Ollantaytambo

Have you ever slept in a train station? I mean where the hotel is the train station?
In Ollantaytambo you can with all the comforts! They even have a gourmet restaurant inside.

This is a picture of Elena at the entrance of the hotel. The window above was the window of our room.
This is the view from our room.....

Ok, you wake up at 6.40 when the first train heading to Machu Picchu arrives, but then you can enjoy over 7 hrs sleep, since the last train is at 11.20 pm.....trust us, we know it...: )
On the day of our arrival the whole town was in turmoil, as Mick Jagger, the leader of the Rolling Stones was coming through on his way to Machu Picchu.
This is a link to the Peruvian Times news paper to read the whole article about his visit.
http://www.peruviantimes.com/14/rolling-stones-front-man-mick-jagger-arrives-at-machu-picchu/13998/
He kind of stole our thunder as he also was there to promote preservation of nature. Go on Mick, good man!

While Mick was getting soaked by the rain and by the crowd at Macchu Picchu on Friday we enjoyed the sun in Ollantaytambo visiting the ruins.
We hired a guide for 2 hrs and we think it was £10 really well spent.
These ruins are pre-Inca, the whole temple has been carved inside the mountain.

The terraces were probably cultivated with all variety of crops coming from all the corners of the empire.

The location was strategically chosen as the point of encounter of 3 valleys.
The temple was magnificent as it had to have a psychological influence on the communities coming from the 3 valleys.
These are the views of the 3 valleys from the top of the temple:

(Picture 1 Sun Temple + valley behind)

Picture 2 (Ollantaytambo village + valley behind)

(Picture 3 fortressess on cliff + 3rd valley behind)

The Sun Temple (pictute 1 above)  was constructed with huge granite boulders. The stone quarry is named Kachiqhata (Salt Slope) and is located about 4 km (2.5 miles) away on the other side of the valley, by the upper side of the opposite south-western mountains. (picture 1) The boulders were carved partially in the quarries, and taken down to the valley's bottom. In order to cross the river, Quechuas constructed an artificial channel parallel to the natural river bed that served for deviating the river's water according to conveniences. Therefore, while that water flowed through one channel the other was dry, thus stones could be taken to the other side of the valley. More over, the boulders were transported to the upper spot where the temple is erected using the inclined plane that is something like a road which silhouette is clearly seen from the valley's bottom. They had the help of log rollers or rolling stones as wheels, South-American cameloids' leather ropes, levers, pulleys, and the power of hundreds and even thousands of men.

In the picture below you can see the monolith with 2 holes (bottom right) where the rolling stones were insterted and one hole on the left for the levers.

Some of these blocks are huge (50 tons) , like the one where Elena is posing here, and they were not positionned properly in the temple. The likelyhood is that the temple was unfinished due to the arrival of spanish troups.

The building technique however was the part that struck us the most.

The walls were built with 5 degrees of inclination. Stones were carved and placed together only using the force of gravity.

As you can see on the Wall of the 6 monotyth they used to place a thin layer of rock between big blocks to act as cushion in the event of earthquakes.

When in 1650 the town of Cusco was struck by a violent earthquake, an emissary went back to the spanish court bringing 2 bad news to the king. The first was that all the churches had been completely distroyed, the second was that all the indigenous temples were completely unscattered.

At the end of our tour we went for a quick climb to visit the fortresses at the other side of the valley.

We really enjoyed our visit to Ollantaytambo. If you ever plan to go to Machu Picchu make sure you have enough time to stop here first.