TRANQUILLO TIMES IN OLLANTAYTAMBO & NEARBY WONDERS

South America » Peru » Cusco » Cusco
July 9th 2007

Published: September 4th 2007

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MRJ SthAmericanAdventures

ROAD TO SALTINAS

Kids in the fields on the road to the saltinas....very excited to see some gringos pass

After our trek to Machu Picchu we did manage to get tickets and caught the train that night towards Cusco. We stopped at a small town called Ollantaytambo where we were transferred onto a bus. Here my friend Nicky was intending on staying the night and then having a look around the area the following day. She had asked me if I wanted to come along, my problem was that I had absolutely no money on me or no access to money, Nicky was nice enough to say that she would lend me some. As usual and especially because I was tired I was not able to make my mind up whether I should stay or head back to Cusco, I was also trying to get a job and didn´t want to miss my opportunity there. As we headed towards the buses I told Nicky that I would just head back to Cusco, so she started to walk up the hill towards the town of Ollantaytambo in the dark of the night. On trying to board the bus it was again a mission to organise it and I looked up the street to see what I thought was Nicky in the

OLLANTAYTAMBO

The Inka ruins in the town of Ollantaytambo

distance and changed my mind at the last minute and decided to stay. It was around 10.30pm at night and I thought all would be good when I caught up with Nicky, not only did I not want to loose her so we could hang the next day but she was my source of money. I started to yell out to Nicky to make sure that I didn´t loose her but I was getting no response from her, as I was doing this all the buses heading to Cusco were passing me. I was wondering at this point if I had made the right decision and was angry at myself for being so indecisive. I made it to the top of the street and no gringos in sight...let alone Nicky...and by now no buses....this was going to be a good lesson in being decisive I thought. After wandering around the town asking people if they had seen Nicky pass and getting no positive responses I decided that all I could do was find somewhere to stay and hope that I would find her in the morning. So this is what I did and lucky some lovely ladies had a room

OLLANTAYTAMBO

A woman spinning wool dressed in traditional dress

for me and after 4 days walking etc I was looking forward to a good night sleep, but this unfortunately was a little interupted with fear that I would be stuck in this town with no money. The morning came and I thought that I should get up early and make my presence obvious in the town. I did wander around and check out some hostels to try and find Nicky but with no luck.....she is extremely obvious with bright red hair so I thought that somewhere I´d have to find her. In the meantime I had my breakfast, I scraped together enough for a couple of bread rolls, sitting out the front of my hostel on the main street watching the world go by. It was a great sunny morning and a wonderful place to sit...the town of Ollantaytambo is the best example of Inca town planning and the narrow cobble stone streets that still exist have been inhabited for over 700 years. There is also Inca ruins that sit looking over the town and my favourite part was that there is many local people wearing tradition dress walking and working in the streets. Early in the morning before

OLLANTAYTAMBO

A woman carrying her baby...this is how it is done here...no flash harness´etc

the town is overtaken with tourists and their buses, it is a peaceful town and I really enjoyed people watching for many hours as I was keeping my eye out for Nicky. Things seemed to still be done the old fashion way and I guess without machines, money and possibly knowledge of other ways the people just went about their business. There is a lot of tourism here so many of the locals were wearing their local dress and carrying babies on backs, spinning wool, had young children with them also dressed in traditional dress and some with animals like lambs and goat kids all in the hope that they could make some money when the tourists arrive and ask for photos. What makes me smile is that the women will wear their tradition dress even when they are at home on the farm and out working in the fields....they seem to be very proud of their culture and want to distinguish themselves between the different indigenous groups or communities.

Finally I found Nicky and we spent a bit more time people watching and trying to take photos discretly in town before heading out to see some of the

OLLANTAYTAMBO

A woman carrying sticks on her back....she was probably in her 50´s or 60´s

ruins nearby. Our first stop was via a small town called Madas which we managed to get to via a taxi from the main road out of town. The town seemed rather deserted and the buildings were extremely basic and made from mud bricks. As we pulled around one corner the taxi driver stopped as an older woman called out....we had already agreed on a price for the taxi and told the driver that it wasn´t a share taxi but we were happy for the lady to come with us. As she sat in the back of the taxi she continually spun wool...never stopping for anything. We dropped her off in the middle of no where were apparantly she lives on a farm. After that we continued on to some ruins called Moray. At this point I had no idea really where I was going as I had not looked into this area, so I was impressed when we did arrive. The ruins here are massive big amphitheater-like terraces that the Incas built and are thought to have used them as an agricultural laboratory. There were a couple of these there and from the biggest one you could easily hear

OLLANTAYTAMBO

A woman with her son dressed in the traditional local dress

a person talking from the middle of it if you were standing on the top of the hill due to it´s acoustics. From here we then managed to do a deal with a taxi driver that would take us where we wanted for the next few hours. Next stop was to the salinas, or salt pans, that are situated in a valley, which have been used to harvest salt since the Inca times. Not only is it quite spectacular but also very interesting to watch the people working on them. I am sure that the technics that they use now are very similar to the past....for example for them to stop the water running into a particular pool all they would use would be some wood or another material that would stop it and basic sieves to extract the salt from the water. Unfortunately as in many places in Sth America there were young people working, this young boy was possibly around 10-11 years, the reality being that it is sometimes more important to work than it is to go to school. From the salt pans we jumped back into the taxi and drove through some amazing scenery that included

MARAS

The small town of Maras....near the ruins of Moray

open yellow plains and mountains in the background....along the road coming across many families in the paddocks with their herds of sheep or cows. Lots of the kids would run to the side of the road as they saw the taxi coming and yell out hello and wave madly to us.....I was loving being out in the open again and the people were just so amazing that I couldn´t get the smile off my face. Our next stop was a small town called Chincero, which to look at was nothing much...just the same mud huts, but what we found there was very interesting. We were invited into a shop that weaves many products, the lady there was going to show us the process of how it was all done. Many of the blankets etc that are handmade are much more expensive than the acrylic ones and I was soon to realise why and appreciate it a lot more. She showed us how the wool was washed with a bark that is found in the wild, this bark would create soapy water in which they could wash the wool. I was amazed that anything from a tree could do that! From

MARAS

The lovely lady we picked up in our taxi to share a ride to her home....never to busy to be spinning her wool

there we were shown all the different dyes that they use, again all from the wild and found in different plants, cactus, seeds etc....again the colours that they have are amazing particularly because they are natural. For example a rich red colour is found growing on the side of cactus....on the cactus it looks like a little ball that is dusted in icing sugar or flour, but when you pull it off and squash it this amazing red paste is there in your hand. I am always amazed and wonder how people find out that they can different create different things from nature. The process from there invovles dying the wool over heat, drying the wool, then spinning it and finally they start to weave the product. Most of the products will take at least 6 weeks to make and it is done solely by hand, just as they have done for years. Nicky decided she would buy one which the girl was just finishing after 6 weeks hard work. It was roughly around 1.5m long and 2ft wide and was a beautiful piece which ended up costing her around AUD$40......not a big pay day for so much work. Unfortunately

MARAS

Countryside on the way to the Moray Ruins

my camera battery died while we were there so I have no photos to show you now, many on my film camera, of the women at work. We did walk away with a huge appreciation for all the hard work that these people put into their work, how precisely it is done and how proud they are. The colours that they use have been used for years and are from the land around them......it is very interesting to get some history about the area and see why people do certain things. It is very intriging and makes me think that it is a shame that in my society we have so little traditions from the past. Our day was finished by getting squashed into another taxi heading to Cusco...they like to fit 4 people across the back seat..this is fine if you are a small Peruvian but when you try to squash two bigger gringos in there the law of physics doesn´t usually agree. So with a very full taxi, people are also in the back part of the station wagon, we head to Cusco with the taxi driver still tooting people on the side of the road to see