Mas Lejos en el Valle Sagrado
1
Evening, a once-warm day turning brisk here in the heart of the Sacred Valley, which despite being some two thousand feet below Cuzco, is still quite high up in the Andes. Nine thousand one hundred and sixty feet above sea level. I am writing at the small table in the kitchen of Hostel Andenes, drinking a cup of yerba mate, my supply still going strong from the kilo I bought in Quito. This table, the only one in the kitchen, is generally occupied by some of the women that work here, or their children. This is the kind of hostel where the guests don’t typically want to hang out in the kitchen. Sadly, there are plentiful tables in the two dining rooms, but they are only open during breakfast hours, so most of the day and night, there’s just this one table to write at. Sometimes a place to simply be, outside of your hostel bed, is hard to come by.
I find myself enamored of this little age-old village town, where I arrived today. Ollantaytambo, once the royal estate of Pachacuti, the great conqueror and founder of the Inca empire, as well as one of the last stands of the Inca resistance against the Spanish. Manco Inca, the younger brother of Huascar — the losing contender of the civil war that immediately preceded the Conquest, was originally installed as a puppet prince under Spanish rule. But he escaped from his handlers in the capital and rallied a sizable enough rebellion that they were able to hold much of the Sacred Valley for a few years, and nearly succeeded in taking back Cuzco.
The capital for that Inca quasi-renaissance was here in Ollantaytambo. The Inca engineers managed to re-route the course of the Rio Urubamba and fortified the valley to make an approach from Pisaq almost impossible. In fact, the Spanish were never able to capture Manco Inca here. For some reason, a couple years into the rebellion, he decided this location was not secure, and retreated some sixty miles to the west, over many many ranges of Andes, to found Vilcabamba, the true last stand of the Incas.
Spent an hour and a half this afternoon into evening just wandering around, and it was clear to me right away that I hadn’t yet been to a place like this. Most of the streets of the old town, an area of three by six blocks, are the existing grid plan of a pre-Colombian settlement. But not only is it on the site — to a significant degree this is the Inca town. The stone in the streets and alleyways, and the little cut-stone canals that run along the edges, are all constructions from a different world.
I was looking at the municipal water program of six hundred years ago, and it still functions flawlessly, with clear cold fast-moving water coming down from the mountains. The upper walls and roofs are of a more recent vintage, but the bottom half of the exterior walls and foundations of almost every home are of well-made Inca stone. I have been to many archaeological sites, but never one where the descendants are still living in the ancestral settlement, where I can walk the exact same streets that someone did in 1491. This is considered one of the longest continuously-inhabited settlements in South America.
Tried my best to get lost in the back streets, but it’s a little too small for that. You just pop out of the town before long, looking up at green rock-studded mountains that ascend near-vertically into sharp peaks far above. The light that comes down between the ridges of the mountains is crisp and tinted gold, and as you walk through the passageways, little kids run by giggling at you, and old ladies all wish “buenas tardes”. The latter are dressed in handmade multi-colored shawls, off-kilter red hats on their heads topped with sewn flowers.
There is a fast-moving mountain river, the Patacancha, at the west edge of town, coming from a steep valley north and running down to where it meets the Rio Urubamba along the valley bottom. The river serves to divide the section of town where people live from the ruins complex and all its correspondent tourism. A five minute walk past the river, visible from most of town, is a massive set of fortifications lording over the valley, buttressed by row after row of stone terraces. Then, some hundreds of meters up on the sheer mountains on each side, are the imposing, fairly-well-preserved remains of a granary and fortress, all made from beige stone. In short, despite eyes jaded from ten months of countless sights and sites, I am enchanted, wandering around in wonder at this place.
Just like in Cuzco, the downside is that there are so many tourists here, in packs and throves, herded by tour guides foreign and local. At dusk I could see hundreds of them still milling about the ruins. I understand why they’re here — it’s magical, and what’s more, this is the nearest town of any size to Machu Picchu, and supposedly much nicer than Aguascalientes, the standard base village. I won’t be making my way to that most famous Inca site, and I’m glad of it. The idea of three thousand tourists at any given moment — being stuck in a small mountain village full of them all taking selfies — is enough to make me queasy.
I suppose any number of these people would be fine and interesting one-on-one, but the sheer quantity of them, their dominating presence on the place, makes me want to avoid their company altogether. The hostel where I’m staying is mostly Peruvian people on vacation, and while it isn’t any kind of authentic reality, at least you have to speak Spanish. I didn’t come all this way to listen to people talking English all the time. But I can’t fault them; I have come to this place, too, and with this one extra stop, as opposed to the standard itinerary of Lima-Cuzco-Machu Picchu, they are at least doing a slightly more in-depth exploration of the Sacred Valley. For better or worse, I have found myself squarely on the Gringo Trail.
2
After breakfast today, I did the thing you have to do when you’re in Ollantaytambo — see the ruins which are only a few hundred feet above the town. Though there were too many tourists for my liking, the place was fascinating and striking in its presence. While many elements were very much of a piece with other Inca ruins I’d seen: the walls of enormous many-sided perfectly cut stones, the expanse of terraced walls covering the mountainsides, shrines to rock and water, and rough-stone large rectangular buildings at the citadel — any of which could have been at Pisaq or Sacsayhuaman or the other sites — every part was constructed with a certain extravagance and authority that spoke to this being built for an emperor.
The Temple of the Sun, though, was altogether different from any Inca construction I’d seen. A monumental wall, maybe ten feet high thick monolithic slabs of smooth pink granite, edged with lines of smaller stones, and with the faint outlines of half of an Andean cross in the middle. It is almost modern, and very rare to see a figurative element like that built into the structure — typically Inca constructions are unadorned. Apparently this temple and its ultimate intended form is a mystery — it was incomplete when the constructions on this site ceased. You can see enormous cut stones on the ground nearby, and these aren’t there from decay — they were never installed.
There must have been some moment on a certain day when the very foundations of the earth shook, when some event, or word of it, was so consequential that continuing to work on this temple no longer made sense. It could have been one of many things: the Inca civil war, the capture of Atahualpa by the Spanish, the fall of Cuzco. Or perhaps work continued or re-started under Manco Inca’s rebellion, and the moment he abandoned the town was when the master stoneworkers laid down their hammers.
I walked out of the main site, figuring a steep hike would weed out most of the tourists, and I climbed for half an hour to a shrine above. Four tall alcove niches, and two walls behind it enclosing the natural spur of rock, the spine of the mountain, with their stones framing it like a masterwork of art. Savored the solitude and wind up there. The Incas were in love with mountains. I understand. The more time I spend around their world, the harder it is for me to be cynical about them.
Came down to see the Temple of Water, which was unusual in that it was half-built with adobe, and had stone columns holding up the roof, almost more like a Roman temple. And the water was still flowing beautifully all through the structure. Clearly some of the best architects and stoneworkers in the empire had been here. They had a way of making these very deliberate, intentional constructions, which at the same time strike me as organic, like they are a part of nature.
On my way out I found a group of Peruvian guides taking a break, and asked them if I could ask a few questions. The older guy looked annoyed, but the younger two seemed at least willing. I asked where the people had lived, as I didn’t see residences anywhere like the ones I’d seen at Pisaq. In the town, the woman said, exactly where it was now. The buildings on the mountainside were for state functions, the people lived below. Same streets, same foundations, same canals. I asked if that was the same in Pisaq, and she said yes, most people lived down where the town is now, but that town was not preserved. I asked what the shrine up above was for, and the younger man said it was for solstice observations. The older one was shaking his head at me by now, so I relinquished any further questions, thanked them for their excellent answers.
I went back to my hostel to rest for the afternoon, and get my things ready for the overnight walk I am going to take tomorrow. I could call it a trek, but to me that conjures up a picture of guides and some kinds of services offered. This was just going to be me walking uphill, alone.
✦✦
Last night, not willing to chance a big game on the hostel wifi which had been spotty all day, I went to a touristy bar with a balcony overlooking the plaza. A pretentious bar purporting itself to be an English Pub, with way overpriced beers and astronomical cocktails, the kind of place I never go. All to watch my Warriors in Game Five of the Western Conference Finals. Even being in Peru, having been out of the states for ten months, my connection with this basketball team has not lessened. Perhaps it’s even stronger. I’ve signed up for NBA League Pass, and usually watch from a hostel sitting room or something like that. But this was a very big game, the series tied 2–2, and felt like it would decide the season. So out I went, to throw down many soles for few beers.
It was neck and neck from the second quarter on, a battle, an intense game to watch. I was racked with stress, felt like this was taking years off my life. A couple Americans came in to watch the game, one guy from San Francisco, but I was too much of a wreck to really talk to them. The Rockets pulled ahead in the fourth. My Warriors made a valiant run, as they nearly always do, but couldn’t hit the big shot late. KD, Steph and Quinn Cook all had good looks at three-pointers, and they all went in and out.
Somehow the Dubs still had the ball with seven seconds left, only down two, a chance to win the game. Draymond, in the process of furiously bringing the ball up court, trying to move faster than his own body was capable, dribbled off his knee and it went out of bounds. Chris Paul calmly hit the two ensuing free throws, and the Rockets won by four. I went to sleep feeling depressed. Not many worse ways to lose than blowing it in the fourth quarter, which they’ve done two games in a row. However great a team the Warriors are (and they are historically great) they’re not so good at executing in crunch time. Luckily I have an adventure to go on today, so I don’t have much time to wallow.
3
Sitting on the ground outside my tent, roughly thirteen thousand five hundred feet above sea level, drinking mate from a little plastic camping mug, that time between sunset and dark, my hands freezing already. My mug is the only hand-warming implement I have, as gloves have not been part of my traveling gear. This is really the first time I wished I had them. So I write a sentence or two and then hold on to the mug or, if that’s not enough, a longer stint with the french press.
I’m camping on a mostly flat grass terrace close by some unnamed but substantial Inca ruins, sheer rocky peaks in every direction, the Valle Sagrado a narrow band of green far below, lights of Ollantaytambo flickering like stars. Up and to my left, beyond the black ridge where somewhere the Inti Punku lies open, Nevada Veronica is shrouded in glacial white. There is a bright egg-shaped moon high in the sky, maybe two-thirds full. It is a pristine and momentous place to sit, but also a very cold one. I was concerned about this, given that it’s plenty cold at night down on the valley floor, three thousand feet lower than where I sit. Oh well. Before very long, I’ll be wrapped up in my thirty degree sleeping bag, and hopefully that will be enough.
Left the Hostel Andenes this morning around ten, having divided all my belongings into “needed for camping” and not, and stowed the unnecessaries in the storage room at the hostel. Got my pack down to about twenty-five pounds, which felt light at first on the flat ground of the valley, but caught up to me quickly once I was scaling mountains.
The plan was to climb up to a place called the Inti Punku, a little Inca shrine to the sun god on top of a mountain, passing through the quarries where they cut the stone for Ollantaytambo. One day up and one day back. Walked through the Plaza de Armas, past offers for taxis and tours, down the road out of town towards Pisaq, to the Rio Urubamba where I crossed a bridge called the Puente Inca. Couldn’t figure out what was Inca about it — maybe the stone supports that are now mostly covered in concrete.
On the other side of the bridge was a little dirt road following the river, but angling slightly away and up the mountainside. Followed this for an hour, the strange sensation of being hot in the tropical sun, hot with the exertion of carrying a pack, but cold in the shade, cold with a biting mountain wind. I couldn’t figure out what I felt. There were various groups of whitewater rafters on the river, screaming and yelling like a roller coaster ride as they passed through little riffles. A train went by below, one of the “Andean Explorer” trains that Perurail runs from Cusco or Urubamba to Aguascalientes below Machu Picchu. It’s roughly a hundred dollars for a three hour ride. For me, that would be three days’ budget for three hours. All of it seemed very far away, a world removed from my Trek of One.
I took an even smaller dirt path going more sharply uphill to the left. Soon I came over a little ridge and got my first view of Nevada Veronica, a stunning snow-covered sharp-peaked volcano a ways down the valley. There’s something about first seeing a snowcapped peak when you don’t expect it that makes your heart flutter for a beat.
After another hour, stopping every so often to catch my breath, I passed a little spring, and shortly after, a nice flat grassy area that was very inviting. A shelter with flat thatched roof, long wooden bench underneath, some trees for shade, a variety of large rocks, a fire ring. It was so nice that I considered just camping there, though it was only 1:30 and a long way from my destination. At the very least it was a perfect place for lunch.
Made a sandwich of palta, tomato and queso andino on a sweet roll I bought at the panaderia in town. Simple, but one of the most satisfying meals I’ve had in a while. Something about carrying a pack up a mountain will do that, make food taste extraordinarily good. And the paltas — avocados — are very very good in Peru. While I was making my sandwich a man came along down the path leading two smallish horses laden with gear, a local country man. He tied them up to the post of the structure, and started unloading many tents and sleeping bags, laying them out to dry in the sun. I asked him why he had so much gear, and he said he was a guia, looking at me like I was stupid for asking. Well, where are the people you are guiding? Se fueron — they’ve all gone.
He said he does the Ruta de Condor, on the other side of the valley. I couldn’t figure out why he would be coming down on this side, then, but that seemed too complicated a thing to ask in Spanish, so I let it go. He said the first quarry was just a little bit farther, and there was a good place to camp an hour past that. We both ate our lunches, and I filled up my 2.5 liter water bottle from the spring, which unfortunately made my pack even heavier, but water is pretty important. Bid him ciao and headed on up the mountain.
As soon as I started walking, a pair of purple and black colibrís — hummingbirds — flew right up to and around me, then slowly up the path, circling back every so often. If a hummingbird decides it wants to leave, it will be a hundred feet away, gone in a second, so it was clear that they were interested in me somehow. Within a few minutes, I came to the lower quarry, and the birds left me. Not sure that if I hadn’t been looking for it, I would have thought it was anything but a boulder field. But then I saw a series of tiny round stone structures, as big as doghouses. I later learned they are called chullpas, and are pre-Inca burial sites which can be miniature or grand.
Looking around, I could make out some large cut slabs, a wheel-like circle with a rod protruding from a cut shaft. Made my way through, and met a group of hikers coming down. They said they’d been walking three days, something called the Moon Trek. Where’s all your stuff, I asked? Oh, it’s on the horses, a ways behind us. Must be nice, I thought. I could sure go for some horses, I said, with my aching back and sore feet.
The path got steep and dusty, frequent switchbacks, and after an hour I came to the upper quarry, much larger than the first. Even bigger boulders, and several flat terraced grassy areas below, an excellent place to camp. The only problem was that I’d just come over a ridge and found myself exposed to a stiff wind coming straight down the mountain, and I knew that wind would be a problem later. I took off my pack, sat down to rest and ponder where to sleep.
It was about three, so I had some time, but in a sheer valley it gets dark and cold fast, and you never know what you’ll find. Soon a couple Peruvian guides came along, but seemed more worldly than the first guy I met. I asked if this was the best place to camp, or if there was a better one ahead. They said there was a better one, maybe an hour’s walk up, look for the ruinas. So I made up my mind to explore the quarry on my way back, and carried on, the path even steeper now, high stone steps every ten feet, then a scree field of small loose stones. I met the horses laden with gear, two more guides; losing steam, resting every fifteen minutes now.
The sun was a brilliant light, very close to the horizon and Veronica, when I saw the ruinas, four decent-sized buildings, simple square constructions and rough stonework by Inca standards. There was a herd of cows grazing around and within them, cows sleeping in these ruins, a testament to the embarrassment of archaeological riches that is Peru.
Sure enough there were a few terraced grassy areas a bit down from the ruins, and one spot in particular under a little holly/birch-like tree with a minimum of cow shit nearby. This tree marked the tree-line, the last tree, and could only exist because it was in this somewhat protected depression; above, the mountains were wall-steep and bare.
I heard voices above, and dropped my pack to investigate. Just past the ruins was another trekking group of gringos, everybody with their walking poles, no gear in sight. They were sitting on the grassy hillside, admiring the view and resting. I said hello, then went back down to set up camp. There were other places above, but there was something about being next to this last tree, some kind of protection from the elements. It had little evergreen leaves, and reddish, peeling bark.
As I was pitching my tent, the sun went down behind the ridgeline, and the wind picked up instantly, blowing my tent over as soon as I laid it out. I ended up having to weigh it down with stones, then stake it into the hard ground before I put it up. As I was struggling with it, the trekkers came down the path just beside me. The first person was a blonde young american outdoorsy woman.
“You’re gonna be cold as fuck,” she said. “Do you have a liner for your bag?”
I had never even considered having a liner for my sleeping bag, told her I thought I’d be okay in my thirty degree bag. “I had a negative-five bag and I froze my ass off. Good Luck!” she said, laughing. Thanks for the encouragement, I thought, getting slightly worried that though I knew I’d survive, this night might get rather unpleasant. They were gone, and I am thankfully alone on the mountain. Time to make some tea, put on all the clothes I have.
It is fully dark now, and stars have come out to decorate the darkness. Jupiter is golden and bright, then there is the Southern Cross and Alpha Centauri; Sirius, slightly blue; Arcturus a flickering red; the Big Dipper just over the mountains on the opposite side of the valley. It’s now gotten too cold to write, so I’m going to make some dinner.
✦✦
Have retreated into my tent and sleeping bag. It’s eight o’clock and I’m certainly not ready to sleep, but I was shivering hard outside, and this is the warmest place I could go. So I’m sitting in my bag like some kind of cocoon, with all my clothes and jackets and hat on. I didn’t bring a winter coat on my journey — just a fleece and a wind-breaker, which combined have gotten me through everything up til now. Here in my bag, I’ve stopped shivering, at least. But it’s gonna get colder still.
Had an excellent dinner cooked on my camp stove: eggplant, tomato and red onion sautéed in olive oil, and when it was nearly done I sliced a couple rolls, turned rock-hard in the cold and dry, and put them over the food in the pan to steam. Sliced some queso andino that almost but not quite melted on the rolls, and ate something like eggplant parmesan, and it was so good I forgot how cold I was until it was done.
4
It was indeed cold, but I survived a night at the highest elevation I’ve ever slept. Had to zip my wind breaker around my legs, my feet in the hood, and keep my face wrapped in the sleeping bag. Some time late in the night I had to pee, and after a near existential crisis, I went out to see that the moon had set, and the valley below was all a sea of clouds. There were so many stars now, that kind of sky you can only stumble upon in the wee hours when it isn’t expecting you. The constellations were full of light inside, background light, the Milky Way a thick gold-colored band across the heavens.
This morning, very early, the sun beating down made it hot in my tent, and I shed layers to buy time until by seven-thirty it was impossible to stay in there. Made a pot of tea and went to investigate the ruins just above my campsite. I hadn’t realized the scope of them the night before. There were two areas, one on the hillside on a terraced platform of four small houses. Then out in the field, two much larger buildings, which it seemed to me, would have been housing for soldiers to guard the pass or some kind of lodge for travelers coming into the valley. All rough stone put together without masonry, nothing like the cut blocks fitting perfectly in Inca ceremonial sites. This was a place where common people lived and worked, probably the workers at the quarry. Or perhaps it had to do with the shrine above.
After a couple cups of tea I walked up the mountain to the Inti Punku. Even without my pack, I found the climb challenging at this altitude. Took my time, and after about forty five minutes I’d reached the summit, and there before me was one of the most striking places I have been on this earth, so surreal that it changed the makeup of my mind so that it just seemed normal. The ruins of a little shrine right there on the peak of the mountain, just one remaining wall, but this contained a tall trapezoidal door looking straight out on Veronica shining in the morning sun, out on blue sky space. This was a gate for the sun, which on the summer solstice sets directly through that door.
It was rough construction of uncut stone, and unlike enough most Inca structures that I wondered if it pre-dated them. In the surviving wall there were a couple of niches, and people had left offerings: flowers, coca leaves, a granadilla. This was a rare and sacred place, which felt not of this world. I put some coca leaves in the niche — I’d figured out the ritual, and had bought some in the market in Ollantaytambo just for this purpose — and gave thanks to the Great Spirit, to the ancestors for bringing me this far. Said a Shehekianu, my favorite Jewish prayer, which is almost Buddhist: thanking God for this moment. It felt like this was the extent of my journey, the farthest in I would get, even though I still had further to travel, at the very least a fair distance south to get to Arequipa, and hopefully much farther than that.
But in this moment it seemed like everything after it would be going back, towards the known world or civilization or something. I felt grateful for being able to see so much of the world and to feel at home across the face of the earth. For safe travels, for my family and friends who love me. I ate some dried fruit and almonds and soaked up the silence, felt like I had succeeded in making it to somewhere.
Walked back down to my campsite, where I cooked a breakfast of eggs, tomato, cheese and flour tortillas, the only kind that can be found in Perú. After a nice long sit in the shade of my friend the tree, which I later learned is called a queñua tree, a kind of Andean birch, indigenous and endangered, with some tea, I broke down my tent and made my way back down the mountain. Going downhill was much easier, but now the effort was in being careful where I stepped with that weight on my back, so I didn’t turn an ankle or walk off a mountainside. Stopped at the upper quarry as I had planned, and wandered up into the rocks. Now that I looked deeper, there were evidences of cut rock and works in progress all around me. Like the Temple of the Sun in the ruins below, it looked like work had just stopped suddenly one day.
Somewhat later, exploring around the lower quarry I came upon a cave, low and shallow but large enough for me to go down into it. There before me were two skeletons, offerings of coca leaves scattered about them. Ancestors. I walked back to my pack and got some coca to offer. This was the first time in my life I had found human remains, but it wasn’t scary, and somehow didn’t even feel surprising. Not that I wanted to spend any more time in there than I needed to, but it seemed peaceful, natural, a good place for bones. They went along with the cut slabs of granite lying around. Stones and bones.
Made it back to town at four pm, much faster going down than up. Checked back into the Hostel Andenes and took a truly great shower, made a pot of coca tea. It had happened; I now understood the medicine and magic of that plant. So good for altitude, dehydration, so strange that Westerners took this sacred plant and super-concentrated it into this other thing, that’s more toxin than medicine. After a dinner of lomo saltado, one of the other national dishes of Perú — stir fried strips of steak with tomatoes and pepper and french fries (not all that great if you ask me), I went back to the English pub to watch Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals.
When I walked by the plaza, there were big unruly bonfires right on the flagstones, and this bizarre tribal fiesta ceremony taking place. Groups of men and boys in almost African-looking colored hoods and rags and feathers, two-by-two ceremonially whipping each other and dancing. Some kind of ritualized combat. I say ceremonially, but the whipping was quite real, the cracks resounding across the stone-walled buildings around the square. The game seemed to be to act as if it didn’t hurt a bit, and after you take your licks, you whip the other guy. Drumming and chanting and dancing, women and children and non-participating men and families and tourists all around the rest of the plaza, eating food and drinking sodas and beers.
This event meant that the bar was packed, especially on the balcony where people were three deep watching the whipping/dancing ceremony and getting drunk. During breaks in the action, I’d squeeze my way out there to have a smoke, get beer spilled on me, drink my shitty Peruvian beers (Callao Pilsen, the cheapest thing on offer) and try to see something of the twisted humanity before me. It made watching basketball a bit surreal, and this game was much less stressful than the last because of it.
The Warriors came out flat, down seventeen points after the first quarter, but cut that to ten by halftime and completely ran away with the game. They outscored the Rockets by thirty-nine points in the second half, somehow completely wresting control of the game, saving their season. Now they have to go back to Houston to win one game and they make it back to the Finals. I am going back to Cuzco tomorrow, and the day after that to Arequipa to start my new life, actually living somewhere, with a job as an English teacher. I’m not sure how I feel about it. Somewhere around eleven all the robed feathered spirits disappeared in the night, and by the time I walked through the plaza back to my hostel, all that was left of the ceremony were immense slow-burning embers from the fires.
