En el Valle Sagrado - Ollantaytambo
Trip Start
May 11, 2006
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10
15
Trip End
May 21, 2006
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Ollantaytambo,
Peru
Monday, May 15, 2006
After our usual early breakfast, we are happy to see that not only has our new mini-van arrived, but also our train tickets. The previous van will stay in a workshop in Ollantaytambo, and we now have the luxury of a driver and a guide. We first motor down to the railway station to make sure our tickets are indeed genuine, which we are assured, they are.
From here we continue to the impressive archeological site of Ollantaytambo. The admission is included in our Cuzco Tourist Ticket, and we pick out a local guide to show us around. Regrettably, he is not very good, but at least we are giving employment to a local lad. Antonio seems to know much more than him.
The actual town of Ollantaytambo is one of the few cities that still maintain the urban-Incan planning
1. Street scene Ollayantaytambo
. The first part of the town has a grid-shape design, with narrow streets that open up towards the Urubamba River. Each block or square is composed of a group of houses that share the same door to the middle yard. The fortress or temple behind the town is composed of seventeen superposed terraces made of large carved stones over 4 meters high, 2 meters wide and two meters deep.
We enter the complex by way of the water gardens, and then ascend the steep terraces. The steps are very high, and at 8,856 feet, it still takes the wind out of you. We continue along a precipitous ledge towards the walls of the Royal House of the Sun, which are composed of six huge stone blocks with small-stone couplings. The stonework is amazing, and our guide shows us the quarries way down in the valley where the immense blocks were cut. They were then transported up the almost sheer rock face on wooden rollers.
Concluding this fascinating visit, a couple of our group try out some local ceviche in the marketplace. We think they are crazy eating raw fish from a street vendor. This, and other indiscretions, will come back to haunt us later on.
We hop in our mini-van and we are off to the next stop, the town of Urubamba. While Cecilia makes a phone call to Lima regarding the arrangements for the wedding anniversary, I am running out of cash. I ask if there is a Banco de Credito here, and I am pointed to what seems like a small roadside sanctuary opposite a petrol station. Inside the diminutive unattended edifice is an ATM machine. This is the bank, and in the middle of nowhere I insert by Washington Mutual card, and extract hundreds of Peruvian soles. Sign of the times.
