Tipón PERU tour review- clearly see how agricultural terraces were constructed by Inca and also their advanced water engineering systems
Click here for more Low Season Travel: Peru Tour stories
We hear people aren’t supposed to—but that they still do.
What they do is to make a pilgrimage to Tipón for rituals and celebrations in this site’s many water-related features. Animal sacrifices are said to still occur, at key times in the Inca’s calendar.
Said to be built by Inca Yawar Waqaq for his vanquished father, Tipón includes ritual baths that were used by the nobility back in the day. The site is extensive, and is constructed with sensibilities similar to modern architectural/engineering firms eyeing a would-be structure’s surrounds. Here, the grade of the mountain was all important for this complex, providing a shield of sorts in the event of an earthquake, and protecting the agricultural terraces from wind erosion.
Tipón Terraces
Though you can see terraces at many Inca ruins, Tipón provides a very clear view of how these were engineered.
Large rocks on the bottom supported smaller stones on top that got smaller and smaller that were then overlaid with the fertile ground that could be irrigated by the water channels around them. The stone layers effectively created a drainage system for each agricultural terrace.
It’s these--Tipón’s water features-- that get top billing, boasting not only aesthetically compelling ritual bath areas, but also underground channels carrying potable water to this day, just as they did in Inca times. This flow is said to be unvarying in either drought or times of heavy rains. The water engineering is said to be so precise that flow is exactly the same in parallel channels.
Fascinating!
*Facts in this article are provided by tour guide from Cuzco Adventures Travel
Click here for more Low Season Travel: Peru Tour stories
Click here for more Picture this Post travel stories by Amy Munice with Photography by Peter Kachergis
