The Sacred Valley of the Incas

On the Way to Urubamba

After a few days in Cusco we started to the highlight of our journey: the forgotten Inca town of Machu Picchu. To honour the mystic and uniqueness of the place we took our time for it. The first day we started with Luchin and his girlfriend Susan to the Valley of the Urubamba river, generally known as the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Already the sixty something kilometres journey to the small town of the same name as the river is an adventure. You start from Cusco already at an altitude of about 3300 meters climbing up on the altiplano at about 4000 m.a.s.l. The tremendously scenic road winds in uncountable curves over the rugged high plateau which is covered by meadows, maize fields, eucalypt trees and lagoons in between which small villages with clay houses tiled with red bricks are dotted. Eventually a huge Andes range of impressive glacier covered peaks appears on the horizon covering it in its entity when coming closer. Just before you think to crash into the enormous peaks the plateau suddenly steeply falls down to the sacred valley and the town of Urubamba. From there we went a few kilometres on until we reached the small village where Luchin´s family run a small, nice restaurant which is specialized in guinea pigs and chicha the maize beer of the Incas which nowadays is Peru´s most famous drink, apart from pisco and Inca Kola. The latter is a bright yellow lemonade with an incredibly chemical taste of bubblegum. Nevertheless it is one of the few local drinks in the world which in it´s country sells even better than Coca Cola. (Which is why Coca Cola bought half of the company decades ago.)

So here in the lovely garden of that restaurant we were hearty welcomed by Luchin´s mother as well as numerous aunts, uncles and cousins. And it was time to try one of Peru´s best known delicacy: guinea pig. It was accompanied by potatoes (for sure), a noodle casserole and home made chicha with strawberries. It is definitely a good meat, low fat, tasty, just many bones for that amount of meat. We also were introduced into the secrets of chicha production and guinea pig breeding. After this tasty, hearty and interesting visit we went on to the village of Ollantaytambo half an hour downriver. This is an ancient Inca settlement what for the streets are narrow and cobbled. Small one floored clay houses are built on the fundament of Inca walls and in the village itself and on the steep slopes of the surrounding mountains everything is full with Inca ruins. You can find a bridge, an archway, a castle, temples, granaries and the impressive rests of many more buildings. We walked around the village a while before Luchin and Susan went back to Luchin´s family. Inés and I searched for a hostel and then kept on exploring town. As it came out the whole village was at a bull fight on a field at the edge of the settlement. There was an atmosphere like at a folk festival with musicians playing, traditionally dressed women selling food, children playing around and people exchanging news of the day or discussing about the bull fights. All around the place there may have been about thirty bulls awaiting their turn while always two of them did a fight inside a circle of people. It occurred that some now and then an escaping bull run straight through the crowd causing fleeing people all over the field.

When the spectacle turned to an end Inés and I took some drinks on the roof terrace of a friendly bar. While wondering about all the great things we had lived today people and bulls started to go home from the arena. Crowds of people came by, the bands playing and mainly young boys of up to not more than 15 years leading the immense bulls each one of may have weighed almost a ton through the narrow streets of the village in between cars, tourists, handicraft shops and street cafes as if the animals were small dogs. Full of impressions I fell into a deep dreamless sleep this night.

Early the next morning I stood up to walk to some of the close ruins. I climbed the steep path and enjoyed the perfectly constructed buildings, amazing views of the village and the surrounding mountains and the sunrise with a morning joint. Sitting there below some ancient granaries overlooking the sacred valley I felt a deep admiration for that incredible mountain people of the Inca.

Later in the morning a small bus picked us up to bring us to a hydroelectric plant from where we would have to walk to Machu Picchu. The bus ride was the next incredibly impressive adventure. A few kilometres after Ollantaytambo the road leaves the Urubamba valley winding up in various hairpin turns to a mountain pass at an altitude of 4300 m.a.s.l. just to fall down on it´s other side to the Urubamba valley again which over there has an altitude of just 1200 m.a.s.l. Driving over the pass the landscape changes drastically. While going up you drive through a dry valley with mainly grass covered mountains around and trees just next to the water streams. We passed by as close as we never did before huge glaciers and rocky giants of almost 6000 metres of altitude next to the pass, just to descend after it into an evergreen valley of jungle forest where bananas, coffee and cocoa are growing. All few kilometres you can see archeological sites of Inca ruins up to the most incredible altitudes where still today people are living in lonesome settlements. When we reached the river Urubamba again at the village of Santa Maria I was already totally stunned by these truly unbelievable landscapes, but there was still more to come. From Santa Maria the bus took a single track gravel road upriver again. Soon the valley formed a deep narrow gorge where the road was adventurously constructed into the almost vertical walls of the canyon about 300 metres above the riverbed. Inés who was sitting next to the driver almost died of fear on that part of the journey. After quite some time on that suicidal road ( with an even more suicidal driver) when I already started to think where the hell we are going to, we reached the village of Santa Teresa which appeared after a curve right out of nowhere at a place where the valley suddenly broadened again. From Santa Teresa where we used the lunch break not only to fill our stomachs but even to relief from the death ride we had been through the road went on - less frightening now but not less amazing - along the river Urubamba which seems to angrily run down here in between and around rocks as high as apartment buildings maybe 15 kilometres until we finally reached the hydroelectric plant where this amazing bus ride ended.