More Ruins: Pisac and Ollantaytambo
We’re getting to meet a lot of other travellers here at the yoga center. Most people are friendly and nice, but the majority of them are in large groups on their own agenda. We met some independent travellers from Missoula, MT (a girl our age just finishing her stint in PeaceCorps in Paraguay, her mom and their friend) and hit it off immediately. We went and visited Pisac together and had a blast. Pisac contains more Incan ruins, hence piles of rocks, but these are spread out over numerous hillsides with great views. There’s impressive ceremonial baths, irrigation systems, agricultural terracing, funerary niches, ceremonial centers with very large carved boulders, a marker for a soltice and people trying to sell you stuff. Luckily the hassling only happens the first set of ruins after the entrance (flutes, woven belts, mostly). We had a local offer to be our guide and when we said no thanks, he went crazy, saying we had plenty of money to kill people in Iraq but not to hire him for a guide…..um, not the best way to drum up business. We just wanted to explore and one of our friends had a guidebook that explained it all.
It was a big site and took us a couple of hours to see it all. We hiked back into town, which was a little steep but not too bad. We passed a few waterfalls and the trail went through some terracing. I don’t understand why the locals don’t use this perfectly well made terracing…it’s just all grass and flowers. All the Incan terracing in the hills that I’ve seen is just abandoned. Maybe it’s an ancestor thing…no one gives me a straight answer when I ask. After Pisac, we walked through their market, which is basically all the same artesania stuff that most towns have (alpaca sweaters, flutes, knick knacks, etc). The nice thing about not having a home is that I’m not tempted to buy anything to decorate it with! I also had really yummy chocolate chip cheesecake at Ulrike’s in the plaza (the only good cheesecake I have had in S.A.)
We also visited Ollantaytambo (20 minutos on a local bus for sl.1) a set of ruins near us. Their agricultural terracing is bigger, steeper and more expansive. They have very large boulders as well, houses, ceremonial baths and one section of 5 foot stone walls set up like a maze. At least it felt like a maze to me, I got lost. I think we may be getting ruined out!