The reality was rather different. As you'll recall from my last post, I'd had to slog through four hours of driving rain, mud, and the occasional stray dog attack, and by the time I arrived to Milhouse Hostel, my home for the week in the historic center of Cusco, I was a mess. The waterproofing liner in my jacket had miraculously kept my upper half dry, but everything else was soaking wet, my boots and pants were covered in a fine coating of red dirt, and my side bags were thickly covered with the same. The hostel staff actually wouldn't let me into the room until I'd sprayed and scrubbed all the dirt off my bags and boots, and after ensuring I wouldn't make my surroundings any messier than I was, I was finally able to strip off my soaked gear, warm up with a thorough shower, and let myself relax a bit. There was still the question of where to store the bike, as I didn't like my chances of leaving it parked on Cusco's busy streets and finding it in the same place or condition the next morning, but fortunately the hostel staff welcomed the idea of me parking it in the large, covered courtyard. Getting the heavy Honda up the steep entryway stairs was an ordeal that nearly ended in disaster and made a great deal of noise, but the Twin and I were soon both situated. Milhouse is one of several hostels built into converted monasteries in the historic center of Cusco, and it was easily one of the nicest places I'd stayed in to date, with two large courtyards/common areas, very nice beds that actually offered some privacy, and a fully stocked 3rd-floor restaurant and bar.
After situating myself and laying every piece of my gear and clothing out by the windows to dry, I met two of the people who would become one of the best parts of my time in Cusco. Phil was a freelance writer from Cleveland who'd been hopping around Latin America for a few months, with a week or so already spent in Cusco. Anita was a periodista from Buenos Aires on one of her lifelong dream trips, who'd arrived around the same time I had. The three of us hit it off immediately, and I was happy to take Phil's advice on places to see around the area. We decided to keep talking over dinner, where we met up with more friends of Phil's: Ruben and Diana, a couple from New Mexico, and Jenn, a diplomatic worker from Washington whose story of being stuck in the La Paz, Bolivia airport for three days amid a nationwide political crisis had me reconsidering my plans to detour there on my way to Santiago. Falling in with five other kindred traveling spirits had me feeling immediately at home in Cusco, and having three months of my own travel stories to share didn't hurt.
After sleeping like a rock, I woke up early for Milhouse's very good included breakfast. While I was eager to explore as many of the iconic ruins surrounding the city as I could, I had to acknowledge that even after a good night's sleep, my legs were sore and I was very much still feeling the five-day ringer I'd put myself through to get here. Consequently, I decided to stay local and explore the markets and old city, joined by Phil and Anita. First order of business: touristy sweaters, and the crusade I'd been on to find a nice Alpaca wool hat since my old Ecuadorian one was stolen all the way back in 2011. Mission accomplished on both counts.
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| A much later photo of my Cusco tourist sweater |
Cusco's sprawling markets are an experience unto themselves; while many of the kiosks are full of mass-manufactured clothing of the sort I'm wearing in the photo above, there's plenty of local art, crafts, and food to peruse. Most of it was fairly inexpensive, particularly the food; the tasty milanesa de pollo I ordered from one of the open-air stands ran me just five soles, the equivalent of about $1.60 US.
After taking in our fill of the markets, we continued on to explore more of the historic center of Cusco. First constructed in the 1100s and occupied by the Incas from the early 1300's as the seat of their wide-ranging empire, nearly every street and alleyway in the old city radiates history. Spanish forces under Francisco Pizarro invaded Cusco in 1533, following the battle of Cajamarca and the infamous capture, ransom, and subsequent execution of the Incan king Atahualpa, and set about ransacking the city and razing as many of the Incan structures as possible. There was only one problem: they couldn't knock them down. While the smaller buildings and upper structures fell, the Incan foundations remained steadfastly undisturbed, and remain more or less in place to this day, though many of the structures built on top of them have been demolished by earthquakes in the intervening years. Archaeologists still haven't fully figured out how the Incas managed to quarry and move the enormous stones, both in Cusco and in many of the surrounding ruins throughout the Peruvian Andes. While many of the colonial Spanish-style buildings and their distinctive balconies surrounding the central plaza have been rebuilt since the last major earthquake, their underpinnings are still quite apparent.
After a day spent exploring the old city, I rejoined my newfound friends from the previous evening for dinner back at Milhouse, where we spent the rest of the night playing pool and swapping more stories before turning in for the night.
The next day had me back to solo exploring; the group I'd fallen in with either had trips arranged already (some to Machu Picchu), or had work to do, so I hatched a plan based on an article I'd read earlier in the trip about the ruins within a day's drive of Cusco. The main highway leading north from the city winds past four major Incan ruins, and while I could have made short work of it on the bike, I had other ideas; part of the famous Inca Trail winds between all four on the way into Cusco, and from my cursory research, seemed like an excellent day hike. A half-hour colectivo ride later, and I was at the gate of the Tambomachay ruins.
A quick note about admission to the historic sites around Cusco: the city government sells a boleto turistico that grants admission to most of the museums in the city, as well as nearly all of the surrounding ruins except for Machu Picchu. It costs 70 soles (approximately $23) for a one-day pass, or 110 soles (about $40) for a 10-day. I wildly and foolishly overestimated how much I could see in a day, bought the one-day pass at first, and ended up having to buy another the next day. Don't do what I did.
One of the better-preserved ruins in the area, Tambomachay was something like a spa for the nobility; natural springs feed a network of open-air baths and showers via aqueducts that are still functional to this day, with trails and terraced hills leading to a refuge in the hills above the springs. "Ruins" almost doesn't feel appropriate; Tambomachay is so well-preserved that other than the overgrown grass and a few broken stones, you'd almost think it was still in use today.
The second of the four ruins I planned on visiting, Pukapukara, was just across the road. A small military fortress/outpost, it was thought to have guarded the main trade route leading into Cusco from the north, now the main highway I'd just come up. The site was fairly small, but the view up the valley it overlooks was incredible.
After my short exploration of Pukapukara and a quick stop for lunch, I got off the roadway and into the "real" part of my trek. I'd found an article by a couple of backpackers detailing a scenic hike that would eventually get me onto a little-used portion of the Inca trail, but not without traversing a bit of farmland and hopping a few creeks. Things went according to plan...right up until I got lost. The trail I was following through the valley leading down to Cusco had started out as a well-worn path that I had expected to lead me down to the old Incan road, but quickly petered out into thick brush grazed by sheep. After some thrashing around in the brush, I came to a ridge overlooking the valley and saw the path I'd been looking for - around 1,000 feet below where I was standing. Crap.
Getting down there was something of a comedy of errors; in places, I was able to walk easily along paths trod by the sheep and goats that grazed the mountain sides, but in other parts, I'd have been better off hacking my way through with the machete I'd carried on the bike. At one point, I stumbled onto a pair of sheepdogs who were none too happy with my proximity to their livestock, and rather than continue on the path and likely get attacked, I instead elected to climb straight down the rock face beneath me, around 30 feet to another path I could see below, silently thanking myself for the afternoons I'd spent at one of the climbing gyms in Nashville.
After managing not to break my legs, I made it down to my intended path, enjoying the view the entire time. Even in this fairly rural area, the marks left by the Incas on the terrain were readily apparent, whether it was the well-preserved terraced farms, the stone wall bordering the path I was walking, or the tiny stone channels directing water underneath my feet. With no one else around, and hardly any signs of the modern world visible, it was easy to let my mind slip back six or seven hundred years to the days when this was a well-traveled highway. After another half hour of hiking, I came upon an overgrown ruin not unlike the Aztec and Mayan pyramids I'd seen in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras; this was the Temple of the Moon, one of the little-known sites in the area. Still under excavation, it's thought to have been a sacrificial and ceremonial site, and is surrounded by rock formations thought to have been the source from which the stones that formed much of Cusco were quarried. The only obvious entrance was cordoned off, so my exploration was limited to one lap around the temple and a few photos before continuing onward.
Not much further on, the trail faded out as I returned to civilization, ending at the third major ruin on my trek, Q'enko. One of the largest huacas, or Incan holy sites, in the region, Q'enko is based on a large, mostly circular natural formation, crisscrossed with water channels, subterranean passages, rooms, and even a small amphitheater carved out of the rock. Evidence of ritual mummification and burials, along with a number of carved monoliths surrounding the site, points to Q'enko having been a site of great religious significance. Walking, and occasionally crawling around underneath the massive rocks felt like I was peeking in on something secret, and even in these tight spaces subject to centuries of wear and tear, the attention to detail paid by the Incas was marvelous.
Having returned to the modern, paved highway I'd started on, I walked the final few kilometers towards the last, and largest ruin on my trek, Sacsayhuaman (you'll see this spelled many different ways). Located at the top of a hill looking down into the center of Cusco, the enormous stone fortress served both a ceremonial function as the site of large-scale communal rituals, and a military one, as the site of much of the fighting during Pizarro's siege of Cusco. While much of the original complex, once an entire town unto itself, was torn down during the Spanish occupation, the main plaza and much of the surrounding structure remains, and it is nothing if not impressive. The engineering and stoneworking prowess of the Incas is on full display, and more than 600 years after Sacsayhuaman was first constructed, the enormous stones forming its remaining walls are still so tightly fit that a piece of paper won't fit in the gaps. Little more than overgrown rubble remains of much of the complex, but it is still easy to imagine how awe-inspiring Sacsayhuaman must have been in its heyday.
With a gorgeous sunset at my back, I walked the final few kilometers down into the center of Cusco, already feeling at home in a small way on the cobblestone streets. I met back up once again with Phil, Ruben, and Diana, the nucleus of what Phil called our Cusco Crew, and despite my sore legs and general fatigue from hiking all day, I wasn't going to turn down another night spent playing games and making friends.
Still slightly sore, I allowed myself a little extra sleep the next morning before wrangling the bike out of the hostel's front entrance and setting off on the road north out of town. My destinations for the day were the ancient cities of Pisac and Ollantaytambo, two of the largest ruins of the Sacred Valley, which runs from Pisac nearly 100 km west to Machu Picchu. While it had rained some part of the two previous days I'd spent in Cusco, I was greeted with perfect weather as I made my way into the valley. The highway wound up and around the side of one of the many mountains surrounding Cusco, and made for spectacular views the whole way.
After around 40 minutes of riding, I arrived in Pisac; the ruins sit on top of and around a small mountain, which would have been a difficult hike all on its own if I hadn't had the bike. Once through the entrance, I was greeted by one of the largest and most complete Incan ruins in all of Peru. Constructed in the early 1400's as a combination military fortress, retreat for nobility, ceremonial site, and agricultural center, the colossal city spans over four square kilometers, and from a visitor's perspective, seems to go on forever. The route through Pisac begins in the ancient fortress, along with structures similar to the baths at Tambomachay, which likely served the same function and were fed by aqueducts that have since run dry. The path continues along the north side of the mountain on which much of the city sits, at times skirting the very edge of a canyon. Hundreds of holes are visible on the opposite canyon wall, grave sites carved into the rock and containing the final resting places of over 3,500 nobility and residents of Pisac. After around an hour of hiking past more buildings and through a 50-foot tunnel carved straight through solid rock, I came to the highest point of the city, a crumbling watchtower built at the peak of the hill on which Pisac sits, and stopped to enjoy the breathtaking view of the Sacred Valley laid out below.
I wasn't even close to finished exploring, though. Continuing downward and onward from the watchtower, I soon found myself in the temple complex of Pisac. A group of very well-preserved buildings, the centerpiece of this area is a large D-shaped temple and stone altar (easier to pick out from above). The altar, carved from pink granite, is one of the few remaining intihuatanas, Quechua for the sundials the Incas used to track the seasons, and aligns with the path of the sun on the summer solstice. Another can be found at Ollantaytambo, and a third at Machu Picchu.
Continuing on from the temple, the hiking path zigzagged down the mountain, briefly making me think I'd seen all of the buildings, until I rounded another curve and found the "urban" residential part of Pisac below. Almost certainly the place where the majority of the city's permanent residents lived, this could almost have been one of the small rural communities I'd ridden through on my trek to Cusco, except that all the roofs were long gone, the floors were overgrown with grass, and there were no people. The buildings in this area displayed a distinctly different construction from those of the temple complex, built of rough stones and mortar over the classic square-block Inca foundations. Wandering the "streets" between what were almost certainly former houses, I could once again imagine myself a few hundred years in the past, when the city must have thrived.
At this point, I was heading back towards the main fortress and entrance, but not before traversing the largest of Pisac's incredible features: the terraces. Whether intended to make Pisac a self-sufficient fortress in the event of an attack by one of the many societies the Incas conquered, or to provide food for Cusco and the other neighboring settlements, the city is surrounded on almost every side by enormous stepped terraces extending nearly all the way down the mountain like a massive staircase. One of the most incredible accomplishments of the Incan Empire, the ability to farm crops on a large scale in a high-altitude, mountainous, and otherwise inhospitable environment allowed for large-scale, permanent settlements like the ones I'd been touring for the past day and a half. While I'd seen terraced fields all over the Peruvian Andes, many of which had almost certainly been in continuous use since the time of the Incas, the terraces at Pisac were built to a mind-boggling scale that was difficult to capture in photos. While the act of walking across flat ground was mundane on the face of it, doing so on top of an ancient piece of civil engineering took on a whole other meaning. Such details as stone stairs jutting out from the walls of the terraces and stone irrigation channels running across and between levels showed the attention to detail paid by the builders of the site. The effort and manpower it must have taken to move both the rocks that formed the walls of each terrace and the soil in which the Incas grew their crops was not lost on me, either.
After crossing one side of the terraces and finally circling back around to the main fortress, I got back on the bike, headed back down the mountain towards the modern town of Pisac, and rejoined the highway that follows the Urubamba River through the sacred valley towards Ollantaytambo. Another 45 minutes or so to the west, Ollantaytambo was built as the personal retreat of the Inca king Pachacuti, incorporating both an enormous mountainside estate and the surrounding town conquered during the Incas' conquest of the Sacred Valley in the 15th century. During the Spanish conquest, it served as the temporary home of the Incan government-in-exile after the fall of Cusco, holding off Spanish raids for over a year until their eventual retreat to the mountain fortress of Vilcabamba. While urban sprawl has concealed some of Cusco's ancient roots, Ollantaytambo's origins are immediately obvious; the majority of the town rests on a short plateau surrounded by stone and mortar walls, and the main route in and out was laid down by the Incas and persists to this day. Even with long-travel suspension, five hundred years of wear on the mortar and cobblestones meant that my teeth were nearly shaken out of my head by the time I made it into the town itself. While the town of Ollantaytambo does show some Spanish Colonial influence, the vast majority of the buildings, roads, and town fixtures have stayed more or less the same since the 1400's; in fact, Ollantaytambo contains some of the oldest continually inhabited buildings in Latin America, and aqueducts running around and under the roads still carry water. In a region where I already felt as though I was looking into the past, Ollantaytambo had me walking through it.
After taking in our fill of the markets, we continued on to explore more of the historic center of Cusco. First constructed in the 1100s and occupied by the Incas from the early 1300's as the seat of their wide-ranging empire, nearly every street and alleyway in the old city radiates history. Spanish forces under Francisco Pizarro invaded Cusco in 1533, following the battle of Cajamarca and the infamous capture, ransom, and subsequent execution of the Incan king Atahualpa, and set about ransacking the city and razing as many of the Incan structures as possible. There was only one problem: they couldn't knock them down. While the smaller buildings and upper structures fell, the Incan foundations remained steadfastly undisturbed, and remain more or less in place to this day, though many of the structures built on top of them have been demolished by earthquakes in the intervening years. Archaeologists still haven't fully figured out how the Incas managed to quarry and move the enormous stones, both in Cusco and in many of the surrounding ruins throughout the Peruvian Andes. While many of the colonial Spanish-style buildings and their distinctive balconies surrounding the central plaza have been rebuilt since the last major earthquake, their underpinnings are still quite apparent.
After a day spent exploring the old city, I rejoined my newfound friends from the previous evening for dinner back at Milhouse, where we spent the rest of the night playing pool and swapping more stories before turning in for the night.
The next day had me back to solo exploring; the group I'd fallen in with either had trips arranged already (some to Machu Picchu), or had work to do, so I hatched a plan based on an article I'd read earlier in the trip about the ruins within a day's drive of Cusco. The main highway leading north from the city winds past four major Incan ruins, and while I could have made short work of it on the bike, I had other ideas; part of the famous Inca Trail winds between all four on the way into Cusco, and from my cursory research, seemed like an excellent day hike. A half-hour colectivo ride later, and I was at the gate of the Tambomachay ruins.
A quick note about admission to the historic sites around Cusco: the city government sells a boleto turistico that grants admission to most of the museums in the city, as well as nearly all of the surrounding ruins except for Machu Picchu. It costs 70 soles (approximately $23) for a one-day pass, or 110 soles (about $40) for a 10-day. I wildly and foolishly overestimated how much I could see in a day, bought the one-day pass at first, and ended up having to buy another the next day. Don't do what I did.
One of the better-preserved ruins in the area, Tambomachay was something like a spa for the nobility; natural springs feed a network of open-air baths and showers via aqueducts that are still functional to this day, with trails and terraced hills leading to a refuge in the hills above the springs. "Ruins" almost doesn't feel appropriate; Tambomachay is so well-preserved that other than the overgrown grass and a few broken stones, you'd almost think it was still in use today.
The second of the four ruins I planned on visiting, Pukapukara, was just across the road. A small military fortress/outpost, it was thought to have guarded the main trade route leading into Cusco from the north, now the main highway I'd just come up. The site was fairly small, but the view up the valley it overlooks was incredible.
After my short exploration of Pukapukara and a quick stop for lunch, I got off the roadway and into the "real" part of my trek. I'd found an article by a couple of backpackers detailing a scenic hike that would eventually get me onto a little-used portion of the Inca trail, but not without traversing a bit of farmland and hopping a few creeks. Things went according to plan...right up until I got lost. The trail I was following through the valley leading down to Cusco had started out as a well-worn path that I had expected to lead me down to the old Incan road, but quickly petered out into thick brush grazed by sheep. After some thrashing around in the brush, I came to a ridge overlooking the valley and saw the path I'd been looking for - around 1,000 feet below where I was standing. Crap.
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| That little ribbon of grass and stone wall in the middle was my intended route |
Getting down there was something of a comedy of errors; in places, I was able to walk easily along paths trod by the sheep and goats that grazed the mountain sides, but in other parts, I'd have been better off hacking my way through with the machete I'd carried on the bike. At one point, I stumbled onto a pair of sheepdogs who were none too happy with my proximity to their livestock, and rather than continue on the path and likely get attacked, I instead elected to climb straight down the rock face beneath me, around 30 feet to another path I could see below, silently thanking myself for the afternoons I'd spent at one of the climbing gyms in Nashville.
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| Local security wasn't too happy with me |
Not much further on, the trail faded out as I returned to civilization, ending at the third major ruin on my trek, Q'enko. One of the largest huacas, or Incan holy sites, in the region, Q'enko is based on a large, mostly circular natural formation, crisscrossed with water channels, subterranean passages, rooms, and even a small amphitheater carved out of the rock. Evidence of ritual mummification and burials, along with a number of carved monoliths surrounding the site, points to Q'enko having been a site of great religious significance. Walking, and occasionally crawling around underneath the massive rocks felt like I was peeking in on something secret, and even in these tight spaces subject to centuries of wear and tear, the attention to detail paid by the Incas was marvelous.
Having returned to the modern, paved highway I'd started on, I walked the final few kilometers towards the last, and largest ruin on my trek, Sacsayhuaman (you'll see this spelled many different ways). Located at the top of a hill looking down into the center of Cusco, the enormous stone fortress served both a ceremonial function as the site of large-scale communal rituals, and a military one, as the site of much of the fighting during Pizarro's siege of Cusco. While much of the original complex, once an entire town unto itself, was torn down during the Spanish occupation, the main plaza and much of the surrounding structure remains, and it is nothing if not impressive. The engineering and stoneworking prowess of the Incas is on full display, and more than 600 years after Sacsayhuaman was first constructed, the enormous stones forming its remaining walls are still so tightly fit that a piece of paper won't fit in the gaps. Little more than overgrown rubble remains of much of the complex, but it is still easy to imagine how awe-inspiring Sacsayhuaman must have been in its heyday.
With a gorgeous sunset at my back, I walked the final few kilometers down into the center of Cusco, already feeling at home in a small way on the cobblestone streets. I met back up once again with Phil, Ruben, and Diana, the nucleus of what Phil called our Cusco Crew, and despite my sore legs and general fatigue from hiking all day, I wasn't going to turn down another night spent playing games and making friends.
Still slightly sore, I allowed myself a little extra sleep the next morning before wrangling the bike out of the hostel's front entrance and setting off on the road north out of town. My destinations for the day were the ancient cities of Pisac and Ollantaytambo, two of the largest ruins of the Sacred Valley, which runs from Pisac nearly 100 km west to Machu Picchu. While it had rained some part of the two previous days I'd spent in Cusco, I was greeted with perfect weather as I made my way into the valley. The highway wound up and around the side of one of the many mountains surrounding Cusco, and made for spectacular views the whole way.
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| This 50-foot tunnel connects the highest reaches of Pisac to the larger fortress below. It is barely wide enough for one person to fit through, and archaeologists still haven't entirely figured out how it was made |
I wasn't even close to finished exploring, though. Continuing downward and onward from the watchtower, I soon found myself in the temple complex of Pisac. A group of very well-preserved buildings, the centerpiece of this area is a large D-shaped temple and stone altar (easier to pick out from above). The altar, carved from pink granite, is one of the few remaining intihuatanas, Quechua for the sundials the Incas used to track the seasons, and aligns with the path of the sun on the summer solstice. Another can be found at Ollantaytambo, and a third at Machu Picchu.
Continuing on from the temple, the hiking path zigzagged down the mountain, briefly making me think I'd seen all of the buildings, until I rounded another curve and found the "urban" residential part of Pisac below. Almost certainly the place where the majority of the city's permanent residents lived, this could almost have been one of the small rural communities I'd ridden through on my trek to Cusco, except that all the roofs were long gone, the floors were overgrown with grass, and there were no people. The buildings in this area displayed a distinctly different construction from those of the temple complex, built of rough stones and mortar over the classic square-block Inca foundations. Wandering the "streets" between what were almost certainly former houses, I could once again imagine myself a few hundred years in the past, when the city must have thrived.
At this point, I was heading back towards the main fortress and entrance, but not before traversing the largest of Pisac's incredible features: the terraces. Whether intended to make Pisac a self-sufficient fortress in the event of an attack by one of the many societies the Incas conquered, or to provide food for Cusco and the other neighboring settlements, the city is surrounded on almost every side by enormous stepped terraces extending nearly all the way down the mountain like a massive staircase. One of the most incredible accomplishments of the Incan Empire, the ability to farm crops on a large scale in a high-altitude, mountainous, and otherwise inhospitable environment allowed for large-scale, permanent settlements like the ones I'd been touring for the past day and a half. While I'd seen terraced fields all over the Peruvian Andes, many of which had almost certainly been in continuous use since the time of the Incas, the terraces at Pisac were built to a mind-boggling scale that was difficult to capture in photos. While the act of walking across flat ground was mundane on the face of it, doing so on top of an ancient piece of civil engineering took on a whole other meaning. Such details as stone stairs jutting out from the walls of the terraces and stone irrigation channels running across and between levels showed the attention to detail paid by the builders of the site. The effort and manpower it must have taken to move both the rocks that formed the walls of each terrace and the soil in which the Incas grew their crops was not lost on me, either.
After crossing one side of the terraces and finally circling back around to the main fortress, I got back on the bike, headed back down the mountain towards the modern town of Pisac, and rejoined the highway that follows the Urubamba River through the sacred valley towards Ollantaytambo. Another 45 minutes or so to the west, Ollantaytambo was built as the personal retreat of the Inca king Pachacuti, incorporating both an enormous mountainside estate and the surrounding town conquered during the Incas' conquest of the Sacred Valley in the 15th century. During the Spanish conquest, it served as the temporary home of the Incan government-in-exile after the fall of Cusco, holding off Spanish raids for over a year until their eventual retreat to the mountain fortress of Vilcabamba. While urban sprawl has concealed some of Cusco's ancient roots, Ollantaytambo's origins are immediately obvious; the majority of the town rests on a short plateau surrounded by stone and mortar walls, and the main route in and out was laid down by the Incas and persists to this day. Even with long-travel suspension, five hundred years of wear on the mortar and cobblestones meant that my teeth were nearly shaken out of my head by the time I made it into the town itself. While the town of Ollantaytambo does show some Spanish Colonial influence, the vast majority of the buildings, roads, and town fixtures have stayed more or less the same since the 1400's; in fact, Ollantaytambo contains some of the oldest continually inhabited buildings in Latin America, and aqueducts running around and under the roads still carry water. In a region where I already felt as though I was looking into the past, Ollantaytambo had me walking through it.
I wasn't just there for the town, though; the skyline of Ollantaytambo, such as it is, is thoroughly dominated by the enormous ruins spanning the mountains and hills overlooking the town. Consisting of a small residence area, a series of spas and baths, a number of agricultural terraces climbing the mountainsides, and a series of fortifications, storehouses, and topped by an elaborate temple complex, the engineering that went into the construction of ancient Ollantaytambo is mind-boggling. Traversing the ruins was difficult at times; the terraces and temple can only be accessed via several hundred steep stairs, and many of the paths showed the effects of centuries of wear and tear. The view over the town, and through the valley below, was one of the most breathtaking I'd seen in all of Peru, already a high bar, and like Pisac earlier in the day, I kept stumbling across small architectural and artistic details that only made the site more impressive, and even found a few broken shards of painted pottery half-buried in the ground. It's hard to find enough superlatives to describe places like this, so I'll let the photos do the rest of the talking for me.
By the time I made it back down the many terraces and steps to the town, the sun was starting to get low in the sky, but I still held out hope that I'd be able to just make it to my third planned destination for the day: Moray, a small archaeological site thought to be a sort of test lab for crop strains grown by the Incans. Unfortunately, having mapped my way there via heretofore trustworthy Google, I found that one of the roads I was being pointed down simply didn't exist, and that the next quickest route would have me there well after nightfall. Having already had a full and fulfilling day, I rode the hour or so back through yet more mountain roads back to Cusco, with a gorgeous sunset at my back.
I arrived back to Cusco just in time to meet my friends for dinner and hostel trivia. It struck me, yet again, how easy it was to feel a sense of belonging in a place so far from where I'd started; the commonality of being travelers in a foreign land broke a barrier between all of us before any words were exchanged, and meant that we were all starting from the same base with each other (though my particular method of travel always had new friends amazed).
The return of the fog and rain the next day kept me mostly inside, but I didn't mind. I had writing to catch up on, and nearly a thousand photos just from the previous week to get into, so I was perfectly content to join Phil and the others at a cozy coffee shop and relax for the morning. While part of me felt the pull to go out and do something with my limited time in Cusco, I hadn't fully relaxed in a couple of weeks, and after a couple of marathon days of exploring every archaeological site I could set feet or wheels on, I didn't mind giving my legs a rest, and passing the day writing, editing photos, and exploring some of the hidden places in Cusco's historic district was a perfect way to do so.
I'm not sure I've ever wanted to leave a place less than I wanted to leave Cusco, but I'd spent an entire week there almost without realizing it, and I'd been given the goal of making it to Santiago by Thanksgiving, which only gave me about two more weeks to finish off my odyssey. I probably could have spent a month there, and I was still harboring a tiny bit of regret for not finding a way to Machu Picchu, but it didn't matter. Even in a season of new and unique experiences, my time in Cusco was a true standout. I'd come away with new, genuine friends, far more history lessons than I expected, and a sense of things greater than myself that I can't entirely describe. I'd experienced a week of magic and insight, and as I rolled the Honda down the hostel's precarious ramp for the last time, I knew it was a week that had changed me.
