Machu Picchu and the Festival of Ollantaytambo

.. or, ML <3's>

We spent all day Friday at Machu Picchu.

The archeological site itself is flanked by two mountains - Machu Picchu (old peak) and Huayna Picchu (young peak). At the advice of our newly minted friend with the eco-lodges, we made a beeline for Machu Picchu as soon as we got there. It takes a bit over an hour to get up to the top, so a lot of visitors choose not to climb it - which made for a surprisingly serene morning. On the way up, I developed a crush on Hiram Bingham, the Yale professor who found Machu Picchu back in 1911. We had our picnic at the top, looking down to the ruins and all around at more massive green mountains. Once again we had a bit of magic - there were a group of Peruvian hippies at the very top worshiping the mountain a la Inca rituals. They were singing quiet beautiful songs and playing the recorder - music that I would have smirked at anywhere else.

Reinforced by a Snickers bar and a Coke, we tackled the ruins in the afternoon. To my amazement, they weren't nearly as overrun as I'd expected - there was room to contemplate what it might have looked like once.

For Saturday and Sunday we headed to Ollantaytambo, a small town in the Sacred Valley where Lizz had been volunteering. Ollanta had their annual fiesta in honor of the town´s patron saint and we wanted to be there for the party.

Ollantaytambo is the kind of small town where if you want to talk to someone, you go out on the street until you bump into them (usually takes under 15 minutes). But they really rally for the festival, which as of last year has been designated 'national heritage'. The fiesta is a really curious mix of Catholic worship with local tradition - group dances performed around the clock in elaborate costumes and masks. By Sunday, the party got rowdy - there was a corrida in a local bull ring (we couldn´t stomach it after they thrust a terrified 10 year old boy atop a buckling donkey) and drinking everywhere. The highlight was the cargos - barbeques or massive cookouts - that each dancing troupe organized. They were extremely welcoming, so we hit up three, where we were treated to large chunks of meat, beer, and dancing. A good note to end on.