Peru - Ollantaytambo and Moray

We caught the bus up to Ollantaytambo in the Inca Sacred Valley of the Urubamba River. The Sacred Valley runs from Cusco up to Machu Picchu.
The journey lasts about 2 1/2hours passing through the rather ugly town of Urubamba, named after the river. The town itself is grim but it sits under mountains and the Veronica Glacier, so we could see a snow capped peak.
Urubamba was apparently, in the 70's, the home of a bohemian set and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards spent time here when Jagger was filming for Werner Herzog in Fitzcarraldo (he never did appear in it as he went on a tour with the Rolling Stones and was not able to keep to the filming schedule).

Mairi had stomach problems and so when we reached Ollantaytambo we took things fairly easily. The bus stopped by the railway station where the line runs up to Agua Calientes and Machu Picchu. We walked down towards the town and the Inca site following a mountain stream
The site is incredibly impressive with Inca terracing ascending to the top of a hill and dominating the town which is laid out in an Inca grid pattern. It was built by Patchacutec and the buildings at the top of the terracing were never finished. On the opposite hill is more terracing and the remains of Inca store houses.

We walked through the tourist market at the foot of the hill and then up through the terracing to the Sun Temple (unfinished) at the top. Here lay huge blocks of hewn and worked stone some of which had carving on. Some of these were laid out as an altar.

The view to the back of the temple was of the hills where the stone was quarried and the Urubamba River flowing towards Machu Picchu

Mairi took it steadily, resting frequently.

Finally we walked around a hanging path on the side of the hill, down through more terraces to the base of the site.

Naomi and I explored the buildings at the bottom, a small temple or observatory and buildings with flowing water which were associated with ritual bathing.

During the Spanish conquest of Peru Ollantaytambo served as a temporary capital for Manco Inca, leader of the native resistance against the conquistadors. He fortified the town and its approaches in the direction of the former Inca capital of Cusco, which had fallen under Spanish domination. In 1536, on the plain of Mascabamba, near Ollantaytambo, Manco Inca defeated a Spanish expedition blocking their advance from a set of high terraces and flooding the plain.Despite his victory,however, Manco Inca did not consider his position tenable so the following year he withdrew to the heavily forested site of Vilcabamba.

We caught the bus back towards Urabamba until the junction with the Maras road. We got of and there was a single taxi waiting at the side of the road. We asked if he could take us to Moray,an Incan agricultural site, and after a little haggling he agreed. His family were sleeping in the car so he turfed them out and we set off.

All the way his fuel indicator was blinking empty. We passed through the dusty small town of Maras and climbed out on smaller and smaller unpaved roads until we got to Moray, an extraordinary terraced agricultural system which looked like an arena. The Incans had built an irrigation system of flowing water from the top of the hill passing through each terrace and the different layers of terracing created micro climates so that a variety of crops could be grown on the different terraces.

The background to this site was the mountains and the Veronica Glacier.

On the way back the driver said he needed petrol - we weren't about to disagree. He stopped by a wooden doorway in Maras and knocked. Eventually a lady opened the door and left it open so we could see her decant some petrol from a large can into a metal jug. She tipped this into the car's tank. We drove on - the taxi still registering empty until we got back to the junction with the main road.

After  a few minutes a bus arrived and we got on. We were entertained all the way back to Cusco by a man wearing a headset mike who was selling vitamin supplements, some extract of quinoa and finally laxatives to the passengers. He had a box of his goods which he distributed and then either took the money for them or collected them up if they weren't wanted. MSD eat your heart out.