Sites nearby and around Puno
Sillustani, this is an Inca burial tower, showing the carefully fitted and carved outer rocks.
View down to Lago Umayo from the tomb shown above. There are older pre-Inca burial structures closer to the lake.
The steamship Yavari, which has been restored as a museum on Lake Titicaca.
Reed boat that transported us between two of the floating islands.
Sheep on Isla Taquile watch as we walk by
Even the males on Isla Taquile dress in the native clothing
The stairs that lead down to the water and the boats on Isla Taquile.
Cuzco is a colonial Spanish city built on the remains of the Inca city that was their “center of the world”. After spending several days just wandering the streets we purchased the tourist ticket to visit three of the local churches. Two of them are on the main plaza, The Cathedral and the Iglesia de Compañia. Both of these churches are built on the ruins of Inca Palaces that sided the large Inca plaza. The current central plaza occupies only about one third of the older Inca plaza, buildings and another smaller plaza cover the rest of the Inca plaza. The Spaniards destroyed many of the Inca structures when they conquered the Incas and then reused the stones (and sometimes whole walls) for their churches and other buildings.
The Cathedral complex is actually three churches with the Cathedral in the center. The Cathedral has a silver central altar with its older, carved wooden one hidden behind. It has many gilded side altars like we have seen in other Peruvian churches and on the walls hang many paintings. The two churches that are on either side of it and adjoining it are El Triumfo and Iglesia Sagrada Familia. El Triumfo is the oldest church in Cuzco and is currently used mostly for weddings.
The Jesuit Iglesia de Compañia, which fronts the plaza on the left of the cathedral, is almost as ornate as the cathedral but when the Jesuits were expelled from the New World by the Pope, they took with them major paintings and the organ from this church.
The third church on the ticket, San Blas, is on the hillside up above the city center. It is one of several churches built above the city for the Incas. San Blas has an interesting carved pulpit. We had guides at each of the churches, students from the university, and our guide at San Blas gave a detailed description of the pulpit carvings which contained Inca as well as Christian details.
San Cristobal is another of the hillside Inca churches that we visited, making the trek along the hillside from San Blas, but it was not open.
Cuzco was the center of the Inca empire and Qoricancha (Temple of the Sun) was its center. August 15 we purchased our 10-day tourist ticket to visit many of the museums and nearby archaeological sites. We then took off visiting. First was a little museum off the Qoricancha site. Then it was off to the big site!! The convent of Santo Domingo was constructed over the ruins of Qoricancha. An earthquake in 1950 destroyed enough of the convent that the Inca remains became visible. They began some archaeological digging and found intact Inca walls. The entire site is now open to the public. We spent over an hour looking over the colonial church and the Inca ruins found buried in the cloisters. Some very interesting intact Inca walls divided off Inca rooms that had been buried for years within the walls of the cloisters. Although all the gold and riches had long been melted down and transferred to Spain, a few small pieces were found by the archaeologists and the intricacy of the work showed, with a little imagination, what once was there. Some of the original gold pieces were reported to have been enormous.
Friday August 17, an early morning (6AM!) bus ride took us to the mountain-top site of Machu Picchu. We arrived early enough to catch photos of the ruins in the drifting morning fog – quite spectacular. Bill and I first hiked up to the guard house for a great view over the site that was once home to 600 Incas. The site was a “late” Inca construction, was never discovered by the invading Spaniards and was only “re-discovered” in 1911. It was built as a retreat for the last Inca ruler. About 60 per cent of the site is agricultural terraces. The west side drops off steeply to the Urubamba River and there are narrow terraces down this side. Although these terraces were used for farming their main purpose seems to be to stabilize that side of the site. Due to all the terracing the site has a large flat area at its center that forms the Central Plaza. There are various groups of building south and east of the plaza as well a temples west of it, all higher than the plaza. We walked SW from the site on one of the “Inca Roads” leading to the site. We walked away from the site on the road which was little more than a path clinging to the cliff, to the overlook of an Inca “drawbridge”. Here the cliff was so steep that a rock wall was built with the path on top. A gap was left and that was spanned by logs that could be easily removed to prevent access to Machu Picchu along that route.
Machu Picchu is now ranked as one of the New Seven Wonders of the world. It certainly seems so to us! It compares favorably with the ruined city of Pompeii in Italy, Chichen Itza (also on the New Seven Wonders list) in Mexico and Tikal in Guatemala. All are different and spectacular.
After spending seven hours exploring the site, and after we had seen almost all of it, we returned to the tourist facilities at the entrance. After sitting down to rest there, we realized that we were too tired to climb back up and into the site, so we returned to Aguas Calientes on the bus, found a nice dinner and returned to our hotel.
Thursday August 16 – the day after the big earthquake near Pisco. We sure felt it here in Cusco last night, but no damage and no injuries here. Other parts of Peru, especially around Pisco and Ica were seriously damaged.
Today we started a three-day tour to visit the Inca Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu. Today we visited two sites in the Urubamba Valley, the ruins above Pisac and also above Ollantaytambo, with lots of climbing up and down. The Incas built terraces on the steep hillsides to grow their produce on, as well as to stabilize the hillsides. On top they built their temples and palaces. There were usually living quarters for the farmers directly above the agricultural terraces. There were also areas set aside for the craft workers (textile and ceramic, among others). The Incas built with finely cut stone blocks and the temples and palaces had the finest walls. At both sites we climbed up above the terraces to view their temples to the sun and moon, and the walls that once formed living rooms. Ollantaytambo is the end of the road, so we finished the day on the evening train to Aguas Calientes, the modern city just below Machu Picchu.
Machu Picchu (on Friday) will be the subject of the next entry.
Saturday August 17 we continued our trip thru the Sacred Valley. We first returned to Ollantaytambo on the early morning (5:45AM !) train from Aguas Calientes. We enjoyed breakfast sitting along the central plaza in Ollantaytambo, watching trekkers getting into vans to be ferried to the road-head for their 4-day hiking trek to Machu Picchu, and watching the rafters also loading up for their day trip on the Urubamba River. The plaza was quite colorful in these morning hours as the local indigenous folks in their bright clothing enjoyed the early hours before beginning work.
When we finished breakfast, Bill found us a taxi with an informative driver and we set off into the valley to visit more Inca sites. We drive thru the farming village of Maras, with its colonial adobe buildings and narrow streets. It is in the middle of a large high plateau with rich farming. The plateau is checker-boarded with dry fields now, where in the rainy season wheat, corn and potatoes are grown. Small herds of sheep, goats, some cattle and wandering pigs nibbled at the stubble. As we passed thru the village, we had to stop for a herd of sheep and goats that were being moved out into the fields. We also had to wait for several burros that were loaded with large clay jugs that hung from each side.
We continued across the plain to the Inca site of Moray. Here are three large amphitheater-like terraced agricultural circles. The best theories say that this area was a experimental agricultural station for the Incas where they were able to experiment with corn and potatoes in different micro-climates. Two of the three bowls of concentric terraces are being repaired and we climbed down 7 of the terraces to not-quite-the-bottom of the best repaired one. To climb down we used Inca stairs, stones jutting out from the terrace wall placed not quite one above the other. We made the climb back to the road and continued on back thru Maras and across more of the plateau. Some farmers were beginning to plow the fields with oxen for the spring planting. We passed a group of pigs that contained many little ones… all eating at the stubble!
Turning off the main road we dropped down into Salinas. Salinas is a salt-producing area that has been in use since Inca times; enough high-quality salt is still produced today for international export. A very salty spring comes out of the hillside here and many ponds have been constructed on the hillside below the spring. The salty water is fed into the ponds and let stand to dry. Then the salt crystals are scooped up and bagged for shipment. The site is only active in the dry season when there is no rain and the air is dry enough to dry up the water. We took the taxi out to the main road and on to Chinchero, where we were left off to continue on our own.
Chinchero is another typical Andean farming village. Bill and I managed to find lunch, eating with the locals. There were few tourists in town as the tour buses bringing them arrive late in the afternoon on their way back to Cuzco. The Inca site actually starts in the modern village and runs uphill from it. The site mostly consists of farming terraces but stones left mark several long multi-roomed buildings as well on the upper terrace. Stones were scavenged from this site for the construction of buildings in the modern village during colonial times. The village church is constructed on the main Inca temple at the site and its exterior walls show the Inca wall remaining on its lower level. The interior of the church is highly decorated with painted mud-plastered walls of the17th century. The artwork is still in good shape (although quite dirty from the many candles burned in the church). The ceiling is also completely covered in painted designs, many Inca of origin. We also checked out the small museum on the site. It contained some pottery, including several large jugs designed to carry liquid on one’s back, but the most interesting were the farm implements used for digging and planting the terraces and the tools used in working the wool and weaving it. We took a combi back to Cuzco and we were the only riders – quite a difference as usually we are packed as tight as possible in the combies.
After three days of early wake-up calls and long days of hiking, climbing and sightseeing, we returned to our hotel in Cuzco quite tired and ready for a few days of rest.
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