Terraces of Pisac in the Sacred Valley

High on a mountain top at the beginning of the Sacred Valley is the town of Pisac.  This path leads to the terraces and the ruins of Pisac.

The Inca built their towns to adapt to the terrain and blend into the environment.  In front of the ruins of Pisac, begin the many terraces.

The terraces along the sides of the mountains gave the Inca the ability to grow a variety of different crops, ones that thrived at different altitudes.  The terraces also allowed the Inca to adapt plants from one area of Peru to this part of the Sacred Valley.

Looking up at Pisac, it is hard to see the village on the top.

The only way up to the top of the mountain and the village of Pisac, was for the Inca to walk..... from the valley below.

Inca terraces at Pisac.

Pisac, high up on the mountain.

The Inca cemetery on the hill..... the holes once held the bodies of the dead.

The terraces, from here, look very narrow.... but in actually, they were very large, providing a great deal of extra cultivation space for the Inca.

The gateway to Pisac.  The Inca built their structures high up in the mountains, to provide a strategic military advantage to those who lived in the town.  Here the gateway monitored all who came and went through the town of Pisa.