Pisac, PE

Day 2

Yesterday afternoon’s rain returned at night, and was visiting yet again when we woke up at 5:15am. Our plan for the day had been to get out early to do a hike through the extensive Pisac archeological site above the town, so thankfully by the time we had finished breakfast and gotten ready to go, it had stopped and remained dry for the rest of our time outdoors.

While the precipitation fell as rain down at our (9800 ft.) level, a couple mountaintops had a new coating of snow that wasn’t there yesterday (and would vanish after several hours in the day’s sun).

The “normal” way to visit the Pisac site is to take a vehicle (frequently from Cusco, but sometimes just from Pisac town) to drive you up to the far end of the site (1.2 miles north, 1400 ft. up), walk around to see some of the terraces and buildings, and then return to the parking lot. The “adventure” way is to take a vehicle from Pisac town to that far end, and then hike back (mostly) downhill to town, seeing much more of the site along the way. The “Neil & Rett Adventure” way is to hike up and back, taking a different route each way, allowing us to see more than almost everyone (and costing us zero money, since the site is included in our already-purchased “Boleto Turistico”).

A half-mile walk brought us from our AirBNB, through town, and up a steep sloping street that eventually turns into the south entrance of the site. Part of our goal was to complete the hike to the far end before too many vehicle-driven tourists showed up there, and I thought we’d be early enough that we wouldn’t even need to show our tickets, but it looked like the ticket taker had just emerged from his residence as we came by, and I think that he was just as annoyed as we were that he had “caught” us, and thus had to put us through the process of entering our information in his log book (which he first needed to dig up from a stack). If we had been two seconds faster completing our morning ablutions, or he two seconds slower completing his, we all could have saved ourselves 2 minutes!

The route took us steeply upward on the nose of the ridge that the site was built on, and with the rocky steps and slopes of the trail still wet from the recently-passed rain, it’s a good thing we were climbing rather than descending. We didn’t encounter anyone but trail workers until we reached the far end of the site.

A terrace-arrangement we haven’t seen yet, directly facing each other across a narrow stream. Which provides more evidence of how stupid the “agricultural research” theory of Moray is! How are the circular terraces there substantially different than this arrangement, which no one claims is for “research”?

A bird’s-eye view to one of Pisac’s narrow streets, barely wide enough for a car. The lines (and diamonds at each intersection) are drainage channels.

The trail took us straight up the near-vertical mountain rising above the north side of the Sacred Valley. At this point the trail runs flat for a bit atop one of the terraces.

Another snow-covered mountain is revealed as we cross the nose of the ridge, though it might be a bit more permanent on that one. Here it seems like roofs have been added to protect the adobe ruins from (further) decay.

A few roughly-parallel trails run north-south through the site (though at significantly-varying elevations!), and we took the easternmost trail north, partly because it had the fewest things to see along the route, which would allow us to get to the popular end of the site faster. But our first real stop, at “Old Town” (Pisaqa) turned out to be not just Rett’s favorite section of Pisac, but perhaps of any Inca ruins we have seen so far. The main unique feature was a long curving “hallway” running through the middle of the “town”, with the stone walls rising 15-20 feet high on either side of us. In that way, it was actually quite similar to the streets of the modern town, so perhaps that feeling is what really instilled the truth that “people really lived here!” in a way we haven’t quite felt their ghosts anywhere else (and of course us and the ghosts being the only ones at the site helped too).

Rett exiting one of the “buildings” to the evocative central “hallway” of Old Town.

The smooth gentle curve of the tall “hallway” wall indicates that “Old Town” was built with some artistry and not just thrown together.

While plants growing on stone sometimes feel like an indicator of decay, here in Old Town they brought a time-traveling vision of light and brightness that might have hinted at the feeling of this place when people lived here.

Old Town sits on the top step of the most extensive set of terraces we’ve ever seen.

For some reason these terraces were built with (by far!) the highest density of embedded stairs we’ve seen.

These terraces run continuously from Old Town all the way down to the river, nearly 70 steps descending 500-600 feet, easily the tallest staircase we’ve seen. Again, a reminder that everyone believes some idiot’s theory that the mere 12-step/100-foot-deep circular terraces at Moray were for agricultural research because “microclimates” of the different elevations enabled experimentation; when 30 miles away there are terraces with 5-6 times the elevation/temperature difference!!

Rett shows that even if there were no Inca ruins here, it would still be a pretty good hike.

Continuing north, we found our way to the base of the iconic arced terraces that are the biggest feature most visitors to the site see, though they arrive at the top, so we zig-zagged up a little-used trail on their north end to get to the same vantage point. Suddenly there were other people around, but like the other non-Machu Picchu sites we’ve visited, not really enough to be annoying. That’s where we turned south and explored the hilltop labyrinth of the “Military Zone”. It’s the densest pile of buildings and passages we’ve encountered so far, and really had the feel of the rising concentric rings of Minas Tirith (even though it looked more like Edoras).

Huh, the bokeh realy makes that rocky mountaintop look like it’s topped with some sort of castle.

Oh, that’s because it *is* topped with some sort of castle!

Rett enters the castle, through another “Sun Gate”.

Yet another snow-capped mountain, and a wall with an unusually high window.

If there ever were “military” here in this “Military Zone” (I haven’t checked to see how tenuously the place has been named), they have long since been chased out by the alpacas!

Eowyn stands on the wall of Edoras, watching for the arrival of Aragorn, with the White Mountains behind (the “modern” thatched roofs really give Pisac the Edoras-feeling that we haven’t gotten elsewhere).

A super-narrow stairway, in front of a super-wide “stairway”.

The chaotic jumble of the buildings in the “Military Zone” contrast with the smooth elegant geometry of the terraces.

From this angle the slope looks so steep, you almost expect the terraces to break loose and start sliding down!

Continuing south from the “Military Zone” meant that we left nearly everyone else behind, ascended even higher up the ridge to a viewpoint, and then down through a tight cave passage (that literally would have stopped people of a certain size) on to the Intihuatana area, which the Incas clearly intended to be the highlight of the site, even if relatively-few visitors make their way out to it today.

The rain is definitely gone, and the second sun halo of the last few days is shining down on us.

Across the gorge from the ridge that most of the Pisac site is built on, there are clearly some other structures built into natural caves on the cliff wall, like a mini-Mesa Verde. Inca? Earlier? Later? Who knows! A bridge crossed the gorge, and connected to roads and a school not far away, and I got the impression that some of the people walking through the Pisac site were locals just using it as the shortest route to where they needed to go!

A large but unnamed structure, just one of many you “discover” as you walk the ridge, which really gives Pisac more of a “civilization” feel than the tightly-organized “estate” of Machu Picchu.

A view down to the Intihuatana, an important natural stone protected by the rock walls.

The buildings around the Intihuatana indicated how important the dark rock was, because they featured the finest stonework we’ve seen (exceeding even (what we saw at) Machu Picchu), and this one Rett is standing in was the finest of them all.

As mind-boggling as the stonework is on many Inca constructions, this building took it to a whole new level. It’s nothing ostentatious, but it just exuded a perfection in every line, including an unmatched level of planarity on this (intentionally) angled wall.

Another example of perfectly-straight (yet angled) lines.

I sort of expect the walls to taper away from you on the inside the same way they do on the outside (essentially forming a pyramid cross-section), but the cleanliness of the lines here highlights the wrongness of that expectation more clearly than any other buildings have. So smooth and regular were the constructed surfaces, that my speaking voice produced a mild echo, not heard at any other Inca site.

Evidence that we aren’t looking at ruins untouched since the Incas vanished 500 years ago. I think this was mostly surface cleaning (other buildings were much more lichen-covered), but I don’t know how much “repair” they do too.

Another view of Old Town.

Approaching the tower-guarded storehouses, where we struggled but eventually succeeded to find a shady place to sit down and eat lunch.

Beginning the final steep descent to town (thankfully with the stones 95% dry by now), here on a human-scale staircase squeezed between the giant-stairs of the terraces.

Our big hike to the Sun Gate over Ollantaytambo is what made it seem entirely reasonable to do two or three times more exploration of Pisac than most visitors do. But the 4.4 miles that I had routed out in RideWithGPS turned into 6.1 miles, partly because I hadn’t drawn paths through each building that we explored, but moreso because even as good as the map is at showing the switchbacks on the trail, it still didn’t know about all of them. Still, we’d be able to make it back to our AirBNB by noon, proving that the own-power loop was definitely the right choice.

As we descended, I was surprised to see a few people coming up from town the same way we had, so maybe we aren’t the only super-adventurers? We also encountered a couple local women (one 20, one 70) separately trying to sell us woven bracelets, which I thought was a terrible business decision, hiking all the way up to a random spot on this trail with barely any traffic. But then Rett pointed out that they were likely heading for the main tourist entrance at the opposite end of the site, and had just paused when they saw us to see if they could make a sale on their way. So instead it’s an incredible example of the hard-working women of Peru (especially the old one!), committing to a challenging 5-mile round-trip hike to sell their wares!

Hey, this couple (outside the town’s Artisan Market) stole our photo pose!

Day 3

Pisac really is the expat-hippie town that it’s advertised as, and today was our chance to really explore that side. It felt very much like Todos Santos in Baja, Mexico. And to me, it just felt weird. Even though Ollantaytambo acclimated us to seeing white people everywhere, seeing those white people taking up residence is something quite different than seeing them just pass through on a tour to Machu Picchu. Hippie culture has never really been my thing, so seeing them all accumulate here and displace the native culture made it doubly-uncomfortable. But, I’m hypocritical enough to still take advantage of that cultural takeover, by picking a place where I could get a burrito for lunch (and Rett a grilled cheese), and then Indian(!) for dinner. I’m curious what the locals think of the stringy-haired women sitting at the cafe with a bare foot up on their chair and their knee pulled into their chest, while sipping their coffee and working on their laptop. Is it still “these strange gringos!”, like we’ve felt in many places in Peru, or has the Western culture been here so long that it’s all just “normal” and integrated now?

“SolSeed – School & Cafe”, where the six keywords Google selects from its reviews are “community”, “workshops”, “atmosphere”, “smoothie”, “vegan”, and “gluten free”. Makes me think it might be these people who created the “Sacred Valley” moniker!

Enjoying our hippie lunch in a hippie cafe, with a “loiter as you like” atmosphere we’ve never felt in Peru (not that we’ve ever been hustled out of a restaurant).

Samosas, and a mango lassi, in Peru! It certainly wasn’t the greatest Indian food in the world, but a chance at a new style of food meant that even “passable” tasted amazing!

Day 2

Day 3

Comments

Leave a Reply Cancel reply