Day 6 - Ollantaytambo and School Visit

As most readers of this Blog may be aware, the Latin culture is a very macho society. One of the things we learned on Monday was the man always gets the last word in a dispute/discussion/disagreement with his spouse. And we learned what those words were. “Yes Dear.” ;o)

It’s hard to say, one ruin tops another. Everything we saw was very impressive. But our visit to Ollantaytambo was probably the best yet.

It was under development when the Spanish arrived, and they never finished the construction. So it gives clues to how Inca construction was done. Where the rocks came from, how they were transported and how they were assembled.

This picture does not do Ollantaytambo justice. There are a series of terraces that rise high above the valley. It is a vary impressive ruin. You can see the knobs sticking out from the rocks in these pictures. They were used to haul the rocks up the mountain and to slide them into position. Once the stone was properly situated they would remove the knobs, for a smooth face. One other interesting 'factoid' these things are like icebergs. We are only seeing 40% of the construction. 60% was done underground to shore up the foundations. So much more stone was carried to these ruins than we can see.

The Sun Temple was under construction. You can see the narrow stones stacked between the big ones. They were there to relieve stress as the stones would expand or contract during temperature changes. This temple would have been amazing, because across the valley stood the mountain – Pinkuylluna with the face of

Tunupa chiseled into the mountain-side and several wonderful geological features.



The sun would hit several specific geological spots on the mountain that simply happened to coincide wth points on the top, or the 'v'cutouts at the top for the Winter/Summer Solstice June 21and December 21 and at the midway point for the equinox. If they had managed to finish the Sun Temple, it probably would have been one of the most precise temples given the strong parallax possibilities.

There was also one remarkable stone that Pavel pointed out, calling it an enigma. It was largely uncut. But work had begun on it. There was a very narrow slice in the stone, in which you could fit a credit card about one quarter of the way. It created a tiny slice - like carving meat - in the rock, that would make it easy to then pound the outer surface layer of rock (chip it off) and leave a smooth finish. The most interesting thing is….no one knows how to do this today. The technique and tooling are perhaps lost forever.


Here is another picture of an Inca wall under construction. The fit of the stones is simply amazing!

School visit at Patacancha
We drove up, up, up to a mountain village called Patacancha, 13,400 feet above sea level. Along the way we picked up a farmer who had come down to Ollantaytambo, hoping to get hired as a porter for an Inca Trail Hike. Unfortunately too many potential porters showed up that day, and he could not get work. We drove him to his village, otherwise it would have been a six hour walk.



Being with children is always magically. We stopped by the kindergarten and the 4th grade classes. The kindergarten kids sang songs for us, and we gave them some bread and fruit.

We had the same treats for the 4th graders, along with Fredy's help they taught us how to count to ten in Quecha.
1 Hoc
2 Iskay


3 Kinsa
4 Tawa
5 Pisqu
6 Socta
7 Cancis


8 Iskon
9 Pusaq
10 Chunka



As you can see they are magical. The native language in the mountains is Quecha. They are taught in both Quecha and Spanish at school. There was no written language for Quecha, so they use Spanish letters for spelling.

Hike Estancias
We then re-boarded our bus and drove a little higher (14,000 feet??) for our hike.

I was able to model a shepherd’s serape. It was a tad short…but that is definitely my color. The mountaintops around us were still much higher, and the snow level that you see in some pictures is at 16,000 feet (the bottom of the snow), those mountains are 19,000 feet.



Along the way we passed some farmers sewing potatoes in their field, using traditional Andean tools. And we stopped in to see a typical Andean Mountain Hut. It was one room, with a bed, cooking area and living areas.

I'm guessing most of life's activities other than cooking and sleeping, were done outside the hut.





You can see our trail in the lower left. It was another hike, near the top of the world. We later had another wonderful outdoor lunch, some of the ladies from Patacancha carried their goods up the mountain to meet us and try to sell some wares. Then we went to visit inside a home (mountain hut) on the mountain. It was one large room, there was no chimney, so it would become somewhat smoky from the cooking fires. They did not heat the place, and they had guinea pigs wandering around the floor….who would provide the meat for a future meal.



We finished this day back at the hotel, where Dana volunteered to learn how to make a Pisco Sour. It is similar to a whiskey sour. The ingredients: Pisco, sugar syrup, lime juice, egg white and a dash of bitters. Our hotel in Yucay was quite charming.