Advertisement
Published: March 27th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Pretty Pisac
We only stopped to change buses here but it looked very pretty. Yesterday was a relatively quiet day for us as we have decided to extend our stay in lovely Cusco. A brief visit to the Lan Airlines office told us that we wouldn't be able to get a flight from La Paz to Buenos Aires with the one remaining flight we have left for South America on our One World ticket, which we were mightily disappointed about.
The day didn't improve when we went to the post office to see about sending a parcel home. The post here in Peru is pretty damn expensive: a stamp for a postcard to Europe is 6 Soles (about £1) and the 2kg parcel we wanted to send would have set us back 125 Soles (£20). Needless to say folks, we won't be sending a lot of postcards from Peru!
Having had a day to chill out, today we craved a bit of adventure again and what started out as a plan to visit some Inca ruins in the town of Pisac, actually turned into a round trip to faraway Ollantaytambo courtesy of a spur of the moment decision to see whether we could do it on our own again. We jumped on
Market Mayhem
It was market day in Urubamba and no-one was going anywhere fast! the bus to Pisac again (2 Soles each) and then waited for the next bus to take us further along the route to Urubamba (another 2 Soles each). The buses were choc full of bemused locals wondering what these odd gringos were doing bunking up with them in a non-air conditioned rickey old tin can on wheels. It was a lot of fun and I even bought myself a choclo (corn on the cob) from a street seller who boarded the bus at one of the many stops we made along the way.
In Urubamba, we weren't quite sure what to do next but looking around the little bus terminal, we soon caught the attention of the local taxi drivers. We were offered a ride in a taxi collectivo (shared taxi) but a few steps into the terminal led us to a proper collectivo in the shape of a minibus that would take us to Ollantaytambo for just 1 Sole each. Cool. The minibus was half full already so Glynn and I couldn't sit together but we were lucky to even get a seat as more and more people piled in the back with us. Although the minibus was
Ethnic Circus
Can you spot our Glynn in amongst all the traditional costumes? clearly not designed to carry in excess of 20 people, we were thrilled to find ourselves squashed in with a host of indigenous people including an ethnic lady in full traditional dress carrying her baby across her back in a brightly coloured woven blanket. As the minibus trundled away, she began to fall asleep, resting her head on Glynn's shoulder in the process!
We piled out of the minibus about 40 minutes later, having taken around 2 hours to reach Ollantaytambo altogether. First impressions of the town were that it looked wonderful. Cobbled streets were lined with crooked houses and a stream of water flowed in open channels at the edge of the road. As pretty as the town was, we were here to see the Inca site and it was easy to see that this was going to be our most impressive set of ruins yet. With our Boleto Touristico in hand, we ventured inside.
Cut into the steep slopes of a nearby mountain is a huge area of stone terracing that makes for quite an incredible sight. But there's much more to these ruins than just the terraces as a breath stealing climb up the stony
Giant Steps
Told you the location was gorgeous. Check out those Inca terraces! steps will show you. At the top, we found a narrow path that literally clung to the edge of the mountain and led to some mud and thatch huts that had been reconstructed in their original form. The view from here was awesome and we could see more houses perched on the even steeper slopes of another mountain across the valley. Incredible.
Back up to the top of the ruins, we wandered through a stone doorway to an area with intact walls and rooms that gave us a clear idea of how this site might once have looked. As with the ruins at Paca Pacara however, what made this place so magical was its location. The views here were simply breathtaking with one side of the site overlooking the town of Ollantaytambo below and the other side granting a vista of the beautiful Sacred Valley with its patchwork of fertile fields bordered by mountains peaking high above.
We spent an enjoyable few hours strolling around the ruins but were mindful of the time as we had been warned not to head back to Cusco too late as the buses often get full later in the day. We resisted
the temptation to pick up any more souvenirs and made our way back over to the marketplace to find a collectivo back to Urubamba. We left just a few minutes later with fewer passengers than last time and no ethnic folks to gaze upon this time. In Urubamba we were delighted to find a bus that went straight through to Cusco, meaning we wouldn't have to change in Pisac as we did on the way here and it also worked out cheaper at just 3 Soles each for the whole last chunk of our journey. Can you believe that it cost us a total of just 18 Soles (£3) for the two of us to travel today?! This is how we like to do our travelling!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.091s; Tpl: 0.018s; cc: 9; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0647s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb