Excursions in the Mountains of Peru

                                                       by Jim Goodman

highlands pasture near Chinchero

       While Peru can boast of many distinct ecological zones, the country can be divided into three basic geographical areas.  The east consists of the lowland jungles and rivers of the Amazonian region.  The west coast is mostly desert, with cities and towns sited in the narrow strips of fertile land along the rivers that tumble down from the highlands.  Dividing this very arid region from the lush vegetation of the Amazon River system is the longest mountain range in the world, crossing the borders of six countries--the Andes.  For most travelers, the main attraction in Peru, where they will spend the most time in their journey, will be the mountains. 

       That’s where cities have the most scenic locations; such as Puno, next to Lake Titicaca, Arequipa, very near the volcano El Misti, and Huaraz, in full view of the highest peaks in Peru.  Besides scenery, the Peruvian Andes are also famous for cities associated with the Inca Empire, like Cusco, Cajamarca, Ollantaytambo, Pisac and Machu Picchu.  Moreover, in the mountains travelers can observe the lifestyles of the Native Americans, descendants of the people who were living here long before the Spanish Conquest.

Huascarán, Peru's highest peak

       Three of the five highest mountains in Peru stand just north of Huaraz, 407 km north of Lima, on the Santa River after a slow ascent across a barren, dry set of foothills, with snow peaks towering beyond them.  Huaraz is a small, quiet city at 3091 meters altitude, all but bereft of old buildings, for it had to be completely rebuilt after a devastating earthquake in 1970. 

       The central market square is the most interesting part of town, especially in the mornings, when Indians from nearby villages come to shop.  On a clear day one can easily see the two peaks of Peru’s highest mountain—Huascarán.  The southern peak, the nearer one, rises to 6768 meters (22.205 feet), while the north peak is only slightly smaller, at 6654 meters. 

crafts shop in Chuquibambilla

       Peru’s third highest mountain—Huandoy—reaches 6428 meters.  It stands north of Huascarán, due east of the town of Caraz, 67 km north of Huaraz.   Yet another massif—Alpamayo—is just a little further north.  At 5947 meters, it is the country’s fifth tallest peak.  Huascarán Mountain is a World Heritage Site and national park, containing 296 lagoons and 663 glaciers, offering plenty of hiking and climbing routes, with the bonus of condors flying overhead and wild vicuñas scampering on the slopes.

       For those with more limited time and ambition, a popular day trip is to Llanganuco, an easily accessible picturesque lagoon between Huascarán and Huandoy.  The excursion includes a stop at Yungay, also on the Santa River, directly west of Huascarán, famous as the site of one of the greatest natural disasters to befall the country.

       In 1970 a violent earthquake at Huascarán caused an avalanche that unleashed 80 million cubic feet of ice, mud and rock hurtling down the mountain at speeds of 280-335 km per hour, burying nearly all of Yungay and a nearby village.  About 20,000 people died.  The same number perished in Huaraz that day, as the earthquake demolished 90% of the city.

ruins of the Viracocha Temple in Raqchi

       Earthquakes are a common nemesis in Peru.  The major ones make international headlines, but there are tremors somewhere in the mountains quite regularly.  However, they are not so frequent as to scare off tourists.  Cities like Arequipa, Puno and Cusco host crowds all year round.  And bus journeys through the Andes from Puno to Cusco give travelers a view not only of the majestic scenery, but the lifestyle of its inhabitants, past and present.

       The distance from Puno to Cusco is 380 km, about five and half hours by car. The bus takes longer, for it stops at several places of tourist interest.  The first, 152 km from Puno, is Chuquibambilla, an experimental breeding station for alpacas and vicuñas.  It is also a handicraft production center, full of shops selling locally made textiles, ceramics, stone carvings and silver jewelry.

Quechua woman, Raqchi

village near Ollantaytambo

       Another 50 km further the road comes to La Raya.  At 4335 meters altitude, it is the highest point on the route, with a clear view of Chinboya, a snow peak of 5489 meters height.  From here the road begins a slow descent following the Vilcanota River, which later, as it flows closer to the Inca heartland near Cusco, becomes the Urubamba River.  In contrast to the rather drab, barren landscapes of the route until La Rasa, the scenery turns greener, with more forests on the slopes and long stretches of farms along the river.

the Urubamba River Valley

       The next major stop is Raqchi, 125 km from Cusco, 3475 meters altitude, and the first site on the journey representative of Inca culture.  Raqchi was a major Inca administrative center, featuring a spacious temple to the Creator God Viracocha.  The temple was 92 meters long and 25.5 meters wide, with walls 15 meters high.  It also had the largest roof in the Inca Empire. 

       The Spanish destroyed most of the temple when they conquered the city.  The roof is gone, but sections of three of the walls remain.  The lowest meter or so consists of stone blocks of irregular shape, fitted together to make a solid base resistant to earthquakes, a technique also employed in Cusco and other Inca cities.  The rest of the walls are made of adobe.  Subsidiary buildings, stone storehouses and royal baths lie in the vicinity, along with circular buildings with conical roofs that the Incas used to store corn and quinoa, to distribute in times of shortages.

the rooftops of Cusco

       Raqchi’s other attraction is its inhabitants, predominantly Quechua Indians, descendants of those who lived there in Inca times.  The women dress in the traditional ensemble:  long, bulky black skirt, long-sleeved red jacket, with bands of largely blue appliqué and embroidery on the lower sleeves, lapel and cuffs, and a large, circular, flat hat. 

       The last major stop on the route is at Andahuaylillas, a colonial era village 45 km from Cusco.  A quiet and pretty mountain village, its fame is due to its church.  The Jesuits built it from 1570-1606, deliberately choosing a traditional Inca sacred site.  On the outside it is just a modest village church, with whitewashed walls and a bit of decoration around the entrance.  Step inside and it’s the most spectacular and richly decorated church interior in the country, featuring baroque murals on the walls and a lavish use of gold leaf and silver on the altar, ceilings and rafters.  The furnishings are so valuable that local villagers volunteer for guard shifts 24 hours a day.

woman with her llama in Cusco

village woman in Limatambo

       The final stop is Cusco, the most beautiful city in the mountains and most popular tourist destination in Peru.  It lies in a valley at 3360 meters altitude, surrounded by hills, and is home to 350,000 people.  It is justly renowned for its colonial era churches, plazas and houses with carved wooden balconies.  But traces of its original Inca identity remain in some walls and foundations that feature the interlocking stone boulders Inca architects devised as defense against earthquakes.

the Inca city of Pisac

       Descendants of the Incas still live in villages near Cusco and some live in the city and work in the markets.  Others come to visit or shop, bringing their llamas to carry the goods.  The women dress similarly to those in Raqchi, but wear a smaller hat, also round, but shaped more like an upturned saucer. Indian women in towns north of Cusco also favor this style, but to the east, as in Limatambo, women favor a very different, and mixed, style of hat—derbies, tall top hats, and hats resembling those worn by Canadian mounted police.

       For those who can tear themselves away from the charms of Cusco, the next excursion will be what’s called The Sacred Valley of the Incas.  The route goes northeast of Cusco 32 km to Pisac, 3040 meters, on the river at the point where its name changes from Vilcanota to Urubamba.  The town holds market day on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, largely consisting of stalls selling handicrafts and souvenirs for the tourist crowds. 

the ruins of Pisac

       The town dates its founding to 1570, after the Spanish destroyed the original Inca city on the adjacent mountain.  Residents tend farms along the river, but originally the people constructed a long line of terraces climbing up the mountain, moving topsoil from the lower levels to the higher ones.  The terraces are still there, but too many recent earthquakes have rendered then too unstable to use anymore.

       On the slopes above these terraces, around the mid-15^th century, the Incas built a fortified city.  A road takes visitors up to a point where it’s a short walk on a narrow mountain trail to the biggest set of ruins.  No intact buildings are left, but lots of foundations, walls, streets and gates, plus an extensive palace on a lower spur, indicating that Pisac was an important city back then.

Quechua boys in Ollantaytambo

       From Pisac the road continues along the Urubamba River another 55 km to Ollantaytambo.  Unlike contemporary Pisac, whose inhabitants live far from the historic city, Ollantaytambo was not destroyed and its original layout, of straight streets intersected at right angles, is still intact.  So are the ancient stone terraces flanking the city, though no longer in use.  The mountain next to the town features a huge carving of the head of the god Viracocha, as well as a few temples on the cliff.

       The road up the Urubamba Valley ends here and day-trippers then return to Cusco via Chunchero.  Further up the valley, but only accessible on foot or by train (the usual option), 80 km from Cusco, is Machu Picchu, the fabled Lost City of the Incas.  Starting near Ollantaytambo, the trek takes four to five days.  The early train from Cusco gets there in an hour and a half, but from the station along the Urubamba River one has to take a vehicle up a zigzag road, with a dozen sharp turns, that itself is an engineering achievement.

Machu Picchu in the morniung

       Whether on foot or by road, the entrance is slightly above the ruins, which lie at 2430 meters height, on a flat spur next to the cliffs of Machu Picchu Mountain and its smaller companion Huayna Picchu.  To the Incas who first built the city in the 1440s, the site had obvious security advantages.  The sides were very steep, affording a clear view of anything approaching it.  Access was only by a couple of suspension bridges between mountains, which could be dismantled if necessary.  The mountain behind the city was virtually impassable.  Springs above the city provided the water sources and terraces along the mountainsides grew more than enough food to feed its population.

       Other, more mystical considerations influenced the choice.  To the Incas, the shape of Machu Picchu Mountain resembled a crouching puma.  The hill jutting out slightly from the face of the mountain appeared to have a pair of ears at the top and a snarling mouth below, like the head of the puma.  To make the resemblance even more obvious, Inca stone masons crawled up the mountain and chiseled out of the rock a pair of eyes.     

stairway and water channel, Machu Picchu

valley view from Machu Picchu

       The long spur in front of the mountains seemed to be in the shape of a cayman—a South American reptile similar to a crocodile.  The Incas built their temples and administrative buildings on this stretch of land.  The peasants lived outside this area, near their terraces, in simple one- or two-story houses with sloping thatched roofs, models of which have been recreated in recent decades. 

houses and terraces, Machu Picchu

       Enemies never tested Machu Picchu’s defenses.  The city stayed aloof from the Spanish Conquest wars, but was abandoned around 1572, possibly because of a smallpox epidemic.  The Spanish never found it and vegetation swept over the ruins undisturbed until discovered by the American explorer Hiram Bingham in 1911.  He actually misidentified it as the Lost City of the Incas, meaning Vilcabamba, the hastily constructed last capital of the Inca emperors, further upriver. 

       The Spanish destroyed Vilcabamba but Machu Picchu, far more sophisticated a settlement, was soon recognized as something quite different.  Excavators cleared away the jungle, partially restored about 30% of the buildings and so now the city is easy to explore.  It became a World Heritage Site in 1983 and has been Peru’s major tourist attraction for decades.  Visitors numbered 400,000 in 2000.

       That’s a lot of people walking on paths in an area that is seismically shaky to begin with.  Worried that the area could not withstand such pressure indefinitely, authorities in 2011 restricted the number of visitors to 2500 a day.  Hopefully, this will help preserve the area.  After all, it was not built anticipating the presence of ten thousand people a day treading on its trails.  As for the lucky 2500 each day, they can continue to revel in what is the gem of the Andes, with a blend of scenery and mystery and an example of how man can transform even the most rugged, remote environment into a viable place to live.

ruins of the Inca city, Machu Picchu

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for more on Puno and Lake Titicaca, Ollantaytambo and Cusco, see under Peru in the Online Articles page

The Living Inca Town of Ollantaytambo

                                                                   by Jim Goodman

Ollantaytambo and Pinkuylluna Mountain

    North of Cusco, the pre-colonial capital of the Inca Empire, the Urubamba River flows through a stretch of the Andes Mountains, from Machu Picchu to Pisac, that once constituted the Sacred Valley of the Incas.  Today it is one of the major tourist attractions in Peru, featuring magnificent scenery, the ruins of ancient fortresses and temples and spectacular terraces clinging to the sides of steep mountain slopes.  The most popular site in this valley, embodying all these characteristics, is of course the World Heritage Site of Machu Picchu.  The rest of the valley tourists usually cover in a separate day’s excursion.

mother and child, Ollantaytambo

    For all its stunning beauty and intrinsic interest, though, Machu Picchu is a ruin, a vestige of history, uninhabited for centuries.  About 45 km downriver, however, lies the vibrant town of Ollantaytambo, home to over 10,000 residents, most of them Quechua-speaking descendants of the people who founded the town hundreds of years ago.  At an altitude of 2800 meters, it lies along the Patacancha River near its confluence with the Urubamba, in between the two mountains Tamboqhasa and Pinkuylluna.  The original checkerboard grid of straight streets in between these mountains is intact and many of the houses are a few hundred years old.  Their occupants no longer celebrate the old Inca festivals, for they converted to Christianity after the Spanish conquest, but in most aspects, their material life differs little from the days of the Inca Empire.  They also still dress in traditional style, with colorful skirts, hats and ponchos that enhance the atmosphere of any stroll around the vicinity.
    The town was an important Inca religious center and boasts several archaeological attractions.  Besides its collection of temple and fortress ruins, ancient terraces and stone streets, Ollantaytambo is the site of a sculpture unique to the Inca realm—a carved head of the god Wiracocha, 140 meters high, on the cliffs of Pinkuylluna Mountain.

taking a break in the town square

  In Inca mythology Wiracocha is both the Creator God and a Culture Hero who introduced the people to language, songs and seeds, taught them which plants were edible, which medicinal and which poisonous, as well as how to make clothing and other useful knowledge.  At Ollantaytambo he gave the people his staff, on which was inscribed all this knowledge.  In return, the people carved his image high up the cliff of Pinkuylluna.
    Only the head is really sculpted.   But the shape of the mound above it suggests the burden the god always carried with him on his travels around the world.  The brow is wrinkled in a way that suggests both admonishment and

the face of Wiracocha

watchfulness.  The eye stays in shadow even as the sunrays hit the rest of the face until about 2:30 in the afternoon, when the light hits the eye and Wiracocha “wakes up.”  He has a long nose and ears and a full beard.  On the top of his head he wears the hat of an Inca astronomer-priest—round with a cylindrical protrusion at each corner.  Equally high up on another slope behind this image is Wiracocha’s temple.   On the summer solstice day the first light to peep through the mountains strikes first the hat and then the temple.
     On Tamboqhasa, the other mountain flanking the Patacancha River, ancient stone terraces climb up from the base to a spur housing temple ruins and a former fortress.  In a landscape dominated by mountains and little relatively flat, alluvial land for farming, stone terraces extended the area for cultivation and kept the valleys free from the danger of landslides.  Builders cut stones of different sizes and angles and fitted them together to produce the best possible structures for both water retention and drainage systems. 
    In the beds of these terraces they first laid a layer of pounded gravel, then a layer of sand and afterwards filled it with topsoil carried up from the valley.  This prevented waterlogged soil from expanding and bursting the retaining walls.  The stones in these retaining walls heated up during the day and then, during the cool nights, transmitted this heat to the soil.  This kept the plant roots warm even when the temperatures plunged to frosty levels.  Farmers generally used them to grow corn, potatoes and quinoa, a cereal grain.

terraces of the Astral Llama on Tamboqhasa Mountain

    But if the terraces didn’t yield the expected amount of these crops then the farmers first planted some corn.  When the corn stalks started getting tall they planted beans, which grew around the stalks.  The bean plants also enriched the soil by adding nitrogen to it.  Finally, in the open spaces left, they planted squash, which kept the soil moist and more or less weed-free.  The Inca stone terraces (other fine examples are at Machu Picchu and Pisac) enabled the Urubamba Valley to become a major food producer for the Inca Empire.
    They also had cosmological significance.  Terraces were not just built wherever it was physically feasible.  Probably under the direction of the local priest-astronomers, farmers constructed terraces and laid out their cities on that part of the terrain that resembled a certain animal or constellation.  In Ollantaytambo’s case, the terraced area of the lower slope of Tamboqhasa represents the Astral Llama.  Viewed across the valley from the slope of Pinkuylluna, it does have that shape, with the head of the animal to the left, where the ruins of the Astral Llama’s shrine stand. 

the main residential area

    This practice of ordering the terraces along lines resembling sacred concepts extended to the residential area as well.  With its parallel streets spaced evenly apart, urban Ollantaytambo was to resemble an ear of corn, the area’s most important crop.  The town itself, along with its farms on the alluvial fan between the bases of the two mountains and the Urubamba River, is laid out like the constellation of the Tree of Life, with the trunk being the narrow part between the two mountains.  This was also the case with Pisac, where the terraces, temples and fortress were on a mountain supposedly resembling the condor, and of Machu Picchu, where the settled part was shaped like a caiman, a South American alligator, and the mountain behind it was a crouching puma.

the House of Dawn--Pacaritampu pyramid

    Not all Inca terraces were the big and sturdy, highly visible, stone staircase types that climbed up the flanks of mountains.  A much more subtle arrangement characterized the terraces that made up the pyramid of Pacaritampu--the House of Dawn—on the western part of the fan of alluvial land in front of Ollantaytambo.  It’s not a pyramid in the Egyptian style, or even like the temple-pyramids of the Aztecs and Maya.  In fact, it is only 32 meters high, occupying an area of 150 hectares.   Even when standing on the flat, trapezoidal top of it one would not realize it was a pyramid at all, for its sides appear to be but faintly declining slopes.

the "windows" of Pacaritampu

    The only way to see the entire pyramid and appreciate its design is by ascending high up Yanaqaqa Mountain across the stream south of the pyramid.  Near the summit of Yanaqaqa, where the apus, or mountain spirits, make their abode, where the Andean snow peaks are visible just across the valley, is the observation point known as the Gate of the Sun.  From here the pyramid, lost in the landscape from points further below, seems to dominate its environment.  It was from way up above it here that the original designers planned and supervised its construction. 

the abode of the mountain spirits

   The Incas called the pyramid the House of Dawn because of the special effects of the first light of dawn on certain key days of the year.  Each ridge of the pyramid is aligned with the position of the sun at dawn on the summer and winter solstices and the spring and autumn equinoxes.  Along the base on the southern side are two recessed, rectangular niches that represent the “windows” of the temple.  According to Inca religious belief, these symbolized passageways to the secret, the sacred and the spiritual and thus to the very heart of knowledge.  On the winter solstice the first beam of light falls across the southern side of the pyramid and lights up one of these windows, while the rest of the pyramid, and the valley as well, are still swathed in shadow.  On the summer solstice the first beam of sunlight hits the truncated top of Pacaritampu and runs right down the center of the western side.
    The Incas built the House of Dawn here because the site was associated with the mythical founding of the Inca nation.  Thus the ‘dawn’ of the temple’s name also implied the birth of the Inca empire and the “dawn’ of a new era.  The first emperor, Manco Capac, was supposed to have been standing at one of the windows at dawn when he was unexpectedly illuminated by the first sunrays.  He did not establish his capital here, though, but instead moved over the mountains 85 km away and founded the royal city of Cusco.

ruins of the fortress above the town

    For a century or so the Inca realm was limited to the area around Cusco.  In 1440 they won a great victory over the Chanca, their main local rival, and from then on embarked on a course of rapid expansion that in less than a hundred years gave them control over an empire from Quito down the coast halfway into modern Chile.  The Spanish began invading and conquering this territory in the 1530s.  Having captured and killed the Inca emperor the year before, the conquistadores occupied Cusco in 1533 and installed a puppet emperor there, who died soon and was succeeded by the young Manco Inca.  He was initially cooperative, but in a short time soured on the Spanish, fled Cusco and from his new home base in Ollantaytambo in 1536 raised the banner of revolt. 
    Assembling a large army Manco Inca laid siege to Cusco, but could not capture the city.  The Spanish counter-attacked the Inca stronghold above the city and forced Manco Inca to retreat.  But other Inca generals occupied neighboring highland areas and annihilated Spanish relief forces.  Though they failed to capture Lima they were still a formidable force and a grave threat to Spanish control.  So the Spanish decided to try to end the deadlock with a direct assault on Ollantaytambo.  Commanded by Hernando Pizarro, the force comprised 30,000 Indian warriors and 100 Europeans, 30 of them infantry and 70 cavalry.  Manco Inca had about the same number in his army, manly made up of conscript local farmers and a large number of recruits from the Amazon rain forests.

Manco Inca

    He had prepared his defenses well, fortifying the eastern approaches and rechanneling the Urubamba to crisscross the valley and provide extra lines of defense.  The Spanish-led forces thus had to cross streams several times, encountering fierce resistance at each point.  The bulk of Manco Inca’s army confronted the enemy on the terraces of Tamboqhasa.  To hinder the cavalry, the Inca commanders released water from hidden channels to flood the plain.  When the horses got bogged down in the rising water the Inca warriors counter-attacked.  Realizing the peril his forces were now in, Pizarro called off the attack and retreated to Cusco.
    Encouraged by his victory, Mano Inca launched another expedition against Cusco.  But the Spanish ambushed his forces at night.  Shortly after, a large Spanish contingent returned to Cusco from campaigns in Chile and Manco Inca decided Ollantaytambo was too close to Cusco in the new situation and moved west to Vitcos.  Pursued by a Spanish army, he escaped to the even more remote location of Vilacabamba and died shortly afterwards.
    The Spanish took possession of Ollantaytambo and put the entire population to work in the mines.  They did not force them out of the town, nor replace their houses with colonial villas.  But they did not let them farm and so the people stopped using the terraces.  Centuries later, when Peru became independent and the people of Ollantaytambo could go back to agriculture, they did not revive the use of the ancient terraces, but made new farms on valley lands.  The stone terraces still perform their other function, that of preventing landslides.  They also provide a constantly visible reminder of Ollantaytambo’s days of glory, when it was one of the famous jewels of the Sacred Valley of the Incas. 

the main battleground in the Spanish assault on Ollantaytambo

                                                                            
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