There is a very special town in the heart of Peru called Ollantaytambo.
It dates back to Inca times and earlier, and it's still occupied today by the Quechua natives,
part of a cultural group found throughout many South American countries.
These people are the descendants of the Inca and still live a somewhat traditional life
based on farming.
And now tourism has become a very popular destination for visitors, commonly called
Ollanta.
This village is like a living museum and a wonderful place to visit.
The town is famous for the massive prehistoric stone terraces rising up the hillside and
the Inca temple on top.
It was the site of the final decisive battle between the Spanish conquistadors and the
Inca in 1537.
We will climb up it and have a closer look later in the program.
Well, Ollantaytambo is located about midway between Cusco and Machu Picchu in the Urubamba
Valley in the highlands of Peru.
That makes it a convenient place to stop for a few hours on your way from Cusco to Machu
Picchu.
Or you could spend the night in Ollanta in a small hotel.
You can travel from Cusco to Ollanta by train.
But in our case, we came by bus through the highlands of the altiplano, beautiful scenery
along the way, passing some villages and very high altitude farmland with the Andes Mountains
in the background.
Driving across the Altiplano here, it reaches as high as 12,500 feet high, and there's villages
scattered through the area.
There are farming at some of the highest farmlands in the world, growing mostly potatoes up here,
passing some lakes and other scenic landscapes as we go, watching people doing some farming
and getting our pictures and snaps as we drive along.
And then we're approaching the valley of Uurubamba.
The bus ride from Cusco was very scenic and just takes about one hour.
Arriving in the village of Ollanta, greeted by friendly vendors.
We'll come back to a little later for some shopping.
We will instead of walking this way, please.
We are touring the village with our guide Elgar, who took us on a walk and explained
some history.
This town is considered one of the best examples in Inca Urban Plan, and you can see how straight
these treets, also look up over there and look up there.
Until now, there are many people living in these places and still they keep the original
order, meaning the time.
It was mainly for irrigation and it was for the daily use.
But now it is mainly irrigation because in neighboring towns they have running water,
but they never, ever contaminated the water when it was sacred.
It was called.
Now the town has regular plumbing and running water inside the houses, and they still use
the water channels for irrigating the farmlands all around it.
The residents are living in stone houses, some of which date back to the Inca days.
A few of the homes welcome visitors so you can go inside and have a look around.
Typical of the area, many of the houses have an open courtyard behind the protecting wall.
Inside, we have a glimpse at some traditional cooking, and you'll be surprised to see a
bunch of guinea pigs running around on the dirt floor.
They're raising them in the kitchen because eventually they are going to be a meal.
The cuy or the Guinea Pig is one of the national dishes of Peru.
They feed them with grass cuttings from the farms that they tend in the areas all around
the village.
And there's even a young mama nursing her brood here.
You can see this is quite the farm right in the kitchen.
There's also cats with their kittens.
It's really a special treat to walk inside one of the locals houses like this.
It's much more interesting than just simply walking past it on the outside, down one of
those stone lanes.
And our guide, Elga, tells us about various items inside the house.
Quinoa, maybe you have these or you saw this before.
Always dry.
It is quinoa.
These skulls, they borrowed from the same entities.
Mainly they brought these skulls because they believed this one would protect the family.
This is one of the examples of one of the tools they had, a stone hammer without handles.
The stonemason, depending on their skills, they used to use the stone hammer to split
up the rocks.
The way local farmers traditionally plow the field is with the foot plow, an ancient implement
that requires a lot of hard work, mostly for growing the traditional crops of potatoes
and maize.
If you like to buy some souvenirs that are some local so that there's something.
Yes, if you want.
They have a few little objects for sale.
You could pick up a wooden flute or a woolen hat.
There's small little dolls.
All of these are handmade in Peru.
Locally, you could buy them in the stores, but much nicer to buy them directly from a
source here in the home.
A favorite local drink is chicha.
It's a kind of beer made from corn and very tasty.
You'll get a little buzz and they make it right here in the Cheecheria.
And you'll have a chance to chat with the kids.
They're always eager to have their photograph taken in return for a small tip, a nice photo
with the kids, and you'd enjoy that as well.
And then, surprisingly, the modern age shows up in the midst of these ancient structures.
It's kids in an Internet game room having fun.
Continuing with our guide, who pointed out some impressive stone structures on the hillside.
It's a large complex built by the Inca.
That was a graineries back in the ancient days.
It was a place to store food, especially potatoes.
And because of the way it was constructed, the potatoes were nicely preserved by the
wind blowing through.
It was cool and breezy, which made it almost like a freeze dried storage area.
Several structures nearby were for storing other items such as textiles and weapons.
After visiting this fascinating little village, you'll want to be sure to walk over to the
massive terraced hillside, a prehistoric structure that was built even before the time of the
Inca, and then later during the Inca time, more structures were added using that amazing
cut stone technique of the Inca, where the stones fit perfectly together, and they created
a temple to the sun up on top.
And this climb is especially worthwhile because the stonework that we're seeing here at this
Ollantaytambo ceremonial area gets better and better.
As you climb to the top, the stones get larger and more beautifully cut and more perfectly
fit together.
And you can stop and rest along the way if you're having any difficulty climbing, there's
no rush, so you might as well take a hike and enjoy the site to the utmost.
It's called a fortress because during the Spanish conquest in 1537, the last Inca king
had a battle with the Spanish soldiers.
This final leader was Manco Inca.
He won the battle with the Spanish, but he knew the Spanish would keep attacking with
more powerful weapons.
And so he retreated further into the jungles to Villcabamba, reputedly the last refuge
of the Inca.
It's called the fortress because of the battle that was held here.
And yet it was not constructed originally as a fortress.
It was a terrace, hillside that was built to shore up the hills so it wouldn't fall
down on the village.
And also for growing crops as agricultural terraces, these were carefully constructed
with different layers of soil brought in.
As our guide explains.
And underneath laid here.
And these layers are mainly big rocks.
The second layer has gravel, the third layer is sand.
The last where we are is soil, dirt.
But you imagine the labor to build the wall, then to fill, to bring sand because sand they
could bring or from the river banks or if not from the Pacific Ocean, and build soil.
These terraces were quite practical, building farmland on a steep hillside, and then it
gradually evolved to take on more meaning.
It became an important spiritual place with the Incas coming in and building their temple
to the sun on top.
And so it was a very sacred area where the very finest of all the crops were offered
to the gods, not a fortress at all.
This climb to the top is a physical challenge, no doubt.
But it's one of those things when you're traveling that you just have to dig in and do it because
the effort is definitely worthwhile when you reach that top and gain the reward of seeing
the beautiful temple of the sun -- there are six huge rectangular stone blocks making up
the main part of the temple.
The largest of the monoliths is over four meters high and two meters wide, located at
about the highest area of the entire place.
We can see the excellent quality stonework in these masterpieces of Inca engineering
carved in dense stone, brought here from miles away with numerous pieces left unfinished.
As our guide explains about some of the finer details.
This doorway was in progress and is really interesting to show you because you can see
how they work, the angles, the shape, trapezoid, doorway.
You can see that indentations work and you can see the accurate, interlocking.
Engineers and architects consider these work handles.
There is an indentation on this.
Also, they could set some kind of crowbars or hard sticks to lean in order to work or
to get the accurate angles to fit.
We certainly enjoyed the visit.
It's a lot easier walking down these steps, but in hindsight the climb up was well worth
it.
So, for
the marketplace.
It's a much more authentic and satisfying experience.
Rather than going into a store in a mall, in a big city, here you're dealing directly
with people and their products are part of a family network of making, distributing and
selling.
These are very skilled salespeople who are going to convince you to purchase something.
And later, you'll be very glad that you did, helping the local economy while bringing home
some memorable items.
We have seen a lot in our visit to Ollantaytambo . Now it's time to move along, but the shopping's
not over yet.
There are some merchants along the roadway, so we stop and see what we can buy from them.
It's another chance to buy some homemade items from the people who actually made them.
After visiting this wonderful village of Ollantaytambo, we continue in the Urubamba Valley to spend
the night at the Hotel Posada del Inca, and we arrive in the evening, spend the night.
This is a lovely spot.
It's a former monastery for nuns.
They have some original cloisters still here on the property.
There's a chapel.
It seems like a small village, the way it's laid out.
And in the morning, they put on a wonderful breakfast.
You can get eggs cooked to order fruits, coffee rolls, breads, cereals and those customized
omelets fortified with this fabulous breakfast.
We're beginning our days journey.
We're going to Machu Picchu today, so stay tuned and we will soon bring you to Machu
Picchu in a future program with a very detailed look at this fabulous site.