Saturday May 23, 2015
I kept waking during the night with fierce headaches until I finally took a couple of Advils. We had an excellent buffet breakfast in the dining room. I hoped the ‘coca tea’ will help my head acclimate to the altitude. The Tambo del Inka Resort is very peaceful and comfortable. It’s a wonderful place to stay. Too bad it isn’t closer to home.
We collected our day packs and joined the rest of the group in the lobby. A local woman distributed walking sticks decorated with textile caps and water bottle holders labeled Machu Picchu. We boarded the buses at 8:30 and drove forty minutes to the nearby village of Ollantaytambo to explore the Parque Arqueological Nacional which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Below is a view of the village of Ollantaytambo as seen from the former Inca terraces which date from the mid-15th century. Originally built for farming and irrigation, the stone constructions were used as strongholds against the Spanish conquistadors.
Later, we explored the village below the site. Located at 9,200 feet above sea level, Ollantaytambo was the royal estate of the Inca Emperor Pachacuti who conquered the region. Nowadays it is a popular tourist attraction because it is one of the starting points for the Inca Trail.
Ollantaytambo has some of the oldest continuously occupied dwellings in South America. Below is a view across the valley to the Inca terraces:
We were invited into the ancient compound of a local family. It consisted of four buildings around an inner courtyard. Ears of corn were spread out on the ground to dry in the center of the yard. One building served as living accommodations and the others were for storage and animals. A pen of guinea pigs was in the corner.
The guide held up a skull which the farmer found in his field some years ago. He gave it a name and believed it was good luck so it had an honored position in his storage room.
A festival was being held in Ollantaytambo during the week. The family in the photo below was washing and preparing a pig for slaughter in their courtyard. They waited until the tourists left before they did the deed.
We returned to our hotel for a cooking demonstration (ceviche and lomo saltado) given by the sous chef, Jose. It was fun to watch the preparations, but I’ll pass the recipe to the cooks in my family. We had a wonderful buffet lunch which included alpaca ribs, quinoa, and potatoes.
Then we took a short walk from the hotel to Pablo Seminario’s pottery studio in the village of Urubamba. His work is on display at the Chicago Field Museum.
Later in the afternoon, a local shaman came to the hotel to bless our journey and share spiritual insights of the Sacred Valley and the descendants of the Inca Empire. We sat on chairs set up on the lawn and watched as he prepared his offerings and listened to him chant and pray. At night he would go to a sacred place in the mountains to give the offerings to the gods.
After dark, we were entertained by the folk-art group, Kusiwasi, who performed the Inca legend: The Apus of the Andes. They danced on stilts and sang songs based on Incan and Quechua stories. The performance had a fiery finale:
Afterwards, we enjoyed a delicious buffet dinner of fire-grilled meats and assorted vegetables and potatoes. At the end of the day, we returned to our rooms to pack our duffle bags for our trip to Machu Picchu tomorrow.