Lyndon's choice of Sacred Architectre.

Cusco was the navel of the Inca empire, their capital city and so it stands to reason that their most grand lavish sacred, scientific and argricultural architectures were located around this area.  The name of the area is the "Sacred valley" named because of the lush green, vast and spectacular valley they are all sited within. 
Pisac
Pisac  is still home to a little village which boasts a famous market, packed mostly with more tourist stuff we didnt want, and also the ruins of a large Incan farming community.  The ruins are set at the top a of small green mountinside,  as you enter into the site you are greeted firstly with the sight of countless Terraces, stetching on and on, caped at the top with a small group of pitch roof stone buildings, far in the distance.  The Terraces were created to strengthen the mountain preventing very common mudslide and also to create a flat workable surface to farm on.  After a strainous 45min walk we made it up the vast stone stair cases to the top and found our way even higher as we climbed through the rough and rugged quarry remains.  Here we found a breathtaking view out over the Andean countryside and an apprecation for the scale of the terraces which stretched out in two directions for miles.  This was not a religious site so the stone work was much more rough and less precious but still left you wondering how people without any knowledge of metalurgy could have fashioned such a complex.
Moray
Moray was for me one of the most spectacular places architectularly, for me even more so than Machu Picchu.  Thats not to say that Machu Picchu's construction was not far more impressive or that the location was better than Machu, which it was not , but only to say that circular oraganic shape it took was far more astheatically pleasing and mystifying.  This site consisted again of mainly terraces like most of the site, but the main difference being they descended down into the ground rather than ascended up into the mountians.  The thing which is most imperessive and which scientists still can't provide a reason for is the fact the site doesn't flood.   The terraces sink down deep below the level of the surronding area, and with the high rain fall in the area, land often becomes boggy and swampy during rainy season which would mean the site should almost certainly be prone to flooding at this time of year, yet some how the inca's managed to create an underground water run of system that still works to day and has not been found.  The use of the site arciologists claim was a sort of laboritory where the incas where able to replicate the temperatures of many different (almost all) regions of Peru.  The stepped terraces descended down around 1.5 meters at a time and aswell as descening by about 2 degrees at a time, which meant that with soil from different regions  brought in and a precise temperature control system the whole of moray was an area for breeding and developing crops to grow in certain regions, leading to the domestication of the potato (peru has over 400 different types).  If this reason if true it is extremly impessive for a ciliviation without written language, the precise science alone as well as the logistics of bringing tons upon tons of soil from hundreds and hundeds of miles away which has been proven to be the case.
Ollantaytambo
The ruins here were a mixture of sacred and argricultural so it was interesting to see the diference between the stone work so close together for comparison.  The temples are constructed using extremely precisely cut, impossible looking three dimesional interlocking stonework, creating complex and beautiful architecture that interacted in even more complex ways with the sun at different times of year, creating shadows of jaguar heads and other spectacular things.  some of these stones creating the walls of the main "tempel of the sun" were 12 feet high 5 foot wide and deep with carved shapes, dragged supposedly from miles away up and down vast mountain ranges, it seemed ludicrous the  guide told us this with complete conviction, as it is clearly impossible this happened.  The farming section if not quite grand was still extremely impressive with much more rugged stone work but equally as impessive contruction.  A huge complexe of storage building high up the side of a facing mountain to the farming terraces, located in such a rediculously awkward place because it is much cooler that the sun rich land used for farming.
After leaving here we were taken to one of the many traditional andean markets again but this time in a small enclosed space and given a 10 minute scripted lecture (same script we had heard 5 times) on how the fabrics are made.  The first time it was really interesting, they explain how the fabrics are cleaned and died with natural plant material and then a demonstarition of how they made using a bone to stich the fabric, and they ask if we know what the bone it is, to which the answer is always 'the bone of the tourist that didnt buy anything'. By the 5th time however our laughs were shallow and fake and the line was delivered with zero charisma. Needless to say we didn't buy anything and fled before we could be the next victim.
Salt mines.
The salt mines were incredible, when two tectonic plates 100s of thousands of years ago crashed together they pushed vast salt deposits up into the heavens, where now a stream runs through and extracts the salt contains twice the salt content of sea water and a hundred times more minerals including magnisium and potasium, and draws it down into these mines.  When i say mines they are not what you'd think they are, they are huge number of small and thin cannals that pull the water into a vast complex of flat pools in ledges where the water is held to be evoporated by the sun leaving behind the salt.  The salt content was insane, we both dipped our hand in and within a mintue in the hot sun our hands were left with a clearly visable crust of salt.
Sacsayhuaman pronounced saxa-ha-woman but referred to commonely as sexy woman, was the main site for Inca religious ceromonys. This has meant that the grandest and most spectacularly huge stone work has been constructed here.  This stone work is just rediculous there are stones the size of small buildings carved with 5 to 17 different faces all interlocking with such precision you couldn't slide a rizla between. Despite all of this, the tiredness and the saturation of Inca ruins had left me and jess preferring to throw larma poo at each other and annoying other tourist by playing silly buggers.
                                                                                            - Lyndon.