Friday, May 4, 2012

Ollantaytambo

There's an Inka ruins park here that covers a large section of the mountainside north of the town. They terraced the mountains and built forts and storage buildings on top. Some look almost glued to the wall. Everything is connected with narrow stairs and footpaths hewn into the rock. The scenery is dramatic.

We could also see the steep mountain overlooking the town (photo), and saw some people mounting paths to several scattered Inca buildings clinging to it, about halfway up. So we went there next. Those paths are very narrow, occasionally have rough steps, but often simply rocky slides. The ascent is occasionally a little technical and vertiginous, but not really dangerous. A walk in the park if you just spent a year hiking in Marseille's Calanques. The sign "danger, closed" with skull and bones, and the barrier we had to climb over, were really uncalled for. Wimps.