Finally, the bus stopped. It took us 45–60min from ‘Hotel Casona de Yucay’ to an archeological site called Moray. I was extremely excited to finally get off the bus and see the attraction that we were promised . Everyone was ready to go. The tour guide suggested that we should bring our water bottle which would help us acclimatize to the high altitude, a cap and sunscreen; even though there wasn’t any sun there was still going to be the radiations. We waited till the guide finished his explanation about Moray and what we were going to see.
As soon as the door opened, everyone was pushing to get outside to the fresh air. As soon as I exited the bus I saw a huge crowd, mostly tourists taking picture of what was then unfamiliar to me. I marched towards the crowd hoping to see what everyone was staring at, but no matter how hard I tried to pass and squeeze, they would just not let me pass, and I was obviously too short to look over the people, so I decided to walk towards a guide. I strolled towards him, and then I saw the stunning site that everyone was looking at, Moray. Moray means dehydrated potato in Quechua. Moray is an Inca ruin located about 3,500m above sea level, about 50 km northwest of Cusco. This Inca ruin is made up of eight circular depressions, and was used for farming in the early Incan time. It looked like a roman arena, only that it was made out of stones and grass. I stood there for five minutes just staring at a wonderful masterpiece that was created over 700 years ago, and the view was priceless I strode down hill towards the tour guide who was talking about it’s history. Moray was built for agricultural purposes, I listened attentively trying to imagine a picture in my head of how they might have built this department. It took them about 40–50 years to build and harvest food.
Just as I looked up I felt a huge raindrop on my cheek. I felt my feet ache, I noticed that I have been standing for quite some time. I wandered around hoping to find a dry place to rest, I looked around and spotted a straw like house, the straw that they use to build these houses is called fierce straw (paja brava). I walked toward it as fast as I could, the last thing I wanted was to get wet. When I finally arrived I noticed several people on the bench inhaling oxygen, the doctors suggested that they should rest and don’t walk too much, the people on the bench had altitude sickness which can occur during the first two days due to overexertion. They looked exhausted and ill. Just as I wanted to sit down next to them the teachers called us to head back to the buses, and that we were leaving soon.
The tour took us about 20–30min. I was maybe only 50m from the buses but the challenge was that it was uphill, it was raining and I stopped every two minutes for a picture, you can take really good pictures from each angle of the ruin, but also from the landscape surroundings. By the time I was uphill the only thing I could think about was water and the bus. As I made it on the transportation, I sat down and thought, I was amazed at how the incas had lived and created tools to live up to what we have now.
