On the Hills of Pisac

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By Tuesday, December 8th, we had seen most of what Cusco and the Sacred Valley had to offer and were making plans to head on. However, we were uneasy about leaving. After anticipating Machu Picchu for so long, our brief afternoon after the grueling Inca Trail did not satisfy, and we were already making plans to come back in a future visit - possibly with parents or an anklebiter in tow. Talking through our plans that morning, we finally asked the obvious question: why not return to Machu Picchu now while we were still in the area? Just like that, we made plans to return to the Lost City within two days, and to stop by Pisac to see the Inca ruins there along the way.

So the next morning, Dec. 9th, we took a bus from Cusco to the town of Pisac, followed by a taxi ride to the top of the hill behind the town where the ruins were located. We hiked down the hill along a trail through a bushy, cactus-filled country, along the ancient terraces that had been carved into the hillside. The ruins along the trail were built in the ¨rustic¨ style, i.e. built rougher and far less care than the best Inca work, and they bore the marks of time. Some were decrepit and overgrown with the local bushes. But they were beautiful, in lonely and desolate way, framed against the mountains and surrounding country. The held a strong sense of the long years before when they were not ruins but functioning structures, part of people´s lives.

We were about two-thirds of the way down when we saw a cluster of buildings made with a much lighter-colored stone, with stones carved and polished smooth, similar to the stone we had only seen used in the Inca cermonial buildings. A quick scan through my binoculars confirmed that we were just above a nearly intact Temple of the Sun. Within a few minutes we were amongst the temple buildings, admiring them and trying to capture their beauty with our camera. I was estatic. Not at all an architecture buff, I had really come to appreciate the Inca buildings during my time on the Inca Trail and in the Sacred Valley. The double-doorways (entrance to important temples), the large carved rocks (indicating a sacred site for ceremonies), the fountains and the Pachamama symbols (which are lined East-West), were all present in this ancient fortress and temple.

We took our time wandering around the Temple of the Sun area, but soon it was time to leave. The views were quite breathtaking as we proceeded down the trail through more terraces. After an hour of hiking, we had reached the bottom of the hill and found ourselves in the town of Pisac again. We caught a shared van ride back to Ollantaytambo in time to have a nice dinner before our scheduled train ride to the town of Agua Calientes. Arriving around 11 pm that night, we were met at the station by a girl from our reserved hostel, beelined it there, and went to bed early that night with plans to catch the first bus back to Machu Picchu the next morning.

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