Peruvian Inca Adventure: Good Food and Good Views

September 8th, 2024

Pervian countryside as taken from the Collectivo

On September 6th, we were ready to leave Cusco for Ollantaytambo (Oyan-tay-tambo or Ollantay for short).  After trading out money we picked up our things and trekked a kilometer through town to the location where you can ride a collectivo to Ollantaytambo.  We got one for 10 soles a piece (roughly $2.60) to take us the 65 km to Ollantay.  It took us around 90 minutes to get there.  We seemed to have a traveling salesman onboard for the first 30 minutes or so.  He did a little preaching and then started selling a magnesium supplement, and then when finished with that, started in on some hand cream.  He managed to sell some, so apparently the gig works.  I know enough Spanish that I could sort of understand what he was saying, which was what made it more interesting.  Mom and I were talking, and said he could tell we were foreigners and probably didn’t speak Spanish because he never really looked our way.  At one point on the road we hit a police stop, where they checked everyone’s ids on the collectivo except mom and I, because apparently we were obviously not Peruvians, and probably couldn’t pass for any other South Americans either.

From the inside of the collectivo

When we arrived in Ollantay, we made our way to our hotel, the Eureka Lodge, which turned out to be all of about 50 meters from the Inca ruins of Ollantaytambo.  We were given the room with the best view in town, I am assuming purely because we were staying 3 nights, while most visitors stay for just a single night.  I’m not sure I’ve ever stayed anywhere where I had such an amazing view from the bed in my hotel room. The one issue with the hotel that we had was lack of hot water. Cold showers aren't exactly fun.

View of the Ollantaytambo Ruins from our hotel

After unpacking, we wandered town a bit.  We found where the train station is, though we’re not heading to Machu Picchu by train.  We will return from there on the train though.  We also made our way back to the main square in town, and then found the local market.  Even more importantly, we found a bakery!  We were walking down the street and smelled something sweet and had to turn around.  We ended up getting some cinammon and sugar covered pastry, that was warm.  It was so good.  After another break in the hotel room we wandered back to the square for supper, where we had a delicious meal.

Probably the best version of Lomo Saltado that I had on the trip.

We got up on our second morning in Ollantay, and headed to the ruins right after breakfast.  They were pretty empty then, which is the complete opposite of how they are in the afternoon.  We’ve found that in the afternoon there ends up being a couple hundred people up there.  We have a view of the ruins from our hotel room, but we found out this morning that we can really only see about ⅓ of it.  There was a lot more to the right that we weren’t able to see, and more up on the hill we look towards, but just can’t see due to our position.  What we can see are a lot of terraces, but there are a ton more too.  Each terrace is about 12 feet tall.  Up high are building ruins.  

Ollantaytambo Ruins - Up at the Top of the Terraces

We took a trail up to a high temple area called Inka Watana.  It was a lot of work to get up there, reminding us once again that we are not at 1300 feet.  But really the muscle fatigue has lessened, and it is more just breathing that hasn’t fully caught up yet.  We took a lot of picture breaks on the way (aka, catch your breath breaks).  From the trail up to Inka Watana, we could see so much more than what we had seen so far.  The valley below on the side of the mountain we were now on (the side away from Ollantay) was mostly small farms.  Every once in a while you’d hear a train whistle and see the train heading away from Ollantay to Agua Calientes and Machu Picchu below.  Up at Inka Watana there seemed to be an altar or something with 4 cutout spaces in the wall.  After taking in the views up there for a bit, we wandered back to the floor of the ruins space, and over to the other area which we couldn’t see from our hotel.

Looking down into the valley on the non-Ollantaytambo side.  Also note the terraces across the valley.  You see terraces, used or not, a ton of places.

Along the floor of the Ollantaytambo ruins are a series of canals and fountains.  It is neat to see the way the canals still work, transporting water today (and sometimes using a little modern ingenuity to hook up hoses to the canals).  There were also the required llama and alpaca at the bottom area as well.  We followed the canals back as far as we could before reaching the end and coming back to the base of the terraces.

Canals through the Ollantaytambo ruins leading to one of the places where they turn into a fountain.

There was a second set of terraces, and high up on them was a building that looked like a church, though I’m not sure if that is really what it was.  We haven’t paid for any guides at any of these ruins we’ve visited so far, and I’m sure we could get a lot more history if we had them, but it is also nice to have the opportunity to wander and not feel like we’re wasting anyone’s time.  We will have 2 hour guided tour at Machu Picchu as part of our trek, so there we’ll have someone knowledgeable telling us what things are.

The High Barns are Pinkuylluna.

After finishing up at the Ollantaytambo Ruins, we crossed the valley over to the Pinkuylluna ruins which are a lot less well taken care of, and don’t really seem to match the ruins across the valley.  There wasn’t really any nice stairs up.  There was a lot more going up rocks, and feeling like you needed to use your hands to steady you.  We first went up to the area that was labeled as the Graneros Parte Alto, or High Barn according to Google translate.  I’m not sure what would have been up in this barn, but it was probably at least 300 feet up the side of the mountain.  The High Barn had 3 tall, still-standing structures that we had been able to see from down below and it was so interesting to see them up close.  From the High Barn, we went across the face to some other structures that appeared to be buildings, and a Low Barn (note, this was still probably a solid 150 feet from the valley floor).  

Structures at Pinkuylluna above Ollantaytambo.  You can see the main plaza in Ollantaytambo in the background.

With the hiking up to the ruins around Ollantay completed, so too has our hiking until the Inca Trail Hike.  

Our last day in Ollantaytambo we spent just walking around town, walking outside of town (on flat land), and repacking for our hiking trip.  We didn’t want to do  anything too taxing since we’d be spending the next 4 days hiking.