Ollantaytambo

On Sunday, April 18th, after breakfast in the Intitambo hotel, which we really liked, we walked to the  massive Inca ruins right by the town. Ollantaytambo is a nice little village with the same narrow cobblestone streets laid out by the Incas. Many of the streets have stone channels where the water runs through the village from the surrounding mountains. Most of the buildings have original Incan stone foundations. There are only a few streets between the square and the railway station that are barely big enough for cars. The rest of the village has narrow pedestrian cobblestone lanes. Very pretty.
Manco Inca, who was a puppet emperor appointed by the Spanish, rebelled after a few years. Ollantaytambo is the site of the his last victory against them. The Incas retreated to their fortress here from Cusco and flooded the plain below through previously dug channels. The Spanish horses got bogged down in the mud so their assault on the steep walls and terraces of the fortress failed. Although the Incas won the battle, they knew that the Spaniards would be back with a bigger force so they burned the village and retreated to the jungle of Vilcabamba in what is now southern Ecuador.
The Ollantaytambo fortress ruins are huge and spectacular, even though they weren't completely finished at the time of the last big battle. The stones were quarried 6 km away across the river. They would transport stones to one side of the river, divert the river so it was behind them, then move the stones and divert the river back to its original course. We walked all over, looking at the big stones in the walls, the agricultural terraces (one of which had a bumper crop of quinoa) and the fountains running with water from the streams above the town. Across the valley we could see the pre-Inca ruins of Pinkulluna where I climbed later. From the roof terrace of our hotel, we had a good view of all the ruins on both sides of town.
After a late lunch at a restaurant recommended in our guidebook, we settled in for the evening to get ready for our trip the next morning through the Sacred Valley and back to Cusco.