Ollantaytambo

The Ollantaytambo fortress was a sight to see. While we've seen a few terraces throughout our trip, it was cool to be able to walk on them and see them up close. I probably wouldn't have noticed the stone steps that lead from one terrace to the other if we didn't get the chance to get close. It also put the terraces in perspective. Even though we talked a lot about the size and complexity of them, it was completely different to see it up close in person.

Another cool thing to see up close was the irrigation system in place. The first of it we saw was a drain that lead into a pool that had a hole at the bottom that lead to another drain. From here we lost the trail, but it looked like another drain would've connected to another pool that lead to another drain down the side of the terrace. What really got me was when we got to bottom of ruins and we saw all the pools. The amount of work to get the water to all those pools would have required a good bit of thought.

The Incas were all about planning and thinking and can easily be seen in sights like Ollantaytambo. The huge rocks that make up buildings and the buildings built off the edge of mountains challenges nature and the Incas clearly won. What helped them was the situation of Ollantaytambo being in a valley near the Urubamba river. When the river flooded it helped fertilize the ground, similar to the flooding of the fertile crescent way back when. With such good land, Ollantaytambo became the breadbasket for the Incas.

We also explored another set of ruins on a different mountain side that I enjoyed. While I wasn't a big fan of climbing the slopes of Ollantaytambo (seriously those Incas must've had calves of steel), I liked taking the steps up the other ruins. I'm not quite sure why but those smaller ruins were more fun to explore, possibly because it wasn't as big of a tourist attraction.