Andahuaylas and the Ruins of Sondor
After our visit to Machu Picchu, we decided to leave the Sacred Valley behind and make our way north despite the dozens of enticing ruins left to see... alas, this is a big world and there are other Old Piles of Stone to see! Our first stop was a ten hour bus ride later at the town of Andahuaylas. We spent a couple of nights there, taking advantage of the opportunity to visit the ruins of Sondor, overlooking a beautiful mountain lake.
Climb to Putucusi
After our trip to Machu Picchu, we decided to get away from the crowds and enjoy this Inca marvel a bit more serenely. So, we decided to climb the trail up to the Putucusi mountain, one of the magnificent cone-shaped peaks opposite Machu Picchu. The climb has a reputation as being difficult due to the need to scale some rickety wooden ladders to get over a couple of small cliffs, but we were quite ready for a little adventure.
The Ruins of Machu Picchu
We finally made it to Machu Picchu. So much has been said in so many places about Machu Picchu that we are not really sure where to begin. The site is reputed as the best preserved of all Inca sites, a claim based on the fact that the Spanish conquistadors never found it and neither plundered it nor desecrated its shrines. Otherwise, Machu Picchu occupies a visually stunning setting, sitting on a spur jutting out over a 500 meter deep canyon with near vertical walls. The mist of the cloud forest almost always enshroud the place just a touch, giving it a mystical feel.
Getting to Machu Picchu
The Inca site par excellence, the place that every tourist to Peru just has to visit, is Machu Picchu. An enormous infrastructure has developed in a somewhat slapdash fashion around this place, and every visitor who wants to get to this remote site has to take the extortionately high-priced and ridiculously over-hyped tourist train. Well, almost everybody, that is.
The Salt Mines of Salinas de Maras
The last place that we visited out of Ollantaytambo was the salt mines of Salinas de Maras. While not an Old Pile of Stone strictly speaking, the mines have reportedly been in use since precolumbian times, and that is good enough for us.
The Terraces of Moray
Our next stop after Chinchero took us to the curious circular terraces of Moray. The only word that really exists to explain these three deep, stepped pits in a high plain overlooking the Urubamba valley is "wierd". The pits are in fact quite huge: up to 140 meters across and 40 meters deep. Each also features a single water canal.
The Ruins of Chinchero
Our first outing from Ollantaytambo took us to the town of Chinchero, about an hour away by bus. Chinchero is known among the tourists for its market and as one of the most accessible places to see people in traditional garb, but trinkets don't interest us and our way of traveling brings us into plenty of contact with locals. No, we were there for another reason entirely: an Old Pile of Stone!
The Town and Ruins of Ollantaytambo
After six days in Cusco, we finally exhausted what we could visit in a day trip, so we set out to the town of Ollantaytambo, situated between two steep mountains a bit further up the Sacred Valley, to use as a new base for our explorations. Ollantaytambo was, of course, a lot more than a base and also an interesting site in and of itself. Ollantaytambo was once an important city and fortress in the Inca empire, and very well fortified. It was, in fact, the only place where the Spanish lost a battle against the Inca, during the post-conquista rebellion of Manco Inca in 1537.
The Ruins of Pisac
Our next day trip out from Cuzco took us deeper into the Sacred Valley to the ruins of Pisac. Pisac is a sprawling complex on a geographically prominent spur and probably served a number of purposes. Built by the Inca at around 1440 CE, it is best known for the sprawling decorative terraces that cover the slopes of the spur.
The Ruins of Tipon
Move over Versailles, the Inca are coming! At least, that is the impression that the ruins of the palatial complex at Tipon give the visitor. As with most prehispanic ruins in the Andes, exactly who built this place and why is not known. We do know that Tipon was built during the Inca empire, and it seems likely that the complex served as a place of leisure for the Cuzco elite as well as a place of ceremonies.
Piquillacta Archeological Park
Our next day trip from Cuzco took us to the Piquillacta Archeological Park, about 45 minutes south of the city by public bus. The park surrounds an area that is particularly rich in water for the semi-arid Cuzco valley, including a shallow lake and a marsh, meaning it was of particular importance for all of the peoples to pass through during its inhabited history, and it is full of interesting archaeological sites. The crowning piece of the park are the remains of a sprawling citadel built by the Huari culture around 800 CE. Other highlights include an Inca-era burial complex with a couple of basic chullpas and a truly massive aqueduct built by the Collpa civilization and expanded by the Incas.
The Ruins of the Coricancha
While Cuzco was once awash in Inca temples and palaces, these are now mostly gone. One exception are the ruins of the Coricancha. In Inca times, the Coricancha was the city's largest temple and dedicated to the sun god, Inti. The outer walls were heavily decorated with gold plate, while on the interior a garden of ceremonial crops made of precious metals assisted the priests in their renewal ceremonies to make the earth fertile year after year.
Four Inca Ruins in Just One Day
Our first day excursion from Cusco brought us up the Sacred Valley a bit on a hike to a string of ruined sites that line the road north-east of the city. The ruins are a popular day-trip among the tourists in Cusco, but most of them take a half-day tour that zooms them through the sites at breakneck speeds. We decided to walk instead, and it once again proved one of my father's sayings: if you want to be alone, walk for a mile. Nobody gets out of their cars. So, we enjoyed these four popular sites pretty much on our own.
Cuzco’s Precolumbian Art Museum
On our first day in Cuzco, we went to one of the most remarkable museums that we have seen thus far in South America, and the first one that could rival the Mexican museums in Oaxaca and Mexico City: the Precolumbian Art Museum. The museum's mission is quite simple: to present the art of Precolumbian cultures in a way that not only seeks to place objects with their historic cultures but also to present them as aesthetic works in and of themselves, that is, as art.
Welcome to Cuzco
After our side trip down to Nasca, we headed back up into the Andes for what is quickly becoming one of the highlights of our trip: Cuzco. This city's claim to fame is that it was the seat and origin of the Incan empire of Tahuantinsuyu.
The Nazca
On our way out of Arequipa, we took a side trip to the town of Nazca, situated on a sandy strip of land between the Andes and the Pacific in what is today southern Peru. Nazca was the home of a culture that is today mostly famous for its enigmatic geoglyphs which can only be readily appreciated from the air despite the fact that the Nazca probably did not possess any flying machines. This fact has led to many wild speculations about the Nazca, many of which involve aliens or strange lost technologies, but the reality of this culture, partial as our knowledge may be, is much more interesting than even the wildest of these theories suggest.
Santa Teresa Convent
The Santa Teresa convent in Arequipa is yet another of the multitude of religious complexes that abound in this colonial city. While the convent still houses 21 cloistered nuns who only see the outside to vote and seek medical attention, most of it has been turned into a museum of colonial art.
La Casa del Moral
One of our favorite places in Arequipa was the colonial mansion of Casa del Moral, built in the 1730s and named after a tree growing in its courtyard. It houses some really nice examples of colonial architecture and art as well as some later modifications: one of the later occupants was the Consul from Great Britain who, as an Anglican, felt that the multitude of Catholic altars would better serve as bars!
A Really Big Mountain
Our next outing from Arequipa was to climb the extinct volcano of Chachani, which looms over the city at an altitude of 6,075 meters (19,930 feet). The mountain is known as one of the easiest climbs of this altitude, mostly because its base on the Altiplano side is over 4000 meters and because sulfur miners in the middle of the last century carved a good dirt track most of the way up. The climb therefore requires no technical experience and you can do the whole thing with just crampons, and you could probably get away with not even having those in this season.
Santa Catalina Convent
Among the sights to see in Arequipa is the Convent of Santa Catalina, one of the city's first. It was founded late in the 16th century by a widow who decided that instead of remarrying, she wanted to retire to wealth instead. As such, the lifestyle in Santa Catalina was not quite one of suffering and privations such as you would see in the Potosi convent, but it was rather more like the Beguinages of the low countries, with nuns instead of old women.