More ruins??? sheesh...

Yup! More ruins! We can't get enough of them down here...

North of Cusco lies Pisac, a small town with a large Inca Ruins above it on the hill. The town square has been permanently turned into a crafts market, which looks exactly like every other crafts market around... We stayed at a nice hostal that housed not only people, but the cutest baby alpaca in the world... I've done the research believe me. It wandered around the inner courtyard and whined alot... but man was it soft and cute. We tried taking it's picture but the best one we got was this blurry one.

The next day we wokeup and hiked the hill behind the town to the Ruins. It was a neat hike up a small gorge with lots and lots of Inca Terraces the whole way up. The whole site was basically small pueblitos that looked after the many agricultural terraces. At the top was a pretty neat temple with a few local guides that would wander around playing bamboo flutes. We got there early enough to beat the hordes from Cusco, and sitting on a Inca carved bench rock, with bamboo flute echoing hauntingly off the stonework, was a perfect way to enjoy the sunny morning. The terraces were very large, and looked like they could feed the whole Inca Empire. Not only are they still around, but there was even some working aquaducts for irrigation, proof that it all worked really well. We finished off the day with a nap on one of the shady terraces before heading back down to town.

We took a bus that afternoon down the Sacred Valley to Ollantaytambo, another Inca ruins, that functioned as a temple and then a fortress. It was very humbling, as some of the rocks that were at the top of the hill, were bigger than a mini van. They were supposedly quarried 6km away, and moved across a river (by diverting it), up a hill, and painstakingly carved to perfection. Not a piece of paper would fit between. The whole experience of standing beside those rocks makes you wonder what things from OUR culture people in 500 years will travel around and look at. I can't think of one thing that wont look like cracked concrete and weeds. We lazed around the sight, checking out the really cool baths (that still have running water), before heading back to Cusco.

Deciding we'd had enough Inca culture, we left Cusco for Puno which is on Lake Titicaca, only to go visit some Inca burials today. Sillustani was a pre-inca and Inca burial site with gigantic funeral towers. We took the non tourist route again today, catching a packed mini-bus, then switching into the trunk of a combi with 2 other people. We made quite a few local friends on their way to and from Puno, (hard not to when you are sitting on their lap) and enjoyed the trip there and back almost as much as the ruins. The funery towers, or chullpas, are ginormous stone things that people were burried in, with lots of food and pottery (for the next life). The only way in was a tiny hole that you had to crawl through to get into. We snuck into one, creeeepy!

Tomorrow we go to Bolivia, but not before seeing the Temple of Fertility... supposed to be very interesting according to one lady we met today. heheheheh