Vinicunca, El Valle Sagrada & Saqsaywaman

01-December-2019

It’s been a little bit since we’ve written but we’ve been pretty busy and there’ve been some complications, things in this part of the world don’t always run smoothly. We woke up a week and a half ago to find we didn’t have water, it seems a water main had broken. But, after 3 days we learned that the water folks had no idea where the broken main was and weren’t sure when it would be fixed so, we decided to move to a new apartment. We found a place that’s even closer to school, closer to a couple Of the supermercados we like and easier to catch cabs to head into el Centro.

Looking at the infrastructure that we can see, like the internet connections in the photo below, if the water mains are anything like this they might still be looking for the break!

Vinicunca – La Montaña de Siete Colores

We moved a week ago Sunday but on that Saturday we took a tour to La Montaña de Siete Colores, also called Rainbow Mountain. The trip started early. We left our apartment at 4:00AM, met our group and guide at a hotel in el Centro then drove up to the mountain. It was a fun group and there were a dozen other people with us – a handful from Mexico, a few from Peru and a couple from Italy.

The hike wasn’t long but we started hiking at about 16,000 feet in elevation and we topped out at about 16,500 feet. That’s about 2,000 feet higher than I’ve hiked before and I was surprised, and pleased, that it really wasn’t so bad. Yep, I could feel the altitude but of our group, Susan and I were surprised that we were the first to get to the top. It was some effort but, as they say in Spanish, “valer la pena” it was worth it!

Here are a few photos from our hike …

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El Valle Sagrada – the Sacred Valley of the Incas

This weekend we took a tour into the Sacred Valley of the Incas. We have our 4 day hike into Manchu Picchu coming up in a week but we decided to take the easy way out and do a tour bus through the Sacred Valley to see a few of the larger ruins. During Inca times, before the Spanish invaded this country, the valley was a bustling hub of activity with farming, mining and, apparently, building temples being some of the main efforts in the area. We stopped and spent time walking through the ruins of dwellings and temples at Pisac and Ollantaytambo, we stopped for lunch in the village of Urubamba and we visited a village where they raise alpaca and produce textiles from their wool.

While the remains of the Incan ruins are spectacular as they stand, you do have to use your imagination to visualize what was there before the Spanish destroyed them to erase their “pagan” symbolism.

It was interesting to hear though how some of the Inca traditions were blended in with Catholicism to try encourage the native people to participate in the church. The guide for our Rainbow Mountain hike and the guide for our Sacred Valley hike both talked a lot about the Incan beliefs, Incan society and social structure and the impacts the European invasions had. We picked up some interesting perspective on Incan and Peruvian history along the way!

And again, some photos …

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Our last stop was in Chinchero where there are some ruins but what was more interesting was a communal weaving and artisans cooperative. The women working there, though the real weaving and tinting of alpaca wool is done in their homes, showed us how they clean the alpaca, dye it with plant, insect and mineral dyes, and then weave it into pretty amazing textiles. It was well worth the stop.

Today we explored Saqsaywaman and a few other sites closer to home. Saqsaywaman is pronounced like “sexy woman”. We took a cab up to the top of a series of ruins high above Cusco then walked back down into town. About a 7 and a half mile walk but all downhill – over 1,500 feet of downhill. Once we got down to Saqsaywaman, we connected with a guide giving tours in the area and were very pleased that we were able to interact with, and understand, her tour which was entirely in Spanish. We’ve found with the guides that while they can do their thing in English, they would prefer not to. Having all these interactions in Spanish has helped us move our Spanish conversational abilities along quite nicely!

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As we were walking back into Cusco, I saw this painting, over a door along the road, of Pachamama, Mother Earth, who was one of the 3 principal Inca gods. This painting seemed a fitting bookend to a nice day immersed in the ancient world of the Incas.