The Inkas built a network of roads radiating from the centre at Cusco North to Columbia and South to the present Argentina. Messages and goods were sent between empires by men running short but fast distances to various posts along the length of the roads. It is thought to have been an extremely efficient system. With less urgency alpacas were used as the main form of transport for carrying goods, slow but well suited to life in the Andes. One of the photos shows me running through the gateway into Cusco.
Sacsayhuaman is a ruined fortress and temple built a above the city of Cusco on the top a mountain. An enormous structure made from enormous blocks of quarried limestone some weighing more than a hundred tons thought to have been roughly shaped before being transported uphill on wooden rollers where they were shaped and finished to sit flushly against the others. The ruins show the expertise in technology and building techniques whilst also displaying the Inkan connection to astronomy and their spiritual beliefs. The drainage holes in the boulders assisted with the dispersal of water down hill resulting in the stability and longevity of the structure to withstand earthquakes and erosion. If the Spaniards had not deconstructed the Inka buildings to use the blocks in their colonial buildings of Cusco, much of them would still be intact today.
Pisac ruins were as equally awe inspiring. Looking out over a fertile terraced valley, a place of ritual and ceromony. With tombs carved into the mountains facing to the East to the rising sun symbolising new beginnings. Today many of the tombs have been robbed of their more precious artifacts.
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