Another town, another ruin
Trip Start
Dec 30, 2007
1
39
50
Trip End
Jun 22, 2008
Pisac,
Sacred Valley,
Peru
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Pisac is another of the towns in the Sacred Vally, usually visited by tourists as a Sunday day trip, to make the best of the market. You can pay for a tour to take you, or you can take a bus. We reckoned we could cover the market and the ruins, see a bit of the Quechua mass, use public transport the whole way and start after breakfast was served at our hostel. Well, I can canvass a market as thoroughly as I care to in about 5 mins, so that put me ahead of the game and we decided to meet up at the entry gate in a few hours and I could advise on the merit of the ruins.
Unfortunately the gate turned out to be 4 kms before the ruins, and I wasn't going to walk back that far just to pass on my opinion. So I had to spend the next 40 mins or so scouring the market looking for Nancy. The market is huge and maze-like, but we met up in the end, and by now it was time for the Quechua mass. Local notables stood around the entry to the church beforehand, dressed in embroidered ponchos and blowing conch shells. I don't know how authentic any of this was. The Quechua mass itself actually seemed to be in Spanish, and the singing was shrill (Nancy says it reminded her of China). So we returned to the ruins happily enough.
The ruins
Access to the ruins is, for walkers, by a steep climb up through terraces. Pisac is thought to have been a major fortification which would explain the location (except that almost all Inca sites are built on very steep hills). I almost immediately put my camera down and forgot it (reprising a similar effort at Machu Picchu), but fortunately the people immediately behind us collected it.
Inca walls (note the corners)
The ruins are huge, but are never all in sight at one time. Consequently, we at first found the site underwhelming. The ceremonial complex is fairly plain, and small. The temple of the sun is another finely worked piece of masonry but without other interesting ornamentation. There were some nice water channels, and a building described as an 'anomalous crude structure' in one book, because the stonework is so loose. But gradually the site grew on me, as we climbed over the ridge and came across other complexes where you could ramble at will, although most paths turn out to be dead ends. The site is built longitudinally along the ridge, with massive terraces below. From this end of the site you have a view to the neighbouring cliff which is riddled with the bricked-up tombs of Inca dead, all robbed. From a distance, it resembles those cliffs full of nesting bird holes. All in all, I thought it an interesting site, and another impressive testament to the Incan facility with building fine walls in precipitous places. One almost senses that it was a thing of pride with the masons. Any remotely moderate slope seemed to be destined for terracing and agriculture rather than accommodation.
By the time we had climbed down, we were tired and I was looking forward to a sleep on the bus on the way home. I would have had to have been almost dead from fatigue to achieve that. It was a return to the days of the chicken bus. We stood, crammed against the seat and crushed every time a passenger got on or off, or the ticket collector had to thread his way down the aisle. It amazes me how malleable people turn out to be.
