We´ve been in Ollantaytambo for two and a half months, living and working at Apu Lodge, and being part of the community. We´ve made some friends, and it will be sad to leave. At Apu, we helped out with breakfast in the morning. We also helped with the shopping, welcoming guests, we gave English lessons, and we did whatever needed to be done.

The lodge is at the end of a little street, and there is no vehicle access. Very often, we would help the guests, either when they were arriving or when they were leaving. We would use the trici to wheel their luggage.

After breakfast, Mike would often accompany Ruth and Samir to school.

Sometimes we would go down to the plaza with Nina or Mayu Rumi. Sometimes we played “Old Maid” with them. Monica would often sew with them.

The narrow streets of Ollantaytambo. These are the original Inca streets and some of the walls.

Here is a photo of the irrigation canal that runs by the lodge. These were built by the Incas, and they still are functional. They are called sequias. These canals run down all four of the streets of town. They also run through the backyards. It´s beautiful to have such an abundance of free water. The water is clear and cold. You know that you´re becoming acculturated when you walk down the street, past a guy who is butchering a sheep by the sequia, and you don´t even hesitate. Or a pig. One night, Moni and I were returning to the lodge, and as I stepped over this stone bridge, a guy shot under my feet, carried along by the water. I thought he was dead. Monica and I ran down the street, caught up with him, and hauled him out of the water. He was alive, unconscious, and drunk. Soon, some police officers arrived, flipped him on to a board, and carried him away. Apparently, it´s not unheard of for drunk guys to fall into the canals.

The plaza is a very lively and friendly place. A perfect place to hang out in the afternoon. The streets of Ollanta are also friendly and interesting. Some of the restaurants have their menus outside, and some of them try to entice the tourists to try some cuy. Cuys are definitely guinea pigs. They´re all over, and they actually have a good life, up until the moment.

Mototaxis are a popular mode of transportation. These are motorcycles with three wheels. The driver straddles the seat, and often pushes off with his leg to turn or back up. They look an awful lot like Fred Flintstone when they do it. They give cheap rides, often short ones, and they are everywhere where we´ve been in Peru.

Chicha is a drink that they´ve been drinking in The Andes for centuries. It ismade by boiling corn and then fermenting it. It´s like beer. A little sweet. A little sour. When the señoras brew up a batch, and they´re ready to sell it, they hang a red plastic bag from their door. That´s the sign. People come in and buy a glass, or a bottle to go, and sit and talk. The one time Monica and I went into a house for some chicha, I told them that Moni was a nurse. Then they all took turns explaining their ailments to her and asking advice.

We loved working at Apu Lodge. We liked being part of this team, which was great not only at working together and getting things done, but also at having fun. Any excuse for a party was a good one. Carlos was working there when we arrived, but left halfway through our stay, to work at a bigger hotel, closer to his home in Urubamba. We had a party for his goaway, then a little party for Mike´s birthday.

 

A week and a half before we leave Ollantaytambo, the town threw its biggest party of the year. The party is in honor of the patron saint of Ollanta, named Señor Choquekilka. He´s the protector of the town, the wise being who helps assure that the crops are abundant and the people are happy. Each town has its own saint, and the saints are celebrated on different days in different ways. Ollanta looks forward to its celebration each year. We had heard a lot about the fiesta a long time before it arrived. It´s a four-day celebration, with lots of music and dancing by dance troupes. They set up stages and bleachers in the plaza, and the normally tranquil town square is turned into a noisy, music-filled square, full of parades of dancers and processions with people carrying Señor Choquekilka in and out of the church.

The entire celebration is a mixture of Christian and Indigenous beliefs. El Señor is an indigenous, pre-Spaniard deity, but he is also none other than Jesus. This mixture of cultures and beliefs is evident everywhere through the Andes. Everyone agrees that the Spaniards were horrible, and the pre-Spanish culture is treasured, but at the same time, Catholicism is the main religion. Everything is a balance.

Most of the dance troops wore masks and costumes. The masks made it all about the group, not about the individuals. The bands would play and the dancers would dance. The dances lasted fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, a half hour.

On Sunday, our friend Ruth was in a dance troupe that was performing in Urubamba, a town about a half-hour ride up the valley. We went to see her.

The final night of the fiesta was especially exciting. All the dance troupes, all the musicians, and I think everybody in Ollantaytambo left town in the late afternoon, and went across the river to a still smaller town to set up food and drink places by the riverside, to play music, to dance, and to celebrate the celebration.  We went there with Karina, a friend from the hotel. It was as if everybody was finally relieved of all the tension of the fiesta, and now it was all about being happy. The place was filled with joy and happiness. Everybody was eating and drinking, but I didn´t see anybody buying or selling anything. There was an abundance to share. We drank some beer and some chicha, and shared some food that Karina´s mom had cooked. Everybody was giving, laughing, and smiling. To get to the party place, we had to cross a little footbridge over the river. It´s prohibited for cars to drive over the bridge, because it´s so rickety. Today, though, there was a steady procession of cars. We walked.

There was a competition to see who could grab the corn. They tied a corncob up to some ropes, then they pulled strings to make it jump up and down. Guys (and some girls) on horses would gallop at full speed and try to grab it as they sped by. Whoever was able to grab it got a chicken. If nobody could get it, the guys with masks would push each other and leap up for it.

A good time was had by all at the biggest party of the year.

 

 

 

 

 

Ollantaytambo is located in The Sacred Valley, surrounded by mountains on all sides. People have been walking through the mountains for centuries, and there are trails everywhere. Monica and I took a day to hike up to the Sun Gate and back. The Incas built Sun Gates all over the Andes. These are structures built to honor the sun, usually at such an angle that they frame a distant mountain and welcome the first rays of the winter solstice. They called these sun gates Inti Punku.

The most famous sun gate is at Machu Picchu. It frames Huaynapicchu. There is also a sun gate near Ollanta. It´s about ten kilometers from the town square, which makes it a twenty kilometer hike. You leave the town square and walk down to the river, then along the river for a while before the trail starts to climb. In all, there is a 3500 foot elevation gain from town up to the gate. The gate is about 12,400 feet above sea level, and it took us six hours of steady ascent to get there.

We set our alarm for 5:00, and we were hiking by a quarter to six. We followed the trail that is marked on a big rock by the Instituto Nacional de Cultura. The trail continues with a view of the train station, with trains leaving for nearby Machu Picchu. The trail goes to the rock quarries, called canteras, where the Incas found and sculpted the giant rocks that they used in Ollanta for their temples.

We continued walking for an hour or so, when we met Neirut and Virginia. They were on their way to school,  and they walk this trail every day. We stopped and talked with them for a while, and shared some chocolate with them. You can think that you are really out there in the wilderness, but people live everywhere in the mountains. Neirut and Virginia live in a little house, that we soon would pass. Later on in the day, when we were returning from high up in the mountains, we ran into them again, returning from their day at school. It kind of puts to shame the myths of “When I was your age, I walked five miles to school, through the snow.” These kids walk through the Andes every day.

Mount Veronica is the tallest mountain near Ollanta. It is a 20,000 foot peak, but you can´t see it from town, because of the other mountains. Once you get around, them, though, Veronica is there.

The trail climbed and climbed, sometimes brutally. We followed some steep switchbacks up and up, and then we arrived at the rock quarry. Huge rocks, some the size of small houses. The Incas came up here and then dragged the rocks down into town. They had to cross the river. For some of the larger rocks, they dragged them to the river, then diverted the river around them, so they didn´t have to drag them through the water. The Incas were so industrious and ingenious. We really worked to get up to the quarry. It´s incredible that they came up here and worked with these giant rocks, sculpting and dragging them.  When we got up to  the quarry, there were some cows, just passing the day.

They worked on the rocks up here, then moved them down to town. There are a lot of rocks that were on their way down when the work stopped. They´re called piedras cansadas, tired rocks, because they stopped before they made it.

There is also a primitive wheel up there. It was obviously sculpted, and it is a mystery. The Incas didn´t have wheels. Perhaps this was a prototype. Maybe somebody was inventing it.

After the quarry, the trail continued up, toward the Sun Gate. We could see it in the distance.

We kept climbing, and it got closer. We could still look down on the valley.

We passed some ruins on the way up.

Did I mention that we were climbing? It got exciting as we got closer.

It´s on a peak. On three sides of the gate, it is just a dropoff down into the valley. The clouds came down, so we really didn´t get a magnificent view of Mount Veronica, but the views were spectacular nonetheless. Being so high up in the mountains was exhilarating.

Another successful outing.