This is our last day in Cusco and for some the last day in South America so for today it was a glorified shopping trip to Pisac, a small community in the Inka Sacred Valley. The trip was about an hour and along the way we stopped to view the Peruvian Andes for the last time. The valley’s are very pastoral and the communities are almost ran like a co-op, people working and sharing their resources from farm equipment to the actual crop. We  stopped at a Llama and Alpaca farm where the local villages co-op their finished products . We made a purchase of a few things and, interestingly, it had to be paid in two  bills because the money was for two separate communities. Very cool!

Pisac has a very large market every Sunday where the indigenous people from the surrounding mountain communities come to buy and to sell. They are in their native dress, so you see real people as they are with or without the tourists.

The natives, and descendant of the Inka, are very small people, (which just adds to the mystery  of how they could move the big rocks), and very colorful. Today, without it being planned by our guide,  was a celebration that involved all the local communities and we were fortunate to witness a day of parades and festivities in the town square. I hope you enjoy the photos!

After the temple we went to Saqsaywaman site to view a temple dedicated to the lighting god, note the zigzag walls. They put 100 metric ton rocks in this wall; how did they move these..?

You just have to wonder but I think I figured it out, sorry can’t tell you right now.

The highest city in our travels so far as I mentioned earlier but so far…touch wood…we are not feeling anything that could be described as “altitude sickness”.

Today we started our tour with the obligatory church trip, ok it wasn’t that bad but still if you have seen one you …you know the rest! Ok. This one was different because it was an Inca temple site converted to a Catholic church. The Inca workmanship was outstanding given the year this was built, around the 13th century. Our next stop was the Inca burial grounds in a cave. The Incas mummified the royalty , the Inca, (while the entire group is called Incas in fact the word Inca refers only to the “king”), and his entourage., the rest of the people were buried in a grave.

The temples we have been seeing throughout this trip were all to worship the sun, stars and the earth. The Inka (the native spelling ) believed in three worlds. The sky represented by the Condor, the earth represented by the Puma, and the underworld represented by the Snake. All are very important in their beliefs, mother earth was  honored to gain favor for good crops etc so their practices could be characterized as being that of the first real environmentalists. The Inka also had figured out long before Europe that the earth was round. (The Europeans were stuck in mythology not only with their religions but the world as it was, hence the flat earth belief and of course at that time if you disbelieved that notion the church would punish you as history has shown. It could be argued that the church was a major contributor to ignorance at that time). But the Inka, believing in the sun, earth,  and underworld, looked at their environment logically. So logically if the sun and the moon were round then it made sense that the world they lived on was round too! Pretty simple.

The temples were laid out in a fashion as to highlight the summer and winter solstice, the fall and spring equinox, so windows were fashioned so that the sun would shine on certain artifacts at that exact time. Therefore they knew exactly what time of the year they were entering or in at all times. Simple but very effective for their livelihood. Here is some of their workmanship but it is not in any particular order:

What can be said that hasn’t already been said about this archeological site? Probably nothing but just standing and looking at this ancient  city, (that they believe is only 60% revealed), poses the question: why has the world lost the  technology to achieve such a engineering feat with only the most rudimentary tools? Indeed it is lost at least in my opinion  because moving the stones is one thing; shaping them to fit so perfectly is yet another.

However our guide, and some, but few, others, feels that the Incas did not build this entire village but conquered the inhabitants and added on to it. While most people do not necessarily support that idea, there appears to be evidence that could support a great argument as the architecture seems to be of two different time periods or maybe not all Incas.  I will try to illustrate that in the photos but it is something that can only be appreciated first hand.

After an early morning, as you recall the wake-up call came at 3:00 am, we headed to the Lima airport only to discover our plane was delayed by 1 hour. We fly into Cusco and immediately were given a cup of cocoa tea, which apparently helps with the altitude sickness, not a great taste; Cusco city is our highest yet at just over 11,000 ft ASL. Fortunately we just pass through and drive to Yucay, a small village in the Sacred Inca Valley. After a quick lunch we went on to Ollantaytambo and visited the ruins there. Much was destroyed after a 2 year war with the Spaniards but what we did see was a great prelude to Machu Picchu. I am going to show you several pictures the first is where the got the big boulders from, the second is the boulders they used to build their temple, the third is the unbelievable craftsmanship . They had to quarry the rocks, get them down a steep mountain, cross a valley, and up a 500 ft to the temple site, my guess 15 KLM. Seems almost impossible to me. Yes, they have moved similar sized stones with 1000 people in the village for approximately one block but still??

I forgot to mention that we went to a interesting private museum in Lima. The Larco family Museum is primarly  Nazca Indian archeological artifacts dating some 3000 years ago and a collection of most erotic ancient pottery in South America from around the same time. The erotic pottery and sculptures I will leave to your imagination but I will point out that when it comes to sex acts there is nothing new today;  it has been around for a very long time.

But we did see some interesting stuff ; the Nazca Indians has several artifacts that might explain the Nazca line…I will leave to the readers to decided.

Lima is a very big city, approximately 10 million people, and the traffic and pollution confirms it. But we still had an interesting day visiting the “old city” ; usual stuff, churches cathedrals, and monuments. We still happened to be on site when the major, a women, was holding some kind of rally. At the same time there was an official visit from a foreign country that shut down the area around the presidential palace.

After the city tour we went out to a Ranc that raises Peruvian Horses, the ones that dance to 4/4 time. Beautiful horses and we had a chance to ride them…I didn’t but Berniece did. The ranch serves a dinner with the visit which was very pleasant.

Tomorrow it is up at 3:00 am to fly to Cuzco.

Pictures to follow, I have a very bad connection so I will catch up when we get back from Machu Pichu.

Rather then give you a long commentary let me just tell you a few facts:

1.They really are not sure when these were done but it is at least 2 thousand years ago and they believe it was the Nascas, again they are uncertain.

2. It was discovered in the early 1900 when they were looking for more aqueducts built by the Inca and the Nazca Natives, an airplane was being used.

3. It can only be seen from the air, yes there are mountains near by but you still wouldn’t see all of them, actually not most of them.

4. A German mathematician studied the lines most of her life until she died at the age of 95, still no real conclusion of what or why.

5. Parts of it look exactly like an airport and runways, in fact from a reasonable altitude you could not be faulted for believing that.

What do I think? Not an airport but a copy of one. They were trying to attract their gods so they built what they believed the gods wanted so they copied it from somewhere, someone or something. It is as good a theory as any of them in my opinion; now if you want to know where I this great insight  I must simply direct you to watch “Ancient Aliens” so that so too can be as informed as I am!!! Kidding aside this site is a must see in a life time.

Well.. we have started the Peru portion of our trip today landing in Lima at 9:00 am. Took forever to get through the immigration and customs but we made it. Lima is a very modern city so when we went for lunch there was all the usual suspects including several KFC’s…no I didn’t…yet! After lunch Berniece and I went for a walk up to a park about 6 blocks away and it was fun. Sunday afternoon a lot of the locals were just hanging out; there was a little out door stadium with a dance area where the locals, mostly the older ones, where dancing. On top of that I something awesome, I will show you the picture and you can figure it out. Later, after dinner, we went to a water show in a local park. The city converted this park to a water fountain show in hopes of having something families could enjoy safely. It turned into a bit of a tourist attraction; we certainly enjoyed it and because we were seniors we got in free, how cool is that?

I know I have mentioned this before but just to reiterate; the picture look pretty small on our screen and maybe on yours as well so double click,  or tap on a iPad, to get the enlarged view because otherwise some of my comments may be lost. Also the enlarged picture does the subject more justice.

hope you enjoy them as much as we do!