Peru’s Sacred Valley
Steeped in myth and legend, Peru’s Sacred Valley is a place where diligent toil pays dividends – and where visitors are gifted with an unforgettable insight into the evolving face of a historic culture Michael Raffael takes a hike into an ancient world
Legend has it that the Incans built their capital Cusco in the shape of a puma. Its fortress citadel Sacsayhuamán formed the head and its snout pointed towards the Valle Sagrado, the Sacred Valley. On the map, this starts as a narrow rift following the Urubamba River meandering towards Machu Picchu, 100 kilometres away. En route it passes through Spanish colonial settlements such as Pisac, Lamay and Ollantaytambo. The image, however seductive, can be misleading. Beyond the town of Urubamba, the valley opens up into a vast sierra. In the rainy season it’s green, turning purple with quinoa. During the dry season – when Quechua people till the burnt ochre soil with teams of oxen – it’s an empty High Plains Drifter landscape. Moray, an agricultural amphitheatre of terraces, and the crazy paving of the saltpans at Maras tell a more vivid story of Inca life than temples, pyramids and palaces ever could.
“Farmers toil side by side, digging plots where they can grow potatoes, maize or quinoa. Their system, which they call
‘minca,’ translates roughly as ‘Today I work for you; tomorrow you work for me’.”
Patabamba, a commune of 100 Quechuan families, looks down on the river. Reaching it is a 40 minute scrabble along a winding dirt track. Here is where the tourist trail hits the buffers. ‘Don’t be lazy,’ ‘Don’t lie and ‘Don’t steal’ were the three Incan precepts. In the village, life revolves around them. At 4,000 metres above sea level, farming doesn’t involve ox and plough. The handkerchief size parcels of land are worked by hand.
Farmers toil side by side, digging plots where they can grow potatoes, maize or quinoa. Their system, which they call ‘minca,’ translates roughly as ‘Today I work for you; tomorrow you work for me.’ What binds the social order on the land also applies when they build houses from adobe bricks.
To celebrate a birth or a harvest, they prepare pachamanca, or earth pot. They heat up a pyramid of loose stones over a fire and when they’re hot enough, the master cook brushes them with salty water before dismantling the roof. In the ashes underneath he buries potatoes and meat, before covering again with the hot stones, then a layer of aromatic grass, and finally earth.
The women here weave for a living. In Cusco, traditional Peruvian ponchos are factory-made but in Patabamba they painstakingly card, spin and dye the wool by hand. Each poncho sold will have earned them around 25 pence per hour.
Pisac’s main square is packed with stalls selling Quechuan clothing. Designs are like signatures with each pattern displaying the creator’s personal stamp. Because of the ruins nearby, the town is evolving into a traveller’s destination. Cute children carrying baby alpacas expect visitors to pay for a snap to show the folks back home. Down a side street, 200-year-old Horno Colonial San Francisco serves empanadas made using a soft bread dough stuffed with chicken, beef, cheese or tomato and oregano, before being baked. They’re a chewable step back in time.
En route to Machu Picchu, roadside townlets vie for their fair share of travellers’ time and soles, be they backpackers or jet-setters. It’s a genuine 21st century pilgrims’ way. Urubamba, buzzing with tuktuks, has three luxury resorts on its fringes: Tambo del Inka, Hacienda Urubamba and the Rio Sagrado. Lamay promotes itself as a ‘cuy’ (guinea pig) capital. Cars stop by roadside stalls, their drivers jumping out to buy them spit roasted over the embers. Ollantaytambo, another Inca stronghold (its pink granite Wall of the Six Monoliths has defied interpretation by archaeologists), is a midway meeting point. Everyone ends up at the railway station to drink the cold craft beers on tap from the Cervecería del Valle Sagrado and catch up on the local news.
All trains from Cusco – including the luxurious Hiram Bingham – stop here. They chug the last 30km of the narrow-gauge line to Aguas Calientes, a.k.a. Machu Picchu. There’s no question it merits its rating as one of the seven wonders of the modern world. The town, the constant streams of buses wriggling up the steep mountainside to reach the site and the football crowd size queues at the entrance do their utmost to demystify it. They fail because it’s such a magical place, perched among the clouds and surrounded by tutelary mountains.
Salinas de Maras has more poignant magic. A thin stream of brackish water trickling from a cleft in the rock feeds an opencast mine that has seen salt harvested since pre-Incan times. Its patchwork of miniature saltpans is tended by the 460 families who own it. They evaporate the water in the same way their ancestors and their forebears did. The finest flor de sal goes to the top restaurants in Lima – such as Central or Astrid y Gastón – but the flamingo tinted table salt is used daily by villagers.
A baked salt crust swaddles the large river trout served at El Parador de Moray, a Cusqueñan restaurant that stares down on the concentric rings of Moray. In its own right it’s a ‘wonder.’ Believed to have been designed for growing crops, the circles have a variety of microclimates. The crater is almost 30m deep, and it allowed the Incas to
“There’s no question [Machu Picchu] merits its rating as one of the seven wonders of the modern world … The football crowd size queues at the entrance do their utmost to demystify it. They fail…”
compare the effects of light and temperature when growing their staple crops. The lessons they learnt about their basic foods still thrive today in the agricultural practices of their Quechua descendants.
Journey through the Sacred Valley and it’s tempting to feel nostalgic for a lost civilisation. The truth is though, it isn’t lost. It survives today in the lives of the people living here. Yes, there’s the gloss of multicoloured caps on wizened natives and guided tours; but the spirit, even after 300 years of colonial rule by Spain, has remained very much intact.
Michael Raffael and Ulf Svane travelled to Cusco courtesy Promperú, BA and LATAM
“Its patchwork of miniature saltpans is tended by the 460 families who own it. The finest goes to the top restaurants in Lima … but the flamingo tinted table salt is used daily by villagers.”