Follow the Narrow Road

Day 4 - June 16, 2017

First, we are in areas where internet connections are just OK, but uploading this blog has been impossible. So, I am not sure when this will be posted or when you will have the opportunity to read it.

Another first … if you are reading this (obviously you are) AND you have only seen the abbreviated description of Day 3, AND you want to get the full scoop on Day 3, I have posted more of our travails and added some pictures. If you just want to keep moving forward, then read on for the events of Day 4.

Have you ever packed a liquid container at or near sea level AND then traveled high altitudes where the atmospheric pressure is far less AND opened it without due care/attention? I have. I broke down and shaved this morning. I opened my aftershave, and it shot across the bathroom like Old Faithful, dampening towels, tissues and the floor. The explosion nearly emptied the bottle so I had to rub my checks on the vanity counter top to get what I needed. Live and learn.

Remember on our arrival in Qosqo (although at the time I was calling it Cuzco, which was wrong on two counts) that we had to schlep our luggage over many blocks of cobblestone streets to our hotel? This morning, in the hotel lobby, one of my luggage wheels (there are only two) crumbled into fragments of plastic in the hotel lobby. Now, we have to schlep my luggage without the aid of the simplest and most ancient of conveniences - the wheel (which, astonishingly, the Inca did not know about or use).

We left Qusqo for our day’s journeys, starting in Chinchero. There we found a small town with Incan farming terraces that span a very large hillside. Interestingly, the site was completely unknown and only recently excavated. Who knows if there is more at this site … and some speculate that there are probably many, many other Incan sites that are unknown to us because of jungle overgrowth or being covered in ages of dirt. In fact, we know that there are some Incan sites out there in the jungle that Hiram Bingham uncovered in his famous 1911-13 explorations that he documented in his notes, but have been ‘re-lost’ due to the inaccuracy of his notes and the relentless advance of the jungle.

As usual, the first picture below does not do justice to the vast expanse of landscape and how far in the distance the hillsides and mountains (which rise to 17,000+ feet and disappear into the clouds) are in the background. For the second picture below, I am standing about two-thirds of the way up the terraced mountain-side. Adams and Ronnie are in the middle of the picture as little people, and way down at the bottom right of the terraces are two teeny, tiny specks called Joe and Barry, who were hiking to the bottom of the concentric rectangular retaining walls. [Is “concentric rectangular” correct mathematically? If not, what is the right way to say this for all you mathematical types? “Each rectangular fragment subtended by the previous fragment”?]

By the way, it was a cold morning – about 45° (it is mid-winter here) – so we packed on some extra clothes. Barry ran up the 206 steps from the bottom to where Adam, Ronnie and I were standing (with Joe a respectable second place just 4 minutes behind). Next, we visited the very old local Catholic Church, which to be honest, was probably quite a glorious place … 100-200 years ago.

Next it was on to Moray. Along the curving mountain roads we were treated to some amazing mountains, several of which had snow-capped peaks – none more stunning than Mount Veronica.

Our journey to Moray required some “off road” driving on dirt and gravel to what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. There were vast expanses of open space of farm land with oats, quinoa, corn etc.

    

Moray is a series of deep, open pits that almost look like surface/strip mining, but in fact, recent archaeological evidence strongly suggests that this was the agricultural laboratory of the Inca. They used it to cross-breed species of plants to make new varieties of corn, potatoes that were better suited for their climate as well as domesticate some other wild plants for systematic agricultural purposes. The way the concentric circles (yes, these are indeed concentric circles) were arranged created micro-climates in which the temperature could vary 3-5° from one terrace to the next! Again, the pictures do not do justice to the size and depth of the depressions in the ground that make up this outdoor laboratory.

                        

The next stop was Moras and the salt pools, but first we had to have some lunch along the way. Our driver and guide packed box lunches and we stopped along the side of the road at the top of a steep hill overlooking the Urubamba River. This is not the typical scenery any of us have for lunch to say the least.

There is a natural salt spring – actually more like a trickle of water - that flows in Maras out of the mountain there. For centuries, the Inca built something like tide pools to capture the water and let it evaporate to capture the remaining salt. That practice goes on today in greatly expanded form where the local village has now built a complex network of irrigation channels and over 4000 (yes, that is the correct number of zeros) tide pools to harvest salt, stretching far down the mountain.

 

After that visit, we took a 1 hour car ride down from the high altitudes to the road that runs along the Urubamba River. We got to the small town of Ollantaytambo where we checked into the El Albergue hotel right at the train station and along the River. It is a small private place with its own immense garden from which it uses freshly harvested vegetables and fruit to prepare meals in their small restaurant each day. Our rooms were secluded in the garden area. We settled in and then had a scrumptious dinner in the restaurant. The rooms were comfortable and the sleeping was very good.