The Sacred Valley

Peru's sacred valley is 3,800 m in elevation and encompasses a large pocket in the north eastern Andes. We combined two touristic tours to see as much as we could.

The Mighty Andes - over 7k km in length (worlds longest) and over 7k m high at highest point in Argentina. Here, Pisac stands as a regional capital city of 10000 tombs and a military outpost at it's peak.

The town of Pisac was our first stop and where I was more impressed by the ancient agricultural progress than the citadel that stands proudly above hundreds of mountain terraces. I didn't know that Andenes actually means terraces. The Andean people respected the original shape of the mountain when they engineered walled soil terraces. They usually faced eastward and benefit from a 1 degree shift in temperature for every six levels in order to grow different crops.These people have been extremely good farmers for a very long time with early demonstrations of seed selection, soil selection, seasonal timing, germentatuon, conservation, storage and use of different edible and non edible parts of the plant. Needless to say I was a little bummed that the mass market tour we got at the last minute seemed to be the only one that bypassed the famous Pisac market.

Physically the Andean people have bigger inner organs lungs and hearts, allowing better circulation and ability to climb mountains in half the time (or maybe four times faster at our current rate). We jogged to keep up with our guide Willy who was going a mile a minute in spanish, then English if you were lucky to be two steps behind him. A note to tour shoppers - an English-only tour is worth the extra money. Willy explained in the sand the geometry of a perfect triangle between Pisac, Cusco and Pumahuaca which are each 30km apart and stand at 3300 m high. A coincidence? Steph and I were both scratching our heads. Perhaps this was the snow line that determined the similar elevation, but how did they make a perfect triangle? I was a bit more skeptical since a triangle would not be too hard given we had seen in museums how Incan cities were built radiatating from Cusco in a star shape from a birds eye view. Regardless, to some people this means perfect energy. Many spiritual people believe that there is a magnetic middle point in the mountain where today Shamens sit in an Indian triangular pose to gain this magnetic energy.

We pushed on to a lunch in a small town called Urubamba that seemed have an incredible abundence of what is known as the 'Restaruante Touristico' - a title that is curiously advertised with pride in Peru. I tried civiche for the first time while watching the football on TV. Steph and I were quickly remembering why we almost always take the independent travel routes. The whirlwind guided tour bus is good for those short on time like the many Americans in south america who are only afforded a handful of precious vacation days a year.

After lunch came the highlight of the tour for me - the ancient town of Ollantaytambo that grew as major stop on the Inca trail on the way to Machu Picchu. It took the Incan army one day to walk from Cusco to Ollantaytambo, a resting place where they built camp.

The fortress perched on the hill was where the Incan army made one of their only great stands against the Spanish. Pizarro's step brother led the invading army here but was met with tumbling boulders, a shower of arrows and, in a masterful touch, a gushing wave of water from canals that were opened to sink the Spanish horses in mud causing a clumsy and hasty retreat. Pizarro soon returned with an army of men four times larger in numbers to ensure Ollantaytambo's capture. Steph almost forcefully stopped the Willy Whiz Tour by yelling "Wait! I have a question! Where are all the bullet holes from the European guns?". Unfortunately we didn't get much of an answer - one of many mysteries unsolved.

What truly amazed me about Ollantaytambo was the walls, cobbles and archways are exactly the same in their living form as they were when built. This is the best surviving example of Inca town planing. As in all Incan cities, they form streets that were always aligned to the sun's rays. From above the city of Ollantaytambo takes on the shape of a seated lama, visible from a special summer solstsce viewpoint on the mountain. It seemed that all these cities were built to take the shape of one of the usual folklore suspects: Pisac is designed as a condor while Saqsaywoman's walls were in the shape of lightning (dedicated to rain) but served more broadly as the teeth in Cusco's arial Puma shape.

Back on the bus we seemed to stop many times for people who boarded and gave us a demonstration of their tourist experience DVD-rom on a laptop or a their trinkets and local spirits. We drove on to a holy town higher in the Andes to visit a church but I couldn't help but notice that we spent more time for an opportunity to buy souveniers at 'craft demonstration'. We were looking forward to the end of the day to be honest.

Luckily the second tour was much more professional. We had decided to take a tour bus through the other half of the sacred valley all the way to Puno on the shores of Lake Titikaka. As much as I would have loved another installment on the famous train that takes this scenic route - but $200 was out of the question. We opted instead to pay a little more than a public bus for the Inka Express that drives along a road shadowing the railway tracks, except you stop off for guided tours along the way. This was well worth the $30 that included lunch and entrance fees. What's more, our guide Hugo was far more patient and kept us interested en route all day long.

The main visit was that of the Raqchi ruins. Here remains a massive wall that stands as the last part of the Temple of Viracocha, one of the holiest in the empire. Hugo knelt down to explain the Chakana in the sand where he drew this Andean cross. There is a huge empahsis on the power of three for the Incans. The andean cross has three stairs and indeed we had seen that Incan sites all had patterns in threes, especially a series of three stairs at important sites. These three steps represent the Condor, puma (balance), snake. Incas always had balance and counterbalance. The Andean cross also reflects that there are three stages to spiritual life. The underworld, the living world and the heavens which house the sun and the gods.

The Inca trail streches far beyond what most people think (Cusco-Machu Picchu), here 60km southeast of Cusco.