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A Propos de Cusco Le Vallée Sacrée des IncasOllantaytambo |
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Ollantaytambo is to 75 kilometers of Cusco, in direction to Machupicchu, located to 2,800 meters on the level of the sea and with a temperature average of 21 C by year. Descending toward the valley of the river Vilcanota, to only 1 hour 45 minutes for the highway Cusco - Chinchero-Urubamba and to 68 Km. for the railroad, the town is located. Ollantaytambo is to 60 Km. to the Northwest of the capital of the Incan empire, through an Inca road. The strategic location of Ollantaytambo connects directly with the Inca Road to Machupicchu for the Northwest; for the West with the Mountain range of Vilcabamba ( Salcantay 6,271 m.a.s.l) for the North with the Mountain range of Vilcanota (La Verónica 5,750 m.a.s.l.), Abra de Málaga and the Rainy Forest, with direction to Espíritu Pampa and the Pongo of Mainique), for the East with the Sacred Valley (Urubamba and Pisac), for the Southeast with Chinchero and Cusco.
The Ruins
According to some specialists and historians; the architectural group of Ollantaytambo belongs to the Imperial Inca stage; comprehend between the Inca Pachacútec and Wayna Capac. This stage embrace to only three generations of Incan gobernors and it preceded the conquerors for only 150 to 200 years. The apparent little time that existed between the design and the construction of this granitic citadel or fortress, makes doubt many investigators regarding its true origin. The defenses that are guided toward Cusco , as if they wanted to defend to city of the Incas, they are another of the riddles that Ollantaytambo presents. It is important to emphasize that this fortress shows the provident spirit of the Inca that provisioned it of water by underground aqueducts whose reception places were secret of state in its time and until the present time they are not discovered. Already in the high of the architectural group they are discovered six gigantic blocks that apparently belonged to the Temple of the Sun, neatly worked in the five hard red porfid as if it was a soft material and molding. These enormous and perfectly inserted pieces that they resisted the eradicators of idolatries, they conform a simply admirable stony canvas for their solidity, volume and mutual assembling. In that canvas three Chacanas or Inca crossings are perceived carved in the third stone (seen from right to left). To the view this temple was destroyed and their pieces spread by the floors. For these reasons Ollantaytambo is shown since here as the clearest evidence in the procedure that theinca had to carry out its constructions, the origin, extraction, it is shown carved, transport and perfect assembling of the stones, for the later construction of the imposing archaeological groups that we can admire until today.
The Town
The Inca town presents characteristic that denote that it was inhabited by residents of a privileged class, just Cusco and Ollantaytambo show so much this great particularity because they are constructions of oneself type, in the high part of the town (on the mountain) and in the plain or valley, this makes the great difference in front of the other architectural groups of Inca origin. The residence group exhibits housings of solid walls of carved rock, with doors in trapezoidal ways and divided by streets of right lines for where the water runs in perfect channels. At the moment, behind an appearance of adobe architecture with colonial influence this ancestral town inhabited by residents that occupy the architectural group in its routine lifestyle. This town daily is visited by residents of the communities thta are located far from the city as: Pallata, Huilloc, Patacancha, etc. which present as common characteristic their traditional gear, faces of pure Indian race that know of their history, nothing else that their routine life.
