Our first stop on the way was at Ccaccaccollo, a community which GAP has sponsored as part of its Planeterra initiative. GAP located this town and selected it as a place where it felt they could help the community grow. They hire most of the men in this community as guides on the Inca trail, and helped train two women in traditional weaving practices. These two women then went back to Ccaccaccollo to help train the rest of the women and now have a thriving traditional weaving business. GAP continues to help this community by bringing their tour groups here to buy the merchandise the town produces. As part of this visit, the women dress up in the traditional costumes and provide a demonstration on the whole weaving process from the different types of wool, dying, spinning the wool and actually making the final products. It turns out that we are paying about 50 soles (about $20) for something that the women will spend a month making, it hardly seems fair and you definitely don’t feel like bargaining after hearing that. Following the presentation we were given a little time to talk to the women and purchase some of the items, the only problem was that you would then have to carry these items along the Inca trail and our bags were already overweight.
From Ccaccaccollo we headed over to Pisac, one of the best examples of the Inca agricultural terraces. In order to help increase the agricultural production, the Incas built thousands of agricultural terraces that can be seen throughout the Sacred Valley. Pisac in particular were the best built and took most of the thought. They built them on the east side of the mountain so as to better soak up the morning sunlight and remain warm throughout the day, thus increasing productivity. They also found the soil at the bottom of the valley was more fertile, and thus carried it up the hill to increase production. But after a few years they noticed that most of the nutrients had been taken out of the soil, so back to the valley floor (maybe a 10km hike) to get more soil to fill in the terraces. The amount of work here would have been incredible, but it worked.
At the top of the hill at Pisac is a ceremonial site where the Incas worshiped their four main gods: Earth, Wind, Sun and Water. It was also an important burial site at the top of the hill, so situated that the dead would be closer to the Sun god and reincarnation. When you look at the hill where the grave yard is, there are hundreds of holes where the Spanish broke in to rob the graves of gold, but found nothing. This is because this particular grave site was for the commoners, therefore no gold. Leaders, rich and holy people were buried in other, more ornate locations in the fetal position, unlike the commoners who were buried flat on their back (the thought here is that the leaders were going to be born again, and the commoners were going to just have to get back to work).After the ruins, we headed down to the town of Pisac to partake in their market day. With only 15 minutes to explore the market, there was no way to grasp the entire size of the market, although it wasn’t as big as Otavalo’s market in Ecuador. Once back in the bus we made our way to a small hacienda where we had a lovely lunch before our last jaunt in the bus to Ollantaytambo, our rest stop for the night.
Before we settled down for a rest at Ollantaytambo, we went to the ruins located in the middle of town, a lovely hike up many terraces, to learn about the purpose of the town, in particular its importance as one of the last stands of the Incas against the Spanish, which the Incas actually won. This site was not only a military site, but it is an example of Inca ingenuity. First off, the town itself still maintained the Inca style of construction, which included rivers of water going through the street so as to supply the town with water. What happened when they came to the main street in the town was move the water underground so that the siphon power would force the water back up on the other side of the main street and keep flowing. If this isn’t impressive enough, they had to find a way to supply their grain shed with water way up on the hill. They did this through the same siphon technique, but using a water source high enough to push the water up to that level .... from 10km away. The grain shed was high on the hill for a specific reason as well. There was wind up there to keep everything cool and refrigerated so that the food didn’t spoil for the town people.
Here, Mario (our guide for the Sacred Valley) told us about how the Incas got the large rocks up the hill (some weighing more than 20 tons). He said they built an incline, much like the Egyptians. Unlike the Egyptians, they didn’t use any wheels to bring the rocks up because if they broke, the rock would fly down the hill and they would have to start over again. Instead they developed a compound that they would spread along the road across which rocks moved (the quarry was at least 20km away ... in some places it was as much as 40km away, and they did all the carving and shaping of the rocks there) and when the rock stopped, the pressure of the rock would turn this compound into glue, and once they started moving again it would unstick and slide easily. Remarkably, considering the rocks were carved so far away, they fit together so closely that they didn’t need any mortar between the rocks, and you can’t slide a piece of paper between the rocks if you wanted to. They even knew how to arrange the rocks (slanted backwards and off centre from each other) to prevent issues with earthquakes. All in all, this society was incredibly advanced.
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