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From the river channels of water were taken for the service of the city, the water being very good." The water here is excellent, far better than any in the Cuzco Basin. On the plain near the river are some of the last cane fields of the plantation of Paltaybamba.
When we reached Paltaybamba, Señor Pancorbo's manager confirmed what we had heard. He said further that an individual named Saavedra lived at Conservidayoc and undoubtedly knew all about the ruins, but was very averse to receiving visitors. Saavedra's house was extremely difficult to find. "No one had been there recently and returned alive." Opinions differed as to how far away it was.
Evaristo Mogrovejo lived on the little plaza around which the houses of the more important people were grouped. He had just returned from Santa Ana by the way of Idma, using a much worse trail than that over which we had come, but one which enabled him to avoid passing through Paltaybamba, with whose proprietor he was not on good terms.
We reached Paltaybamba about dusk. The owner, Señor José S. Pancorbo, was absent, attending to the affairs of a rubber estate in the jungles of the river San Miguel. The plantation of Paltaybamba occupies the best lands in the lower Vilcabamba Valley, but lying, as it does, well off the main highway, visitors are rare and our arrival was the occasion for considerable excitement.
About two leagues above Paltaybamba, at or near the spot called by Raimondi "Maracnyoc," an "abandoned tampu," we came to some old stone walls, the ruins of a place now called Huayara or "Hoyara."
He was satisfied that Choqquequirau was Manco's refuge because it was far enough from Pucyura to answer the requirements of Calancha that it was "two or three days' journey" from Uilcapampa to Puquiura. A new road had recently been built along the river bank by the owner of the sugar estate at Paltaybamba, to enable his pack animals to travel more rapidly.
He told us stories of misadventures which had happened to travelers at the gates of Paltaybamba, stories highly reminiscent of feudal days in Europe, when provincial barons were accustomed to lay tribute on all who passed.
In some of the forests on the more gentle slopes recent clearings gave evidence of enterprise on the part of the present inhabitants of the valley. After an hour's climb we reached what were unquestionably the ruins of Inca structures, on an artificial terrace which commands a magnificent view far down toward Paltaybamba and the bridge of Chuquichaca, as well as in the opposite direction.
In the morning the manager gave us a guide to the next house up the valley, with orders that the man at that house should relay us to the next, and so on. These people, all tenants of the plantation, obligingly carried out their orders, although at considerable inconvenience to themselves. The Vilcabamba Valley above Paltaybamba is very picturesque.
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