K’usillochayuj

Recently, my Mary and Mary Walsh and I decided to take advantage of a sunny morning by walking over to some Inca Terraces that could easily be seen on the other side of a small river that flows behind our house. We weren’t going to be gone long so we didn’t take water or our backpacks but once we were on the terraces, which were very interesting, we ran into someone who told us about even better ruins about a kilometer up the river. We (read I) of course couldn’t miss out on this opportunity for further exploration so off we went. We did find the ruins (K’usillochayuj) and they were more impressive than the ones from which we started but the only problem was the trail petered out at the river 100’ or so below the ruins. Displaying behavior that I’ve been informed is not untypical for me, I solved the problem by climbing up the steep slope (the rock band at which the Mary’s turned back at was easy 5th class, honest), while the girls engaged in behavior not untypical of them and retraced their steps until they found an excellent and well-worn path to the top. The ruins themselves were very interesting with many carved rocks and retaining walls nearby as well as a short tunnel that had been worked by the Incans. We followed another more direct path to the city and passed some excellent Inca terraces which were still being used for agriculture. On the way out, as we passed a couple of Colonial Era brick kilns, we met Tim from Whistler, BC who spends a number of months mountain-biking on the many excellent trails around Cusco. I always admire people like Tim who can drop out of the rat race for shorter or longer periods of time. I don´t mean that we should simply be lazy and mooch off of others but many people seem to forget that time and not just money are valuable. After all, if we are going to talk about wasting time, is it wasted by not working at an unfulfilling job so one can buy bigger cars and stereos or is that, in fact, how time is wasted?