The Incas' Sacred Valley

The Sacred Valley of the Incas.

Andenería en Písac.

The Sacred Valley of the Incas, in the Peruvian Andes and on the edge of the jungle, is made up of numerous rivers that descend through ravines and small valleys; It has numerous archaeological monuments and indigenous towns. From the provinces of Urubamba and Calca.

This valley was highly appreciated by the Incas due to its special geographical and climatic qualities. It was one of the main points of production due to the richness of its lands and the place where the best grain of corn in Peru is produced.

In 2006, the Sacred Valley of the Incas was declared Cultural Heritage of the Nation.

Description

In the Sacred Valley of the Incas there are beautiful colonial towns that were created, and that today show their miscegenation in architecture, art and living culture. There are the towns of Chinchero and its weavers, Písac and its craft fair, Urubamba and its cosmopolitanism, Ollantaytambo, with its fortress and its living Inca people. And Maras Moray with its dazzling Salinaras, in these territories, of the Sacred Valley, various communities have created rural tourism and experiential tourism products that amaze locals and strangers. Each one of them is a world in itself, and together, they make up an unprecedented way of getting to know the most traditional region of the South American Andes.

Climate

The Sacred Valley of the Incas covers the northeast of Cusco, and has an elevation of 2000 to 2800 m a.s.l. no. m. (meters above sea level). For this reason, the valley has the best climate in the entire Cusco region, which varies during the day between 22 and 25 °C, and at night it reaches between 10 and 8 °C.

Location

The Sacred Valley of the Incas is located between the towns of Písac and Ollantaytambo, parallel to the Vilcanota River. You can access it from the city of Cusco.

Pisac

Architectural remains in the Sacred Valley.

The main square of Písac is an entertaining place full of color and with various items for sale. This town is famous for its astronomical observatory. Písaq is a mestizo town built on indigenous remains by the viceroy Francisco Álvarez de Toledo. In Písaq you can attend a mass in Quechua in the midst of indigenous people and varayocs or regional mayors. Likewise, it can be verified how the Inca agronomists solved the problem of planting on the slopes of the hills. In the typical market, it can be seen how the peasants who attend from different communities continue to use the barter system.

Pre-Columbian Cemetery

On the peaks of Písac remain the remains of a pre-Columbian cemetery, probably the largest found in America.

Sacsayhuaman

Sacsayhuamán or Saqsahuma is located at 3490 m a.s.l. no. m. and it is a very important archaeological center as it consists of many limestone constructions, which is one of the hardest rocks according to the MOHS scale.

Kenko

Qenko: Channel in zigzag.

Qenko's labyrinth with its zigzag channels and its stone moving to the center like an altar in front of which the worshipers of the Sun and Mother Earth possibly prostrated themselves.

Tambomachay

Tambomachay or Tampumachay is known for its canals and waterfalls that demonstrate the advances of Inca architects and hydraulic engineers. Tambomachay was considered a center of worship and homage to water.

Chinchero

It is a town that also preserves the style of the time. The tourist area is located there to buy objects, clothing, accessories, etc.

Maras

The importance of this town originates from the extraction of salt. Since the time of the Incas it was very important for the mineral, essential for human consumption. In colonial times, its importance continued, as evidenced by the large Jesuit community installed in the area: today you can appreciate the beautiful carved portals in the houses that belonged to the priests.

Similarly are the beautiful ruins of Moray. According to experts, it was a crop experimentation center used by the Incas for the acclimatization of products brought from other areas.

Moray

Here you can see four concentric circular stone constructions forming a kind of rings that widen as they ascend. Its buildings are supported by strong stone walls; around the main construction you can see platforms that form a kind of ironwork. There are those who believe that these constructions may have served as terraces or amphitheaters for civic-religious ceremonies and not only for agricultural use.

Ollantaytambo

View of Ollantaytambo.

The archaeological zone of Ollantaytambo is another monumental work of Inca architecture. It has been built on two mountains in a strategic place that dominates the entire valley. It constituted a military, religious, administrative and agricultural complex.

Entrance is through a door called Punku-punku, made of stone and with a double imperial jamb. It is the entrance to a city with a prestigious legend. You have to start climbing some rigorously well-designed stairs and at the top is the masterpiece of Inca architects and stonecutters.

Ollantaytambo is the only Inca city that remains almost intact and its houses still serve as homes where their descendants live. The design of the city, its axes, its urban structure, the beauty of the volumes and its play of light and shadow attract the visitor.

In the main temple there is a front with six pink granite monoliths brought from another place and perfectly assembled in the stone.

Plant fields on slopes

With slopes of 45 degrees, the Incas found the solution for their crops in Pisaq and other places: the terraces. These works of agricultural engineering are terraces two or three meters wide that were conditioned for planting. The platforms are so harmoniously designed that combinations of concentric semicircles can be seen on the slopes of the hills.

The Conquest of the Valley

The most notable settlers of antiquity were the Ayarmacas, people from the Altiplano, who settled in the valley, near Ollantaytambo, in search of better land for cultivation. Chroniclers refer to this people as the Tampus and they were related to the Incas in language and culture, which allowed them to retain a certain independence, which they kept until the arrival of the Inca Pachacútec, who conquered them, annexing the Tambo valley to his empire. What was it called at the time?

The second conquest of the valley, this time by Spanish hands, in 1536, turned the place into the scene of bloody chapters in the history of Peru, when the rebellion of Manco Inca, the last ruler of Tahuantinsuyu, who was imposed by the conquerors as a puppet-king. Upon learning of this, Manco Inca decided to revolt and entrenched himself in Ollantaytambo, from where he put the Spanish troops in check for 50 years.

Machu Picchu

From southern Quechua machu pikchu ("Old Pyramid Mountain") is the contemporary name given to a stone llaqta (ancient Inca settlement) built mainly in the mid-century XV on the rocky promontory that joins the mountains Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu on the eastern slope of the Central Andes, southern Peru. Its original name would have been Picchu or Picho.

According to documents from the mid-century XVI, Machu Picchu would have been one of the resting places of Pachacútec (first emperor Inca, 1438-1470). However, some of its best constructions and the evident ceremonial character of the main access road to the llaqta would show that it was used as a religious sanctuary. Both uses, that of a palace and that of a sanctuary, would not have been incompatible. Some experts seem to have ruled out, instead, a supposed military character, which is why the popular descriptions of "fortress" or "citadel" could have been outclassed

Adventure tourism

The varied and original decoration of the snow-capped mountains, flowery meadows, deep blue lagoons with original flora and fauna make the Valley the main base for adventure tourism in South America.

The Urubamba River passes through Písac. In this area the river is not very mighty, sometimes reaching 25 m wide and, although it is gentle in most of its course, there are torrential sectors used by intrepid tourists for canoeing.