Machu Picchu Pictures

The magnificent Machu Picchu - vertical-cliff-sided mountains, sheer stone agricultural terraces, simple elevated temples... and the inevitable looming clouds. Spectacular place! And below you can see the rain that came from those gloomy clouds. Climbing up Huayna Picchu (the steep mount in the background of the first photo) with an umbrella in hand wasn´t the eastist thing - it made you very aware of the long drop over the edge of the cliff should you miss your footing.

The view from Huayna Picchu down towards the main Machu Piccu Complex, far, far below! As you can see, the whispy clouds were pierced by the odd ray of sunshine, making the view truly spectacular. You can appreciate the extent of the terracing in the site fro this angle too. Below you can see Machu Picchu´s circular terraces in the foreground, with Huayna Picchu towering in the background against the clouds.

Sunshine! When the ancient temple was lit up the terraces looked beautiful, but it was a rare event. Huayna Picchu behind is still dark and gloomy however.

A classic view of Machu Picchu, with a very small Vicki perched on a terrace at the right of the photo. More gloomy clouds above, but a few rays of sunshine escape to brighten up the complex below.

Ollantaytambo and the Sacred Valley

We’ve spent a reasonable amount of time travelling up and down the dramatic Sacred Valley over the last few days. After first visiting Pisac and spending ages admiring the upper end of the valley from the great height of the mountain-perched Inca complex, we thought we’d have a go at venturing a little further. Pisac was very easy to get to – just hop on one of the small rickety local busses that leave every 15 minutes or so from Avenida Tullumayo in central Cusco and it’s an extremely cheap 30 minute trip. Our next target, Ollantaytambo, as well as proving much more difficult to pronounce, was much trickier to reach.

The main problem is that direct busses to and from Ollantaytambo are few and far between – leaving only once or twice a day at inconvenient times. So, to get there in ‘local style’ you have to first catch one of the incredibly popular busses that leave Avenida Grau to go to another town in the Sacred valley called Urubamba every half an hour. This was sort of OK –we weren’t lucky enough to get seats and so had to stand in the isle with 15 odd other poor devils in the packed bus. We were getting the hang of keeping our balance around the tight hair-pin bends as the road wound up out of Cusco when unfortunately the bus started to warm up. This is one thing that we really can’t understand about the locals here – they wear layer upon layer upon layer of clothing ALL of the time. Yes, the evenings and nights are bitterly cold, but the days are often sunny and warm. This was a warm day and we were in a packed, overcrowded bus – so the temperature rose rapidly until Gary and I were boiling! But even though the locals seemed to be wearing more than 4 times as many clothes compared to either of us they closed all the windows and wrapped themselves up in more coats to make it even warmer! We just don’t get it, they must have been roasting, but they all kept their coats on!

Anyway, the trip to Urubamba wasn’t the most comfortable, but it did offer some wonderful vistas as we descended into the Sacred Valley. Then we had a relatively easy transfer onto a Collectivo bound for Ollantaytambo. A Collectivo is a sort of clapped-out mini bus that only leaves a bus terminal when it can’t possibly fit any more passengers on board – but of course it will stop every now and then along the way to squeeze in anyone else who hails it down! Still, out reward for successfully traversing the Sacred Valley was to have a few hours exploring the very pretty little town of Ollantaytambo with its impressive Inca Fort.

The ruins here aren’t anywhere near as impressively located as those in Pisac. The main Inca Citadel is only 200m or so up the mountain above town, and so as you climb you do get nice views back over the Sacred Valley and Ollantaytambo itself, but they don’t compare to the vistas from the Pisac Temple. On the other hand it only takes a gentle 10 minute climb to reach the top rather than nearly 2 hours of hard hiking! It is for this reason we suspect that Ollantaytambo is particularly popular with tour groups. We were fortunate – we had just enough time to make a leisurely ascent to the citadel, quickly explore the small ruined Temple of the Sun, and then stroll along the top of the beautifully geometric agricultural terraces before the tours descended upon the place. As we made our way down the far side of the Inca Complex to our horror we saw hoards of tourists making their way (very very slowly) up to the Citadel we had explored only half an hour earlier. There were loads of them! At least five groups, each with 10 to 30 people… it looked like the stone terraces had sprouted a particularly virulent and colourful fungal infection! We actually felt sorry for each of the poor sods struggling upwards. Whereas we’d enjoyed the stunning temple and scenery in peace, they would be herded around the place with billions of others, never really getting the chance to appreciate it properly. And I dread to think how much more a guided tour would have cost compared to the pittance we paid for our local transport adventure!

This made us think of a conversation we’d overheard a day earlier while having a pizza for dinner in a restaurant overlooking the Plaza De Armas in Cusco. We don’t usually listen to other people’s conversations… but here we had no choice. Two couples in their late middle age sitting at adjacent tables began to chat – one from Denmark, the other from the USA. And trust me, if we’d been sitting in the restaurant next door we’d probably have still heard the North Americans clearly! They started off by saying ‘You know, we had a real adventure today – we were picked up by our guide at 8.00am and didn’t come back until 5.00! We visited the Sacred Valley’. At this point the Danish couple politely asked where in the Sacred Valley they had visited. ‘Ugh, I don’t think it has a name other than the Sacred Valley. There were some salt mines…But our Guide was really good – he’s written a book! I bought it…’ As you can imagine, this went on for some time! Eventually the Danish couple explained that they had used local buses to see the valley a few days earlier – and that they had been travelling up to Cusco from Lima by bus. The couple from the USA could barely disguise their horror: ‘Local buses? That must have been, err, interesting. Have you been to the Airport here? No? It’s really unusual…’ It was clear that the Danes had completely fallen in their estimation for not spending more money to travel in luxury – and for becoming somehow contaminated by ‘mixing’ with locals.

We listened to all this (we had no choice given the volume the North Americans shouted) with utter horror. I really hope that most people who travel have a genuine interest in the places they visit – and are willing to explore them rather than wanting bits and pieces handed to them on a 5 star platter. Having the opportunity to explore and get a real feel for a place is so much more fun than simply being bussed from point to point with crowds of other tourists. And on a practical note – independent travel is much cheaper too!

Ollantaytambo Photographs

This is one of the spectacular views from the windows of the dodgy local bus on the way to Ollantaytambo... you can see some of the dramatic mountains of the Sacred Valley in the distance, with very lush agricultural areas closer to us. Below is the Inca Citadel at Ollantaytambo... more steps to climb, more terraces to explore - we think the Incas were totally mad for positioning all their complexes on slopes!

This view from the Inca Citadel shows the lively little town of Ollantaytambo in the Valley below. If you look at the mountain slopes in the distance you can see even more Inca Citadels - they never seemed to tire of their stonework! Below are pictures of some lovely terraces, and the mountain they ´hang´ from. In one of these photos is a very small Gary to give a sense of scale. We´ll award a prize to anyone who can spot him!

A slightly larger Gary in the Inca Citadel. With another lovely view over another lovely valley. Scenic area!

Pisac

The Sacred Valley of the Incas is an astonishingly beautiful place, perched high up in the midst of the Andes. It is a dramatic steep sided river valley running from the small town of Pisac down past Ollantaytambo to eventually reach Machu Picchu. This area is completely saturated by Inca remains – from glorious fortress-temples clinging to the vertical rock of mountain peaks, to extensive, meticulously organised agricultural terraces carved from the steep valley sides.

Pisac lies just 30km north west of Cusco and the fabulous Sachsayhumuan. The town is small and pretty, situated in the centre of the narrow, perfectly flat plain at the head of the Sacred Valley. Apparently the market here is one of the best in the region – but apart from briefly wandering past we weren’t too interested (by this point in our Peruvian travels we’ve been pestered to buy far too many alopecia jumpers, woolly hats, silver jewellery, colourful blankets and pan-pipes!). The main reason we spent the day here was to explore the Inca ruins that lie on the mountainside just above the town.

Perhaps saying the ancient temple lies ‘just’ above the town isn’t entirely accurate. To be honest, we didn’t expect that climbing to the Inca remains would be anything like as absolutely exhausting or rewarding as it was! The misleading thing was that mountain north of Pisac is absolutely teeming with superb stone terracing – as soon as you climb the first few steep steps from the warden’s hut at the base of the mountain you start to ascend past these wonderful terraces and several pretty waterfalls. And from here if you gaze upwards you can see a number of circular stone ruins perched only a few hundred meters above at the top of the cliff. They must be your target, no? Erm, no. The wonderful Inca site at Pisac is very extensive, meaning that there are terraces and fortifications all over the mountain, on every false summit. The actual Temple of the Sun which forms the most impressive cluster of buildings takes at least an hour and a half of hard climbing up steep stone steps to reach – and even this fails to mark the top of the complex! Climb higher up the increasingly craggy mountain and you’ll reach further stone Inca structures, and receive increasingly spectacular views down over the stunning terraces and the wonderful Sacred valley

So far of the Inca sites we’ve seen Pisac has to be the most dramatic. It was hard work to get to the top of the mountain, but with each steep step upwards you were rewarded with fantastic views, making you want to continue all the way to the top! The Temple of the Sun was particularly impressive, constructed of those perfectly fitting stone blocks that the Incas carved so well. But the most wonderful structures in the complex were without doubt the stone agricultural terraces. There were areas of impressive terracing all over the mountain, but one section on the eastern side was particularly amazing. The name ‘Pisac’ apparently means ‘partridge’, and it’s theorised that this particularly extensive terrace is supposed to represent a partridge’s wing. It certainly looked a lot like a birds’ wing stretching down the mountain… but on a truly magnificent scale. I hope the photographs we’ve included below give you some sort of an idea!

Anyway, the next town in the Sacred Valley we hope to visit is Ollantaytambo, which apparently has its own impressive temple-fortress to guard the centre of the Inca Empire. And all of these are just a warm up to visiting Machu Picchu!

Pisac pictures

The Sacred Valley stretches from here at Pisac all the way down to Machu Picchu. The steep sides, dramatic terraces and mystical Inca ruins make it a great place to spend an (energetic) afternoon! Below you can see a very small Gary in front of the Temple De Sol on one of the many false summits of the mountain above Pisac town where the Incas built their impressively extensive complex.

This is the Temple de Sol from another angle - we climbed well above this citadel to explore the burial sites at the top of the mountain (where you can see Gary at the bottom of a craggy cliff), and to get the most impressive views down onto the stunning stone terraces hundreds of meters below us!

Cusco

Cusco is one of the most famous cities in Peru – mainly due to it’s proximity to the magnificent Inca Citadel Machu Picchu. It is a vibrant colonial town, perched high in the Andes (meaning the evenings are cold, but thankfully not quite as evilly freezing as nights in Puno!). Of course the main reason we chose to visit here was to see Machu Picchu, along with every other traveller in Peru, but as we found there were actually a huge number of other reasons to visit Cusco we ended up staying for ages – and decided the place deserved a blog entry of it’s own (I’ll put up separate posts on Machu Picchu and other Inca ruins in the area after we visit them).

We stayed in a tiny hotel just above a small plaza in San Blas on the north side of Cusco. It turned out to be a particularly pretty and lively area, which was great – the only drawback was that San Blas is a good, steep climb from the city centre. So when we first arrived in Cusco after a long, cramped bus ride from Puno we struggled uphill for over an hour, fully laden with all our worldly goods of course! The distance from the bus station wasn’t more than 4km, which would normally be fine by us, but it was all uphill. The last section, from the elegant central Plaza de Armas to San Blas was particularly steep and evil – especially given the thin air up here at high altitude!

Even after we had recovered from our travelling we found the gradient of Cusco challenging at times. But in a way the fact that the town is built on such a steep slope is one of the nicest things about the place – there are lots of pretty winding alleyways, twisting stone staircases and narrow near vertical streets squeezed in between the old Spanish colonial houses. Many of these streets have Inca stone work too… the Spanish simply built on top of the original Inca town when they colonised Peru, leading to a weird but attractive mishmash of architectural styles throughout Cusco.

You don’t have to go far from Cusco to get to really impressive Inca stone-work either. Situated on a hilltop overlooking the city is Sacsayhuaman, a hugely impressive fortress. Sadly much of the structure was plundered by the Spanish to rebuild Cusco town, but fortunately large sections of the complex remain – including the immense zigzag stone walls that formed the perimeter of the fort. Apparently the largest block of rock in the walls weighs over 70 tonnes… yet it and all the other huge ‘bricks’ were cut with elegant precision to fit perfectly together. Really impressive stonemasonry - the entire wall structure looks so perfectly preserved that it could have been made last year rather than centuries ago!

We struggled up hundreds of steps from Cusco to explore Sacsayhuaman (or ‘Sexy Woman’ as Gary nicknamed the place after mispronouncing the name all day!), and after catching our breath decided to explore some other Inca sites nearby. We were a bit ambitious – our Rough Guide to Peru informed us that there was an important but rarely visited complex called Chacan only 5km north-west, and so we set out to look for it. What the lovely Rough Guide didn’t tell us was that the way to Chacan was all uphill (beautifully steep Andean mountain-hills), nor did it give us any remotely useful directions. But after climbing for well over an hour in what we hoped was the right direction (aided by Gary’s Spanish, a very helpful Peruvian family and a friendly llama shepherdess) we actually found the place! And it was lovely – there were no roads, only dirt paths, so no buses full of tourists venture anywhere nearby, leaving us to admire the huge stone ruins of an Imperial Inca bathing ritual site in perfect peace. The whole complex teetered on the edge of a particularly beautiful gorge with colourful striped rock walls, and stunning views back down the valley of Cusco several hundred meters below.

On our way back down to town we got a bit sidetracked playing on the Inca slides at Rodadero. Here weirdly rounded volcanic rock has been polished over hundreds of years by people sliding down it! The rock is truly slippery on the ‘slides’ – you pick up quite a lot of speed as you get towards the bottom – where you have to stop immediately or end up face down in a muddy puddle... And finally we made a brief diversion on our way home to yet another Inca complex above Cusco called Qenko (we nicknamed it ‘Kenko’ in desperate mispronunciation…). This one was based around a huge carved outcrop of rock, complete with underground caves carved into a fun labyrinth. Lots of huge rock formations to scramble around. And these were only the nearest Inca sites to Cusco!

Only a little further a field are two other Inca sites, both easily reachable by local bus from Cusco. So we were very surprised and horrified when we hopped off our 20 year old clapped-out minibus packed with locals to see that most people turned up with tour groups and guides… The local transport here is so good that we really wonder why people sign up for tours only to be stuck with an irritating guide and 40 or so other tourists all day. Anyway, after dodging the hordes we spent a nice evening wandering around the small Inca sites of Tambo Machay and Puka Pukara. Tambo Machay is really just an over-large bath, complete with nice waterfalls, fit for the Royal Incas to bathe! Puka Pukara is a little more impressive – it consists of a fortified mound overlooking a beautiful valley above Cusco, and is apparently the Inca version of a hunting lodge. Both sites are only 11km from town, so after exploring the ruins we wandered back downhill, watching the sun set above Cusco before descending into the city centre for a well-earned pizza.

Anyway, over the next few days we plan to venture out from Cusco by bus and train to see Inca ruins at Pisac, Ollantaytambo, and of course, Machu Picchu – and we’ll put up some posts and pictures on the blog afterwards!

Cusco Photos

As we walk out of our hotel each morning this is the view over Cusco we see - the lively area of San Blas formed by this sweet square and the twisting alleys you see below.

Here you can see Gary standing in front of the impressive zigzag fortifications at ´Sexy Woman´. As always clouds loom over Cusco in the distance but fortunately the weather stayed clear for our Inca explorations.

More zigzags at Sachsayhumuan... and a very small gary near them to give a sense of scale!


This gorge was near the Inca site of Chacan - we followed it back down towards Cusco, getting fabulous views of the city on the way.

Rock sildes! The volcanic rock near Sachsayhumuan has been used for sliding for hundreds of years - making it very smooth! By the time you reach the bottom you´re going pretty swiftly towards that muddy puddle... Below you can see Gary in Qenko, standng in one of the labrynthine caves.

Puka Pukara looks like any ruined castle you might find in Europe, but by Inca standards it´s only a tiny hunting lodge. It does have a wonderful view over the valley to the right of this photo though, and just off to the left are some sacred bathing pools.

Cusco´s Plaza de Armas at night - very lively, nice churches and cathedrals - and of course the obligatory silly fountain in the middle.