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Published: September 8th 2008
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Ruins
Puca Pucara The Cusco tourist ticket had given us entry to various museums in the city, none of which had massively sparked our interest, but it was with greater enthusiasm that we approached the remaining sites, all of which were ruins outside of Cusco. Our first day-trip took us to Pisac, and a pre-ruin wander through its large, thrice-weekly market, full of fruit and vegetables stalls, handicrafts, and camera-wielding tourists.
Pisac sits on a valley floor and was notably warmer than Cusco, leading to a carelessly pink author. The Inca ruins sit high above the town on a spur, and we took a taxi to the topmost drop-off point to avoid what would have been a wearying climb - a decision vindicated when we returned to Pisac via this steep, switchback-laden route.
There are various ruins at the site, set amongst sweeping agricultural terraces of a similar ilk to ones we'd seen in China (
Yuanyang and
Dazhai) and
the Philippines, and still in use today. Though functionally built for growing crops and preventing erosion of the hillsides, the Incas had refined the terracing techniques from the civilisations that came before them, including introducing irrigation systems to temper the effects of drought. The
most impressive ruin was the Temple of the Sun, featuring some of the amazingly precise large stone construction characteristic of the Incas, the joins so tight as to require no mortar. The setting itself was also superb, with views of the neighbouring mountains and down onto Pisac and the river Urubamba running through it.
Our second day-trip took in a variety of sites, with a taxi driver dropping us off at the furthest, Tambo Machay, and us tracing a route back to Cusco that linked the different ruins. Tambo Machay was the site of some ritual Inca baths, though the clearance available under the water drop-off seemed to indicated Inca noblemen were pygymesque in height. Nearby was Puka Pukara, a hunting lodge whose name means Red Fort in defiance of both its colour and function.
We then had a cross-country trek to Qenko, lopping off a good chunk of the distance we would have had to cover on the looping road. Qenko is a large limestone outcrop containing a few passages that could generously be termed a labyrinth. The RG's tantalising description of carvings and channels through which llama blood used to flow as a means of predicting
crop yields raised our hopes, but we saw no evidence of these and trooped on, disappointed, to the final site of the day - Sacsayhuaman.
Sacsayhuaman is the Inca fortress overlooking Cusco, built about 500 years ago and containing further great examples of Inca stonework, with some of the building blocks weighing hundreds of tonnes. Tour groups prowled the ruins in their dozens, kept in line by a team of whistle-blowing guards. Banks of clouds had moved in by this point, robbing us of an atmospheric sunset but giving us a grey, breezy, rain-spattered experience that was impressive in its melancholy. The views onto Cusco were panoramic and it was only 15 minutes later that we were plodding into the Plaza de Armas.
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