Epic Travel → Central and South America → Peru → Saqsaywaman

Location: Sacsayhuaman National Park, Cusco Region

Time Required: 2 – 3 hours

Red Tape/Notes: You’ll need either the Cusco General Tourist ticket ($130 for foreigners as of 2017) or a Cusco Circuit 1 ticket ($70 for foreigners as of 2017) to visit the site. Which ticket you want will depend on what else you’re seeing (and when you’re seeing it). Visit this website for more information on the various ticket types and to purchase tickets.

What’s Nearby?: Mountain Biking, Cusco, Oropesa Bread Making, Pikillacta, Tipon, Cruzmoqo

Saqsaywaman (which has about a million different spelling options, btw, all of which result in a pronunciation that sounds remarkably like “sexy woman”), was a fortified citadel complex on a steep hill overlooking the city of Cusco. The earliest sections of the complex were built by the Killke culture around 1100 CE, but it was substantially expanded by the Inca in the 13th century. The site is notable for its huge stone blocks which were custom cut and shaped to fit together without the use of mortar, and the site was described in detail by the early Spanish explorer Pedro Pizarro (Francisco Pizarro’s less famous brother). Much of the site was destroyed following the conquest of the Spanish over the region, as they dismantled the site to use the blocks for building their own structures; luckily for us, many of the blocks were simply too large to be easily removed, so many of the most impressive sections of wall are still in tact. According to local people we talked to, the use of blocks from the site continued until the recent past, until the site was finally designated as protected (it’s currently a UNESCO World Heritage Site, along with the greater Cusco area).

Epic Travel → Central and South America → Peru → Saqsaywaman