarn totally by magic when it comes in contact with this spinning gadget.  After the yarn is spun it is dyed using a variety of local plants and minerals.  The vibrant red dye, however, is neither plant nor mineral.  It is created from the bodies of cochineals, insects that parasitize cacti.  The dyed yarn is then knit or woven into the many items that are for sale.

Top:  Spinning Demonstration
Middle:  Yarn Dying Demonstration
Bottom:  Natural Materials Used for Dying

We all buy sweaters.  Our guide tells us that not only are the prices better here than what we will find in Cusco, but we can be sure that items said to contain alpaca wool here are authentic while the items for sale in the tourist stalls in Cusco could be sheep wool or even synthetic.  While we appreciate the chance to buy our handcrafted sweaters, value the opportunity to support this venture, and appreciate the hospitality of the weavers and the knowledge we gained from them, the highlight by far was seeing the tiny baby kitten fast asleep in a basket of wool.

Kitten in Basket of Wool

After Chincheros, we return to Cusco and get off the bus at Plaza De Armas.   We eat our dinner at a pizza place in the plaza, buy a few snacks for tomorrow, then walk the few blocks up the hill to the Casona les Pleiades.  It is after eight o’clock by the time we reach the hotel and we immediately set to work packing our backpacks for our two-day Machu Picchu excursion that will have us crawling out of bed at 4:30 the next morning.  We are out as soon as our heads hit the pillow – with another short night in front of us.