Sacred Valley

Today Annie and I walked through the Sacred Valley just outside of Cuzco. There are four sets of Incan ruins nearby, and we took a bus to the furthest one, Tambomachay, and then walked the 8km back to town. It was a beautiful day, with clouds over all the hills and valleys, and we had a clear view of one of the highest snow-covered peaks, it´s more than 6000 meters. Tambomachay has an irrigation system with channels that still has water pouring out of it. The next was Pukapukara, and then down the road to Q´enqo, which was amazing. It is an enormous rock formation that the Incans carved out into a series of caves and alleyways and staircases, and they also made channels running over the top so that, again, the blood would pour down in various paths after the sacrifices. It´s so cool too because from afar it just looks like an enormous rock--the caves and tunnels are hidden unless you are right next to them.
All of the Incan walls are so amazing--the rocks are huge octoganal shapes that all fit into each other perfectly--so tightly that even today not enough dirt has collected between them to support plant life. The most impressive of all of the ruins was Saqsaywaman (pronounced the way it looks: ´Sexy Woman´). This is on the hill overlooking Cuzco and used to have three towers and was more powerful than Machu Picchu during the time of the Incas. Although when the Spanish came they destroyed most of it and took the stones down to Cuzco to make their churches, the ruins are incredible. The stones are enormous, the highest one is 9 meters above ground but extends 2 meters below ground. The heaviest one is estimated to be over 120 tons, and they moved all of these from the mountains using logs as rollers and ramps to stack them on top of each other, to make them up to 20 meters high. The Incas did everything with 3 levels in mind, symbolizing the afterlife, life, and the spiritual life. They made a lot of designs with zig zags because the thunderbolt connected the earth with the heavens. The three tiers also represented the serpent (intelligence), the puma (strength) and the condor (spirituality), and llamas can also be found in some of the stone work. We had a guide around Saqsaywaman, and he led us through these tunnels that the Incans also made, where women would give birth with the symbolism of coming out into the light with new life.
Annie and I slid down these huge slides made of stone--they were carved by lava flowing in the same way that glaciers usually carve rocks, and then they have been smoothed over the centuries of people sliding down. The myth is couples would slide down the rock to see if they were meant to be together. It was meant to be if magically they had a baby 9 months later...I don´t think Annie and I are meant for each other.
Tomorrow we will visit more ruins, and then we are off on our 5 day trek through the Salkantay valley to Machu Picchu--it is going to be amazing. There are hot springs along the way to break up all of the hiking-I´m excited!!