Pisac

We were up at 8 this morning and by 9 we had packed, found ourselves a S1 coffee and had walked to the area outside the market where all the collectivos gather. We managed to get ourselves a ride to Urubamba where we changed for a rather bumpy bus trip the rest of the way to Pisac, another typical Inca town with waterways incorporated into the design and cobbled pavements. After looking around for a while we found another hostel for S15 each ($5), dumped our bags and went out to explore more ruins! The walk through the town to where the entrance to the site began was quite pretty, within a lot of the cobbles designs, pictures and patterns had been formed as well as their being reliefs on the walls of some buildings of sacred animals such as the Puma, Condor or Serpent. We walked through the usual tourist market selling the normal stuff and Andy stopped to buy a new T shirt which we got for a good price but had to wait for the guy to go and find some change for. As we looked up at the entrance to the ruins all we could see was more steps leading up to more terraces, the trail goes up and around the side of the mountain and even though we huffed and puffed getting up there, the views were spectacular. We had a beautiful sunny day with a light breeze and once we got around the first bend in the zig zagging path we could see all down the length of the valley with Pisac nestled in the bottom. The more we climbed the better the views got, with each turn in the path revealing more of the other valleys around and eventually the ruins! This site is not one set of ruins but is comprised of several different structures across a distance of about 5km, some are really well made and preserved with the exemplary stonemasonary we've seen elsewhere, others are much rougher seeming to be of less importance and much smaller than the best buildings. We had been chatting with a guy from Germany on the way up but split away from him at a juncture to the first set of ruins, deciding for some odd reason to go up the hard way and said we'd see him at the top later. We climbed yet more steps, these ones straight, narrow and steep to get to what appeared to be some kind of lookout point and had a well deserved rest and picture stop (photos are a great excuse for a breather!!) before having a look around. This turned out to be a false summit and we could see more ruins above us at the top of another set of terraces. Climbing again but getting slower the higher we went, we came to another couple of small lookout ruins before things flattened out a bit and we reached what must be the principal ruins, those with the good stonework and regular sized buildings. Here we met our German friend again who told us we had missed some good ruins round the side of the mountain so we decided we would descend that way so as to take them in. We parted once more and we continued up again on the search for a tunnel through the mountain we'd seen on the map, before we reached it however we came across what would have been a cool set of ruins to clamber around except for the obnoxious group of latino tourists who were there. One of the men was urinating against the side of the ruins while the rest were shouting, posing for pictures and generally being a bunch of yobs...quite a contrast from the rest of the time here where all we'd heard was the hauntingly tranquil notes of someone playing a traditional Andean flute up in the hills. We quickly left them behind and were shortly rewarded (after MORE steps) by coming to the tunnel which appears to be quite natural as well as dark and clearly used by smaller people than modern day man! Once through to the other side yet another vista opened itself up to us, the most impressive set of terraces we've seen yet being not only enormous but arranged in a huge curve like an ampitheatre across the hillside. We now understood why we'd suddenly started to meet more tourists than earlier on...these ruins can be reached by a long winding road via taxi from Pisac and cuts out 90% of the climbing aspect, therefore all those too fat, lazy or old/young to manage the Inca trail pay to come this way instead. Having seen plenty of ruin buildings already and knowing that we currently had the best view of the terraces from where we stood (we could see everything, including the work going on to restore some of them near the bottom) we decided not to go any further as we'd have to double back on ourselves anyway to see the ruins the german had told us about and so took more photos and went back through the Inca tunnel. After bumping into a couple who we stopped and chatted with for 1/2hr or so about our different travels we started descending to the last set of ruins, the ones we'd missed on the way up and soon found ourselves in a deserted site (too much effort for most tourists clearly) where the bottom half of the massive walls was of excellent quality whereas the top half was clearly a more recent addition and was very rough indeed. We spent some time looking round before deciding it was getting late and we should head back down to Pisac before it got dark, the journey down taking considerably less time than on the way up but with the same consequence as Machu Pichu, wobbly knees!! Finally reaching the bottom we made our way past a restaurant called the Blue Llama which we'd been told serves 'all you can eat pancakes' for breakfast (perfect for the morning!) and after finding our way back to the hostel to shower and change, went out once more to search for dinner. Luckily a place we'd seen as we passed on the bus was still open and we got 3 rapidly served courses and a jug of pineapple juice for S5 each...thats about £1!! and there was a choice of main dishes too!! Dinner being so ridiculously cheap we had to treat ourselves to rather expensive in comparison cheesecake at an overpriced tourist place recommended in the guide book. It was soooo worth it though...Kahlua Cheesecake..absolutely delicious!! Very full, we decided we should go and find the bus station ready for the morning and once again bumped into our german friend from earlier who it turns out is in the same hostel as us and we ended up going out for a drink with him until about 10 when we called it a night and went back to the hostel to bed.