Top of the mountain: A hike to Machu Picchu (Part 2)

This entry is part 2 of 8 in the series Top of the mountain: A hike to Machu Picchu

October 4, 2014

Top of the mountain: A hike to Machu Picchu (Part 2)

By Simon J. Lau

Things are still going smoothly. My father and I embarked on an all-day tour of historic sites in and around Cuzco. This included Pisac, Ollantaytambo, and Cinchero Church. Below are some pictures from today.

This is a view of the Sacred Valley, once the epicenter of the Inca Empire. It is flanked by the Urubamba River and many of the places we planned to visit today are within this area.

Here’s my attempt at taking a photo with a guinea pig, llama, and their owners. I once had a guinea pig like the one featured here. His name was Boris, mostly brown with some dark spots of black on his head and body. In case you missed it, the kid here clearly wasn’t interested in the photo at all. I can’t blame him. It was pretty hot outside, and I’m sure after the first few photos of the day, it was hard for a kid to keep up the act.

Ollantaytambo is a former Inca town and usually the starting point for the Inca Trail (we are scheduled to hike the Salkantay Trek, a separate route to Machu Picchu). This was a great place to visit to get a taste of Inca architecture. Several things I learned were that the Incas (1) tried to build their structures considering the natural formation of the mountains and (2) had very sophisticated construction capabilities for their time. I noticed many retaining walls along the mountains. These walls functioned in two ways: either as a wall to create a farming platform or as a retaining wall to safeguard against landslides. The Incas chiseled these stones so snugly that you couldn’t fit a razor between two stones. This gave the walls and buildings their tight configurations and helped them withstand the test of time. Chinchero Church was a former Inca church renovated by the Spanish. Unfortunately, pictures were not allowed inside the church, but the interiors were very colorful and included a mix of Catholic and traditional Inca religious figures. One distinction our guide made regarding Inca religion vs. Catholic religion was that Inca religion was generally more colorful and included much more song and dance. That said, when Spanish Missionaries came to convert the indigenous people of Peru, these locals combined the traditional Inca religious features with Catholic teachings.

Finally, we were also introduced to the weaving and dying process for traditional Peruvian clothing. In this case, we were shown how llama, alpaca, and goat fibers are dyed and woven to create a poncho. The clothing here appeared to be of much higher quality than I have encountered elsewhere. Unfortunately, since we are leaving for Machu Picchu tomorrow, there was no room for us to carry back any of these as souvenirs. I did consider it though!