For our morning excursion, we went with our guide, Alvin, to the lower part of the site to avoid the crowds. It’s certainly a magical moment when you first see the whole thing. .
As we scrambled around, Alvin explained a lot about the history of the site and about how the first “scientific” discovery was by Hiram Bingham in 1911.
By all accounts this was a thriving community during the period of the Inca Empire which lasted from around 1200 to 1500AD. It was home to several thousand people and was an agricultural, religious and astranomical center. It was accessed by several Inca Trails all the way back to Cusco (the Inca capital). In fact, through a series of mountain top signals, messages could be relayed back and forth to Cusco in 5 minutes. Relays of runners would also carry messages back and forth.
The series of terraces were much more than was needed to sustain the population and speculation is that they used them to acclimatize plants to higher altitudes and to grow specific varieties that could flourish in the city. Including, and probably especially, coca.
We wandered through buildings that were used for people’s homes, for storage, workshops and worship. We noticed that the lower parts were put together with great precision and the upper parts were mostly stones roughly put together - a strategy used by later Incas to finish the place off in a hurry before the Spaniards arrived.
All the terraces still had the original drainage and was so sophisticated that no erosion has occurred in all the time it has been around.
We met a few friends along the way.
We returnd briefely for lunch and waited for things to cool down and the crowds to disappear before venturing out again.