Frolicking with the Alpacas

Monday morning started early due to a long day at planned at the Saqsayhuaman site. We obtained a rather small bus and the bus assistant insisted all eleven of us could fit. We packed into the bus like sardines and headed toward Cristo Blanco. Upon being the only ones left on the bus, the bus driver knew exactly where we were headed. We walked down the dirt road and got our cards checked and papers stamped. Our first discussion consisted of the vast methods of irrigation the Incas used. There were straight cuts made into the walkway to allow water to drain. The sizes of the cuts varied, but they were all straight as an arrow. We dissected any correlation between the direction of the channel and the sun rise. One canal seemed to be pointing at where the sun would rise at some point during the year. Some other cuts were in the side of the hills and were used as storm drains to prevent flooding. Next, we talked about the edifice of stone walls. Some stones were meticulously cut to allow perfect fitment between stones. The level of craftsmanship concerning the construction of the wall is second to none. Some upside down jug-like embossments were hypothesized to have been used to hoist the massive stones into place using brute force. The stones would be stacked using some sort of pulley system driven by a team of animals. The biggest stones would be on the bottom of the lowest level of terraces. These stones, weighing who knows how much, were easily the size of a shipping container and most likely used a system of rollers to get them in place. The shapes of most rocks were rectal linear especially the larger ones, but other stones varied between pentagons, triangles, and all kinds of rough polygon shapes. Most rocks were worked on four of the five sides that were visible. The front side was smoothly rounded near the edges of the stone and left raw in the middle of the front side. The Incas would have to use small tools to obtain tight fitment as they did.

After following a long trail with an irrigation canal by our side we came to the edge of the cliff with an erected giant cross. We took a break for pictures and to talk about the city of Cusco while we could see a majority of it. Dr. Brown explained oriented us with the plazas and squares we have seen thus far as well as explaining to us the original shape of the city. The city was initially shaped like a puma, but outgrew its shape to consume the valley floor and the bottom of the hillsides.

Later ruins entailed some interesting details. There were imperial style bricks as well as the less worked stone all within the same area. The imperial style bricks were very smooth and flat allowing me to infer that a greater deal of time was taken to execute the acts of creating these bricks. The regular stones would have taken a long time to cut as well, but not as much as the more angular imperial style. A suspicious observation brought on by Dr. Brown’s encouragement was that some groupings of stones made long straight lines. These lines possibly could point towards a bearing or aim towards a constellation. As we approached a stone staircase leading to a field of alpacas, we observed something we were told to look out for; circular objects. As a reminder, rounded stones and structures have great significance in the Andean culture because they typically point out something high value. In this case, the staircase made a gradual left turn and some of the big block stones had curved corners. The rounded corners were very flush and took lots of work to obtain such a look of perfection.

After a twenty minute break of frolicking through the fields with alpacas and taking pictures we ascended a large straight staircase above the quarry. We observed big hunks of stone where obvious blocks would have been extracted. I questioned how the Incas cut out rocks with efficiency due to how they moved up certain rocks at angles rather than using a three dimensional grid cut to have no left overs. Somewhere in this lost in thought moment we came across a rock slide. It was next to a cut where a nearly perfect imperial brick was extracted. The slide was quite slick and worked better than effected. After a few more paces we came across the motherload of rock slides. After some fooling around we gathered some sense and ventured back onto the field and headed for Cristo Blanco. During the short hike to the massive white figurine of Jesus, we crossed a very large and perfectly straight irrigation canal that was bigger than any others. My hypothesis of a central canal collecting all the water at a lower elevation was correct! This canal led to a small waterfall and cliff side headed for Cusco. At Cristo Blanco we looked out over the city of Cusco and enjoyed blissful weather!

Viva Peru!

~JH