The Drums of Ollantaytambo

In one of my Spanish literature classes last year, we read a poem about Ollantaytambo. I don't remember much of it, because it was a huge survey course and we read a whole bunch of literature in those ten weeks, but what struck me was the poem's percussive rhythm. As I later learned, that drumbeat cadence was intentional, because Ollantaytambo eventually served as a stronghold for the resisting Incas when the Spanish invaded. We all know what happened with that.

It didn't start out with such a sad history, though. According to legend, a general once fell in love with the king's daughter. Naturally, the king didn't take too kindly to his soldier wooing his little baby girl, so, being the headstrong lovers that they were, the general and the princess ran away together. They settled at Ollantaytambo, exactly halfway between Cusco and the jungle in the Urubamba valley, where the winds blow with ferocity and the river twists along the valley floor. There, they built a fortress on the mountainside, and the general and his men managed to hold out for ten years. Eventually, though, they lost, and the king's men took the general back to Cusco as a prisoner to be executed. Before they could execute him, though, the old king died, so the general and the princess were allowed to live together from then onward. The general's name was Ollantay, and "tambo" means "place of rest" or "refuge" - hence the name.

I visited Ollantaytambo with some people from my school yesterday, spurred in part by my insatiable love of history but, even more, by the memory of that drumbeat poem. I wanted to see the stones that had been a stronghold of love and a bastion of last resort. Blame it on my raging romanticism. Still, I trekked all the way up that mountain for the sake of poetry and was well rewarded. You can't exactly see how high it is because that first photo was taken from halfway up, but at this altitude it was definitely a task not lightly undertaken. The stairs going up the mountain were old and crumbling and uneven, and we had to wind around the temples and the palaces and the food storage bins, but once we got to the top, the view alone was worth it.

This photo of me was taken from the soldier's lookout and, although it's hard to tell, there is a steep drop of several hundred feet no more than 6 inches behind me. Apparently it was designed this way so that, should a soldier slack off and fall asleep, he would fall to his death. If he got smart and sat down to sleep, it was his buddy's responsibility to nudge him over the edge. Those who know me and my fear of heights will notice that I am hanging on to the walls very, very tightly, in part because the wind was blowing pretty hard by that point and in part because hell, who wouldn't hold onto a wall for safety if they could?

Afterward, I wanted to try some cuy for lunch (dude, if I'm going Inca for the day, I'm going all in), but the restaurant where we ate didn't have it on the menu. Oh well. Another day, another guinea pig.