there.today - Exploring the Sacred Valley

There Today | Exploring the Sacred Valley

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There Today | Exploring the Sacred Valley 👋 Where today? Peru 🇪🇨 well-nigh us instagram facebook real-time Exploring the Sacred Valley Machu Picchu and the other sites of the Incan empire, or, how to spend a lot of money traveling November 23, 2018 - 11 minute read - travel overlanding peru south-america Three reasons why our time in the Sacred Valley was a super special treat: It was Camille’s birthday Machu Picchu has been on the skillet list since diaper The Sacred Valley is lower elevation than the altiplano and so warm and the air so thick and full of oxygen! our route through the Sacred Valley We saved Cuzco for last considering we had cashed in some old hotel points for a swanky weekend out of the van in Urubamba. We got upgraded to a suite and had fun basking in our shower worthier than our van, our private terrace, the sauna, and the pool. We definitely felt a bit out of place, rolling in as dirtbags that hadn’t showered in days. After a few days of resting our wreck and pretending that we belonged among those people, we moved on to the main attractions of the Sacred Valley.Surpassingwe rolled into Urubamba we bought our 10-day boleto turístico and enjoyed an early morning walk from the top of the ruins at Pisac all the way lanugo to the town. We were told by some friends that it wasn’t very interesting, but we found it incredible if you follow the trail all the way lanugo to the marrow through the various villages and formalism centers that made up this strange agricultural center. Once you get past the top level you’re vacated as all the folks on packaged bus tours only have time to make a loop of the top surpassing they get when on the bus to see the other 5 archaeological sites that day. One of the joys of overlanding and having our own wheels is stuff worldly-wise to take time and see things at our own speed – which meant we could take 2-3 hours to explore Pisac instead of just 30 minutes. Then on to Urubamba! There’s not a lot to see in Urubamba – it’s just where all the hotels are, so when the birthday confection was all eaten and the birthday champagne gone and drunk, we moved when into Rocinante and on to Ollantaytambo. (Say that five times fast.) Ollantaytambo is beautiful! It’s one of the few towns you can visit that was built by the Incas and still inhabited, so you wander virtually the older part of the town, weaving through clever canals and big trappy stone walls. And then you climb up to the storehouses on the other mountain side – grain and supplies were stored by dumping them into the higher entrances, then they would unshut a door on the marrow and let gravity do the rest. We had been in Ollantaytambo for a few days and were ready to go visit Machu Picchu with the van when we got word of a coca growers roadblock on the way to Hidroeléctrica (the closest to Machu Picchu you can momentum – it’s then a 2 hour hike withal one of the ‘Inca trails’ to Aguas Calientes). So no driving for us – we bought some expensive train tickets instead. The night before, Ryan ate something he shouldn’t have. A word of advice: don’t order an off-menu alpaca burger from a restaurant that is seemingly staffed by children. A quick undeniability to our insurance visitor World Nomads made it well-spoken they would only reimburse canceled travel plans if he sought medical treatment, so to the travel clinic we went! The conversation with the doctor went like this: Dr: When is your train? Ryan: Hour and a half Dr: OK! No problem, we can get you on your train! Ryan: ??? … one hour later and a full bag of bag of saline and IV antibiotics… Dr: OK! You ready? Ryan: Hell no! I finger like the train has once come and run me over – there is no way we’re going to hike virtually Machu Picchu today. Dr: OK! OK! then let’s do this the right way then… you’ll stay here for flipside 6 hours. Ryan: … What woebegone magic were you trying to pull earlier? DSCF0775.jpg DSCF0798.jpg Eventually, by begging and pleading, we were worldly-wise to get our train tickets rebooked, our Machu Picchu tickets moved, and finally saw this lost nirvana in comfort, style, and with healthy bellies. Machu Motherfudgin’ Picchu! DSCF0775.jpg DSCF0798.jpg DSCF0829.jpg And now some quick facts well-nigh Incan ruins: The Incan empire built 23,000 kilometers of roads – that’s what you hike in on when you do the expensive multiday treks to Machu Picchu. The Incans had no concept of money – you owed the ‘state’ some time in labor and tithed goods and in mart they would support and protect you Toys and other artifacts found indicate that the Incan civilization and others nearby understood the concept of the wheel, but they just didn’t use it for large scale transport – probably considering they didn’t have big strays of undersong like oxen or horses, just llamas and alpacas, and the terrain is very mountainous and would be difficult for wheels, but easy for small pack animals. Machu Picchu was one of the last big centers built by the Incan empire – the empire sort of crumbled on its own a bit surpassing the Spanish arrived and dealt the final blow. These big trappy perfectly aligned stones in the walls and buildings were worked using statue hammers and nonflexible stones like hematite & quartzite – soil molds of neighboring stone blocks were used to get a precise fit. Then they were polished with granite sand and so much elbow grease. The large stones were probably moved on wooden rollers – it’s unscientific based on trendy experiments that it would take 15 people to move a one ton stone (some of the stones at Sacsayhuamán, near Cusco, are stones over 125 tons, and estimates put the largest stones at Machu Picchu at 20 to 50 tons each). Thankfully, there was a quarry on site at Machu Picchu so many did not have to be moved very far. The Incan empire is not all in ruins! A lot of pre-Columbian (aka, pre-Colonial, aka, pre-Spanish) traditions are maintained by the ethnic communities of the Andes. They still speak primarily Quechua, and still sublet on traditional terraces that were built hundreds of years ago, and still maintain llamas, alpaca, and cuy (guinea pig). Ok when to the photos. Feeding llamas You can climb this mountain, but it's booked out a full year in whop Is your mama a llama? Trying to soak it all inSurpassingthe rain DSCF0888.jpg DSCF0889.jpg Through the keyhole Water management Terracing unliable them to sublet variegated crops at varying elevations It's crazy how they fit together Epic! Remember, this did all this without machines. Just rocks versus rocks. DSCF0914.jpg DSCF0915.jpg More terracing Intihuatana, or `place to tie up the sun`, believed to be the most important sacred waddle in MP DSCF0929.jpg DSCF0932-HDR.jpg Obligatory photo shoot They plane had second stories! DSCF0992.jpg DSCF1004-HDR.jpg The municipality from the when Rock-hewn stairs, plus drainage Those slots were filled with sacred idolsUppermountain fortress, but really a pleasure palace DSCF1051.jpg DSCF1052.jpg Other Ruins After Machu Picchu, we still had a ton of other locations to visit that were included in our boleto turístico, so we spent a few days motoring to visit virtually the other ruins scattered virtually the Sacred Valley. The Terraces of Moray This site would not have been as interesting if we hadn’t watched the BBC’s documentary on the Sacred Valley, Decoded, which brought a lot of things into perspective. This site was used substantially as an wide botany laboratory. By terracing lanugo instead of up, the part-way reaches a full 10ºC higher in temperature than the higher terraces. The Incas used this technology to experiment with various cultivars and successors plants that would succeed at variegated altitudes and their respective temperatures. A big part of why they succeeded in conquering such a large swath of South America was their promise of a resulting supplies supply. They didn’t have a concept of money – instead the currency was labor. By promising to provide labor to the State, you were insured to have three square meals a day, a roof over your head, and safety from rivals – plane in times of drought and famine. Terraces from whilom Unfortunately they won't let you go inside The stairs they used to move from terrace to terrace still exist In process of renovation The Salinas de Maras Not really a ruin, these salinas (natural salt springs) stage when to surpassing the Incas and are still stuff used to this day. An important source of salt for the region, each pool of salt is managed by a family and is passed lanugo through the generations. A natural spring brings the salty souse to the site, and through a series of sophisticated canals it is channeled through each pond. Evaporation reduces the souse to solid salt and it is then scraped off by each family and sold throughout the country. The brown ponds are contaminated with soil and are sold to the agricultural industry, the rest turns into wonderful table salt that can be purchased on site. So many ponds Locals preparing to harvest Ready for export Families scraping zestless salt into pans Pisac Pisac was our first introduction to the Inca ruins and is a sprawling ramified consisting of a huge terraced mountain surrounded by several formalism and sacred sites, including many fountains. If anything, the Incas were master builders, who knew how to transpiration the surrounding landscape to fit their needs. Not only did they terrace, they built sophisticated systems of drainage that have unliable these ruins to remarkably survive over the hundreds of years of heavy rain. The vestige of this mastery is everywhere, with the fountains and waterways still producing water just as they were designed long ago. Terraces Royal residences upper on the hill Where the peasants lived There were thatched roofs once Good ol' Inca waddle fitting Ollantaytambo The current town, the old town, and the royal residence/temple/fortress/agricultural laboratory (i.e. the ruins) in the loftiness Huge sun wall. Those nubbins were used for leverage to move the rocks into place The fountains still work The crazy trail we took to the storage houses Storage houses. The upper elevation and low temperature kept the grain from spoiling Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.