End of the Year: Pt. 2 - Up the Urubamba

Dawn, again, in Cuzco. Up at five am, out by six, Sarah, Andrew, and I set out on the grand tour of all the major Incan sites outside of town, up the Sacred Valley, almost all the way to Macchu Picchu. In the ensuing twelve hours, I saw so many rocks, so precisely stacked, so artfully engineered, it is almost inconceivable. Grabbing my rain slicker and my camera, we stumbled out the door.

Our tour guide was a very pleasant woman named Katie (?) who was the cousin of Andrew's roommate Jose. Her driver - and I didn't learn this until much later - was also Jose's cousin, but that he had never met Katie. [Such are the demographics of the Andes.] A simple, quiet man, he napped in his taxi while we walked around.

We were up early enough to arrive at Sacsaywaman before the control agents did, so we got in for free. In many ways, Sacsaywaman (go ahead, pronounce it like a gringo: "sexy woman") is just as impressive as anything else the Incans built; the stones here are larger, expertly joined, and perfectly finished. The imposing temple fortress of the city of Cuzco, Sacsaywaman towers over the valley as the 'head' on Cuzco's puma cityplan. As was explained to me repeatedly, the Incas had symbols for their three worlds: the condor (for the world of the gods) the puma (for the earth where we live) and the serpent (for the underworld of the soul.) Cuzco, as the center of the world, was designed - literally - to resemble a puma. To be fair, Modernism's response, on the other side of the continent, was to shape Brasilia like a jet airplane.
From the top of the mountain, Cuzco looks lost in time. No building is more than four stories, billboards are discouraged, and all foreign chains have been banned. Every roof shares a ubiquitous red tile - if they have a proper roof at all - and a dirtying attempt at whitewash. As much as I dislike the forces of capitalistic change, of creative destruction, there is something melancholy in a stagnant landscape, in a living museum that's already dead.

{Interesting side note about preservation: Sacsaywaman has a huge Incan festival in late June featuring thousands of dancers and such dancing and such. All the gringos pay big money to sit on the main field, while Peruvians used to be able to picnic on the temples themselves, looking down on the festivities. About five years ago, after years of Peruvians leaving all sorts of Coca-Cola bottles and sandwich wrappers, the park got fed up with cleaning up all the litter, and banned everyone from the temples. Such a globalist irony: tourists enraptured with native ritual, while actual natives are banned for their tourist behavior. Take that, Thomas Friedman!}

Heading up the mountains, we stopped at a holy fountain of Tambomachay. Pretty much everything in Incan architecture is made up of twos and threes. The dualities of the universe are, in order, man/woman, black/white, and convex/concave. Anything in three means the condor/puma/serpent are coming for you. Anyway, girls: if you drink the water you'll have twins. One will probably be convex.
After a little trip around a bend, we came upon the vast and lush Sacred Valley, a fraying green checkered tie around the otherwise rock-strewn Andes. A huge variety of corns and potatoes grow in the shadow of the valley, varying plot to plot, up the hillside, onward past ruins, to the edge of the jungle itself. We stopped at a curve in the mountain road; on the other side of the valley, dozens of abandoned Incan terraces cling to the cliffside, disused for whatever reason, certainly not by law.

We descended the mountain to reach the village of Pisac, the local market town, before venturing up the other side to the archeological park, also known as Pisac, home to more Incan cleverness. We hiked around, across parts of the Inca Trail, over some rocks, around some terraces, up a hill, down a hill, past a throne, and generally without direction. It was bright and clear, and I was carrying my rain jacket. Pisac is very impressive, like a miniature version of Machu Picchu, but by the time we left the tourists had started arriving. Many of them (Italians mostly, though with a blonde in Viking braids) were not happy hiking up the hill. I wasn't happy, Andrew wasn't happy and Sarah dragged behind us all. We roused our driver and headed back to Pisac.

I should mention a typical exchange in the Pisac market:
Obvious tourist to a Peruvian giving her a necklace and change: Gracias, es muy bonita.....hey, wait, I gave you a hundred! Hey!
We just kept walking. Typical.
After a trucha menu and an afternoon rainstorm, we were on the move again, up the valley to Ollantaytambo, high water mark of the Conquista. Only reachable by hundreds of stairs, Ollantaytambo is an imposing mountain fortress with clear views all across the valley; not surprisingly, it was taken without a fight. Manco Inca had retreated from the Sacred Valley to Vilcabamba in the jungle to wage his futile guerrilla war, leaving Ollantaytambo for Pizarro and his armies. Pizarro, content enough with his success, never pursued past Ollanataytambo leaving the other sites to get covered by the jungle. But more on the Indiana Jones stuff later.
If Machu Picchu is a condor, and Cuzco is a puma, then Ollantaytambo is a llama, complete with nuzzling baby llama, set onto the mountainside. The site overlooks a sacred mountain, so sacred the Incas dragged two-ton stones across the valley to construct the buildings, or at least half-complete them. On our way out of town, Andrew and I debated how much it would cost to buy every building in the village.
As the sun began to set we arrived in Chinchero, a middle-of-nowhere town perched on the far side of the mountains at the beginning of the great high desert plains. Though very small, the city boasts an unbelievable church and altar, even as opulent churches and altars go. The entire wood roof of the building, as well as the supporting columns, are covered in intricate Arabesque flowers and vines, painted in natural dyes in the 1600s. The altar, which protects one of four Black Jesus relics in Peru, is all glittering with silver and gold, done in the style of the Cuzco school, the blend of indigenous and European art from the Peruvian Andes of the 17th Century. (No cameras allowed.)

We also encountered our favorite ambulante, a sweet little girl hawking hats:

Girl: Miss, Miss, hats one sol!
Sarah: One sol! Really!
Girl: Yes...one sol...noooo, and four more.
Sarah: No gracias.

Three hours later, Andrew, Sarah, and I meet up with Jeff at a Bolivian empenada stand in el centro. They are delicious, better than those of other South American nations, because the empenada is filled with such juiciness, it just runs down your chin. I fall asleep almost immediately, preparing myself for another 5am wakeup call. Macchu Picchu awaits, on the last day of the year.
(They were singing. Look at me, I'm a Let's Go photographer.)