End of the Tour

We spent a few days of our vacation in Ollantaytambo. This made the most of our travels. It was more impressive to us than Machu Picchu but that could be because we had a better tour guide here than we did at Machu Picchu.

Inca Architecture

Across from the temple, on the opposite mountain, is a grain store house. The thought behind why the incas would have build a grain storage so high up a mountain is that the moisture was less and the grain would have lasted longer.

On this same mountain, the incas carved faces into the mountain surface. Below is the face of a bearded man with a crown on something on his head.

This bearded man is believed to be a traveler from Bolivia that brought grain and technology to the people of Ollantaytambo. The Tiahuanaco people in Bolivia had this stone carving and water technology prior to Ollantaytambo and Machu Pichuu. In the picture below, the bearded man is carrying a big bag on his back along with the grain store house.

In the picture below, you can see the profile of an inca emperor. When you look at this mountain, it seems there could be a lot more faces carved into it if you look long enough.

stone structure continued

Here is more carvings on the pink granite.




Here is the inca three levels (heaven, earth and underworld).

The guide showed us that the quary for the pink granite was at that mountain peak across the valley.

The stone would someone be taken from the quarry, brought down to the valley, then the incas would damn part of the river with and island in the middle. They would damn one side of the island so that the water would flow on the opposite side. Then they would move the boulders onto the island, un-damn the river and then damn the opposite side of the river and then bring the boulders across and up to the temple. This is all impressive and pretty unbelievable.

More structure

Our guide pointed out that the incas always contured their construction to the layout of the land. In the first photo, you can see existing structure was built on top of with the pink granite instread of removing it. When looking around the temple, you will find different levels of complexity on the stones used for the structure. Some stones are just picked and placed while others were custom cut. The more complex cuts are the newer additions.

What's amazing about these pink granite rocks is that they are huge and were brought here from the next mountain over. In the images below, you can see some shapes protruding from the face of the blocks. It is believed that these were puma faces that were destroyed by the spanish priests. Peru use to have earthquakes and so the incas build relief joints into the wall.