Wednesday 30 September:

Itinerary: Sacred Valley. Visit to Inka ruins at Pisac, and tour of Inka town and ruins of Ollantaytambo. Both places will also afford rich natural history pickings, including the first of numerous hummingbirds! Pisac has excellent craft markets, where those who wish may indulge themselves. Accommodation as for last night.

30 Sept
I recorded having a terrible nights sleep, although I cannot now remember how bad it was. At 6am I certainly felt awful and considered staying in the hotel all day. When I found the rest of the group birding in the grounds of the hotel I said how bad I felt and that I was considering pulling out of the Inca Trail walk the next day. This was because both I felt bad and if I couldn't complete the walk it would be extremely inconvenient for the others to have to evacuate me. Juan asked if I was taking drugs for altitude and on my answering 'no' he provided some, which I immediately started to take.

As a result of my later start I missed 3 species of hummingbird (hereafter hummers) but got Torrent ducks in the river and a few others.

After breakfast I felt better (when in doubt, take drugs?) and hopped in the bus. I was still dubious about the Inca trail next day. Our first stop was where the river ran beside the road and we added several birds to the trip list. I was feeling better (when in doubt take drugs and add birds to one's life list?).

The area is rather prone to graffiti of a political nature. Nearly all houses had been tagged with political slogans - candidates for Alcade (ie Mayor) were particular prominent. In addition most towns/villages had some sign or slogan scorched onto the hillside above them.

On down the road - with down being a key point - looking at various bits of evidence of the Inca civilisation beside the road. There are still many terraces evident: Juan explained that the Incas were great experimenters and by building terraces at various levels up the (very steep) hillsides were able to create a great range of microclimates, which they used to develop some 2,000 varieties of potatoes. They were also skilled hydraulic engineers and their aqueducts which stretched for many kilometres from the snow melt areas to their fields were still in some cases operational. We got to the living Inca village of Ollantaytambo to look around: this included visiting a residents allotment (spotting a couple more lifers). His digging tool was most impressive - a design going back several centuries. Most of the group went inside his house - a highlight here was seeing his guinea pigs running about indoors. My health continued to gradually improve. (When in doubt take drugs, add birds to one's life list and get down to a lower altitude?) A little later we saw that some people had advanced a bit beyond the wooden spade approach, but not to the tractor level.

The main attraction in this town was the site of a battle between the Incas and the Spaniards. The Incas won, by the nifty trick of breaking a dam up in the mountains and the resulting torrent sweeping the Spaniards away. Juan had a graphic description of the masses gathered around the rim of cliffs making a noise as the signal for the dam to be broken. However they never finished the building they were creating, as evidenced by stones that were left out of final position.

If I remember it correctly - and I should have taken notes - there are three types of stone walls.

The 'crudest' is more or less like European dry stone walling: very robust but not particularly tightly finished. This is visible in the image at the left.

The finest type fit together with hardly a visible join. What makes this really remarkable is that the stones come from a quarry several kilometres from the building site. They were carved in sequence at the quarry and dragged over to the building including down one mountain and up another using ramps. They are up to 3 cubic metes in size (at about 2.7 tonnes per cubic metre) and fit together perfectly so it is not a matter of shoving it over a cliff and letting gravity do the work. When moving the rocks lumps were left on the outside to attach the ropes for dragging, and polished off when positioned Where the stones were not finally positioned they have a mortise and tenon arrangement precarved so resist earthquakes. I find to my astonishment I don't have a photograph of this from this locale: fortunately I can blame altitude sickness rather than simple daftness.  Fortunately the image to the right  - taken at Coricancha in Cusco a few days later - shows the fineness of the fit.

This work would be impressive with modern equipment. The Incas did it using water, leather and dust as their grinding agents. This led the group to make comments such as

• "What did you do with your life?"
• "Oh I finished grinding out the rock which my grandfather started working on!"

Our lunch was at cafe by organised by a 72 year old British lady who does good works with the local disadvantaged people. My burrito was very tasty. More coca tea, although by this stage I was feeling rather good: the Inca Trail was definitely back on the agenda!

After lunch we went back to Pisac market to buy stuff. Frances got jewelry and a small bag and bargained for both (so we only paid about twice what we should rather than the 4 times they started at!. With the bag I took a picture of the stall holder's kid so gave back a sole for "el nino". It was a tad worrying, from a social policy view, that this time of year is peak tourist season but obviously some of the stall holders had not sold a single thing all day.

I ended up with 11 lifers for the day, which was pretty good. Interestingly when we got back to the hotel - a bit higher than Ollantytambo - I started feeling a bit ratty again, which proved to me that altitude was probably the issue.

As usual Itinerary was well satisified!