Sacred Valley outside Ollantaytambo

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Sacred Valley—trips to sites other than Ollantaytambo

Pisac trip

Wednesday, October 24

Because I didn’t have to teach in Cusco until 4 pm, guide Dayana and I arranged to meet to go to the ruins of the fort, temples, terraces and residences at Pisac, about an hour from Cusco via bus (about $1.)

Once you get to the market town of Pisac, a mostly pretty drive through the portion of the sacred valley closest to Cuzco, you need to take a taxi or hike to the top of the ruins. While I had been up for the climb (said to be an hour or two), Dayana advised taking the taxi top the top of the ruins and walking back to town.

As it turned out, this was enough of a challenge for the day, especially since we had to be back in Cusco by 3.30 latest. As Peter Frost, the local UK expat author of the excellent Exploring Cusco says of the walk down via the upper pathway (the one we took):

The upper pathway, from the highest part of the ruins, “requires fitness and a reasonable head for heights.”

The athletic challenge wasn’t particularly extreme—some steep descending. But the “exposure” as they say in mountaineering in the U.S.—that is the combined effect of the narrowness/roughness of trail and the distance of potential unbroken fall in case of a slip—was daunting to say the least, especially on the first few segments of the trail. The walkway, still intact from Inca days, is a 24 inch or so pebbly path that clings to an entirely vertical rock face about 300 or 400 feet above a beautiful valley. (There is a sign that says “slow,” and not many hikers coming the other way.)

Since it had been raining when we got to the top, wet footing added to the delights. After 5 or 10 minutes, though, not only did the trail broaden, but the sky began to clear, with sunshine not far behind, and much broader pathways below.

Soon very beautiful vistas of elaborate terraces, an extensive and relatively intact Inca temple complex, and green valleys below open up. Though there were a number of tourists there that day, we found a quiet spot in the Temple of the Stars, about the size of a typical U.S. living room, and ate our empanada lunch in peace, using a large Inca bench on which offerings had been placed as our dining table. Nice.

The quality of the Inca stonework, its remarkable condition, the number of temples, and the views all make the Pisac trip, about an hour or so from Cusco, extremely well worth doing.




Walk along the Urubamba—Coya to Calca
October 29, 2007

This is another walk described in Peter Frosts’s book, one of a series that follow a quiet valley road that runs along the river on the opposite side from the highway. Most of the time, on this stretch, it is about a KM or so distant from the highway, so road noise is minimal, and there is almost no motorized traffic at all on the unpaved road this route follows (rougher trail alternatives are also available on many of the sections Frost lists. The walks are structured around access points that cross the river, usually via pedestrian bridges every 5 to 15 or so KM. These permit access to he main valley highway between Pisac and Urubamba, and the larger towns and transportation services that link them.

I began the day’s walk from Coya, reached via taxi from Ollanta or Urubamba, or by one of the colectivos that run to Pisac.

The bridge at the small town of Coya crosses the river an very soon reaches the small and attractive farming settlement of Macay, as you begin walking west downstream. Remnants of an occasional crumbling colonial hacienda lie along this part of the route, along with smaller more contemporary adobe homes. Since it is spring, many families are out in the fields with their oxen, plowing and planting (photo). Dogs are a bit of a problem around some of the homes and farms, so trekking poles and a stone poised for throwing are helpful.

The very peaceful and easy walk continued down past the bridge to Lamay, the next small town, and the countryside opened up, with less heavy vegetation around the path, and more farm animals and bird life along the river.

An interesting highlight as the walk approached the 10 or 12 km point is a beautifully renovated large hacienda easily visible south of the road, a few hundred meters off the main path, tucked up against the high red cliffs of this portion of the valley. It is the Casa de Milagros, now home to a young American family and an orphanage with about 32 children and staff to help run the place. The organization that runs the place is the “Chandler Sky Foundation,” and it has a good website that notes that accommodations are available there.

The hacienda is self-sustaining, with organic vegetable gardens and greenhouse, huge fields of corn, guinea pigs, rabbits, etc. It also has a very nice stable of what appear to be very well bred Peruvian riding horses. The building and its flower gardens are very well worth a visit. (Photos)

A few KM past the hacienda, my hike ended with the bridge crossing to Chanca. It is a surprisingly lovely little place, with well maintained and pretty pastel homes and gardens, especially around the bridge. A good lunch at a nice quinta and a bus ride back to Urubamba finished a very nice day.

Maras to Moray

Sunday, November 11, 2007

This was one of the two most beautiful walks of my Sacred Valley/Ollanta stay, rivaled only by the substantially more difficult hike from Ollanta to the Canterras. (See the Ollanta chapter.)

This walk has it all—a bit of a challenge but relatively easy, few other hikers, especially in the uphill direction from Maras to Moray, a path generally entirely separate from motor vehicle traffic (a number of mountain bikers having a great time, though). Best of all are the vistas, green fields topped by great clear views (on this sunny day) of all the Nevadas (glacier-topped very high Andean peaks) I have mentioned and a few I haven’t. About 8 km, if you take a taxi from the well marked highway drop off point to Maras to begin. See Peter Frost’s book for advice on limited facilities and services, a good and simple route directions.)

A quite lovely farm near the end of the hike was one of the nice spots I came across. An older woman, (photo) who either spoke only Quechua, or such heavily accented Spanish it may as well have been Quechua, came out to see me as the trail crossed her property and I stopped to take yet more photos. She was quite insistent that I pay her 5 soles (about $1.60) for something that I believe involved lunch and soup made from her corn. It is also possible she was just charging me for access, but I doubt it. Her about 5 year old grandson (I think) spoke good Spanish, but wasn’t terribly eager to help me sort things out. At any rate, I paid, but apparently the lunch was to be served on my way back. Since I took a taxi from Moray to the Salineras, I never had the opportunity to sample it, if it existed.

Moray is the site where the Incas built terraces(photos)(looks like amphitheater) in natural sinkholes to use as a type of agricultural research station, using the varying shade and altitude to achieve variations in temperature as broad as the differences between Bombay and London, to see which crops grew best in what conditions. That may have been how they figured out how to create Andean corn, which scientists believe was no mean feat for that altitude..


The Moray site is very intriguing, but the hike was even better. At the site, I met a young Chilena, Daiana Rosse, who was visiting alone since her boyfriend was back in Cusco, too tired to join her for the day’s outing. We traded photo-taking. (That’s her way down in one of the terraced sites) and then joined together for the taxi I had arranged to pick me up after the hike to go to the nearby Salineras site. It is a huge complex of salt pans developed by the Incas and still used today. (Photos). We then journeyed back to Urubamba, where we parted ways after some interesting discussions about life in Santiago and her upcoming trip with her family to Los Angeles.

Subsequent mention of the encounter and her compliments about the friendliness of Peruanos led to quite an interesting discussion with Adolfo re Peruvian-Chilean relations and broader intra-south American relations. I summarize it in my Ollanta people section.

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Photos

Chicon and the Sacred Valley
The mountain is above Urubamba

Mother, baby, Veronica
on Moray Hike

Moray
with Daiane Rosse (the Chilena woman who asked me to take her picture) below

Moray hike vista
Good old Veronica in the distance, down the valley past Ollantaytambo

Casa de Milagros
part of gardens

Down in Moray
Daiane Rosse way down there

AW at Moray
the largest of the 3 agro-research Inca terraced sites here