5.22.2009

The Sacred Valley

Today Tyler and I had to opportunity to travel around to many ruin sites around Cusco and in the Sacred Valley. It was so beautiful and we had a wonderful day.
The first stop on our tour was Pisaq. It was probably our favorite place of the day. We saw many awesome ruins and beautiful sightsThe giant step looking things behind us are actually agricultural terraces. That's right, the Incans carved massive terraces into the mountain so they could grow crops. The Peruvian people still grow crops such as corn up in these mountains. Amazing! Tyler was obsessed with the terraces.
The next place we visited was Ollantaytambo. This city is the only city in Peru that is still inhabited by Incans, many of the people living in Ollantaytambo are decendants of the Incans. The homes are built on the foundation of Incan ruins and the original urban planning is still in place.The Incans were also incredible architects. They didn't use mortar to fit their stones together they carved each individual stone so that it fit together almost seamlessly!The Incans set up irrigation systems which are still working today. These are pictures of some of the bathhouses that still have water flowing through them. This mountain at Ollantaytambo is incredible. There is a massive storehouse on top of the mountain where the people would store food. The Incans carved the face of their sun god into the mountain. The sun god is carved in such a way that it looks like he is carrying the storehouse on his back. We were at a bad angle but it's still pretty amazing!On the way home we stopped by Chinchero. This location doesn't have many ruins because the Peruvians built their churches and homes on the Incan foundations. While I was sitting on the grass taking pictures I was randomly surrounded by little children. I had read in a book that often children will surround you, distract you and try to steal things from you. Well as soon as they surrounded me I popped up and sure enough there was a little boy with his hand in the outside pocket of my backpack. Good thing I didn't put anything in there!

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