Ollantaytambo

Ollantaytambo stands where the Patakancha stream meets the Urubamba, at the lower end of the Sacred Valley. Around the middle of the 15th century the Inca emperor Pachacuti conquered and razed an earlier town here and rebuilt it as his royal estate, with fine buildings for the Inca nobility and extensive terracing and irrigation along the valley, farmed by the emperor's retainers, the yanakuna. After his death the estate passed to his panaqa, his family clan. Storehouses were built on the surrounding hills, and roads linked the town with Machu Picchu to the west and Pisac to the east.

During the Spanish conquest it became a temporary capital for Manco Inca, leader of the Inca resistance. In January 1537, at the Battle of Ollantaytambo, his forces held off a Spanish expedition led by Hernando Pizarro from a set of high terraces and flooded the plain below by channelling water. Manco Inca still judged the position impossible to hold and the following year withdrew to Vilcabamba, where the Neo-Inca State held out. The work on Temple Hill was never finished, and the stone blocks still lying around the site show that construction and remodelling were under way when it was abandoned.

In 1540 the native population was assigned in encomienda to Hernando Pizarro. Much of the town kept its Inca layout, and families continued to live in the Inca blocks. Hiram Bingham passed through in 1911 on his journey along the Urubamba in search of Machu Picchu. Today the town is an important tourist centre and lies on the route to a starting point of the four-day Inca Trail.

Ollantaytambo's identity rests on continuity. The main settlement keeps the grid the Inca laid out — four long streets crossed by seven — and its southern blocks are still divided into kanchas, walled compounds of one-room buildings around a courtyard. Araqhama, across the stream, has been lived in since Inca times, and its church stands on the edge of its old plaza. Modern houses are built on top of pre-Hispanic walls, and only the ruins on the hills around the town are uninhabited.

Quechua is spoken across the district, and the town shares the Andean customs of the wider region: offerings to Pachamama and the apus, the mountain spirits, and communal work in the villages. Weaving is the most visible craft. In the Patacancha valley above the town, Quechua women weave cloth with natural fibres and dyes, and a non-profit fair-trade project in Ollantaytambo sells their work and runs visits and workshops in the communities.

Chicha, maize beer, is brewed and drunk in local houses, a long-standing social custom in the Andean valleys. Visitors are welcome at the ruins and in the market, but the town is also a working community, and residents appreciate being asked before they are photographed.

Ollantaytambo is a small town at about 2,800 metres, lived in by Quechua-speaking families whose houses are built into the Inca town. Tourism is the main business: the ruins, the station for the Machu Picchu trains and the route towards the Inca Trail bring a steady flow of visitors, and many residents work as guides, cooks, drivers, hotel staff or weavers. The streets between the station and the plaza are lined with restaurants, guesthouses and tour agencies, and moto-taxis wait for each train.

The day follows the trains and the tour buses. Early departures for Aguas Calientes fill the station road before dawn, coaches from Cusco arrive at the ruins during the day, and the town quietens in the evening once the day visitors leave. Away from the centre, life in the side valleys is farming, herding and weaving.

The pressures are those of the whole Sacred Valley: traffic and coaches in narrow Inca streets, crowding at the ruins in the dry season, and dependence on a single industry. Protests and road blockades in the southern Andes since late 2022 have at times stopped the trains and cut incomes sharply.

Ollantaytambo eats as the Cusco highlands do. Cuy al horno, guinea pig roasted whole, is the dish for celebrations; soups built on potatoes, maize and chuño, freeze-dried potato, are everyday food; and trout from Andean rivers and lakes is common on restaurant menus, often beside alpaca steak. Restaurants around the plaza and along the station road serve these Andean dishes alongside pizza and international cooking aimed at travellers.

Chicha de jora, the maize beer of the Andes, is sold in local houses, and frutillada is its sweet strawberry version. Coca tea is offered everywhere as a remedy for the altitude, and cafés by the station serve espresso and baked goods to passengers on early trains. Menú lunches, set meals of soup and a main course, are the cheap everyday option in the town. The terraces around Ollantaytambo were built so that crops from lower altitudes could be grown here, and maize, potatoes and quinoa from the valley remain the base of local cooking, above all in soups and stews.