Ollantaytambo, the Urubamba River and the Sacred Valley of the Inca

[Sunday, January 25]

We started early today, at 6:45, for an optional tour of  the Ollantaytambo Fortress – a 2 hour motor van drive through the Sacred Valley of the Incas of Urubamba River.  Along the way, we saw rich agricultural areas, primarily growing potatoes.  The local residents use terraces for farming that climb the hillsides – built by the Incas and dating from the 1300’s

Hillside terraces and storage warehouses build by Incas

Photographer Jay Dickman and Peruvian girl

Farming in the sacred Urubamba River Valley

Ollantaytambo is an active village in the Urubamba River valley, but it was also a very important archaeological site in the Sacred Valley of the Incas.  It served as a fortress, with an agricultural area, an urban area and a religious temple.  The current town is built on the foundations of the urban plan of the Incas.  Agricultural terraces climb all the way up the hillside.

The complex was known as a fortress because Manco Inca successfully fought the Spanish conquistadores here in the 1500’s – one of the last places the Inca were able to resist the technology of fire arms, horses and armor.  But the location was really used as a temple and community complex– with the highest part being the Sun temple.  It's walls and terraces demonstrate the same incredible stone building skills as seen in Sacsayhuaman and Cusco – stones cut to fit like puzzle pieces and are dry stacked and the stone joints are so tight that one is not able to slip a knife blade between any of the stones.

Incan complex at Ollantaytambo with agricultural terraces 

Climbing the stone stairway to reach the temple

Stone wall construction at the temple area

Ollantaytambo viewed from the Temple of the Sun

Walking up to the top of the temple was hard (!) – a few more days of altitude acclimation would have helped.  In the town, we saw a 5 year old boy who sang us a song in Quechua – about a goose that has lost it’s mate – in exchange for 1 soles – about a quarter in US money.

Quechuan singer

Incan foundation stones at the base level of houses in the town