Ask your bus driver to let you off 1 km before Ollantaytambo at the original Inca Trail, which follows the hillside on the right (north) side of town. To your left is the plain that Manco Inca flooded in the 1537 battle against the Spanish. The path leads up to the town’s restored terraces and through a massive Inca gate, through which a water channel still runs. The path then joins with the road past the Wall of 100 Niches, whose inward slant indicates this was the inside—not the outside—of a roadside building (or maybe the road went through the building).

Once in the main plaza, head a half block north to the Museo CATCCO (Convención, tel. 084/20-4024, www.catcco.org, 8 a.m.–10 p.m. Mon.–Fri., 8 a.m.–8 p.m. Sat.–Sun., US$1.50 suggested donation), which is one of the best ethnographical museums in the Andes. Guides for day hikes can also be hired at the museum, which offers a tourist information center, Internet, a store, and a ceramics workshop and hosts a variety of lectures, concerts, and other events. Ask to see the best book yet written on Ollantaytambo, J. P. Protzen’s Inca Architecture and Construction at Ollantaytambo.

Behind the museum is the original Inca town, named Qozqo Ayllu, which is laid out in the form of a trapezoid and bisected by narrow, irrigated alleys. Oversized trapezoidal doorways open in the courtyards of homes, or kanchas, occupied continuously ever since Pachacútec’s time.