Peru, Days 12-13: Ollantaytambo

Following our tour of the Pisaq ruins, we stopped for lunch, then continued to Ollantaytambo, a spectacular display of Inca fortress ruins above the modern Ollantaytambo town, which is known as a “living museum” because of all the Inca roadways and foundations that still exist there (visit the link for lots of great info). At the fortress, we learned a bit about how the Incas were able to construct their amazing walls of rock. Well, a bit of the mystery was solved, anyway. Apparently, Peruvian granite is a little different than Canadian granite. The Peruvian granite fractures naturally. Of course these fractures don’t result in factory-perfect carvings (which is what they look like), so the Incas were indeed masters at their craft. But what they’d do is insert wood wedges between the natural fractures in the rock, then cause the wood to “swell” by saturating it with water. As the wood would swell, the fractures would become more deep, etc., etc. But the help of the wood doesn’t explain the perfection of Incan archictecture displayed in some of the walls. You’ll see what I mean when we get to Machu Picchu.

In the meantime, the Ollantaytambo ruins were breathtaking. Like many ruins we visited, including Machu Picchu, the fortress was never finished. It’s hard to finish a structure like this when it takes hundreds of years and thousands of men to build and the Spaniards from long ago were intent on taking over your world. I could talk and talk and not explain how amazing it is to climb all over these ruins. So let’s just look at some pictures.

Following Ollantaytambo, we were dropped off at our hotel and tried to enjoy a nice dinner in the dining room (I won’t expand on the “tried.” Let’s just the Peruvian idea of how to prepare beef tenderloin and mine are not at all the same). The DH had alpaca. I tried a mouthful. It wasn’t bad!