On Saturday November 7th Media Luna opened the largest water reservoir in the Sacred Valley. Daniel and I attended the festivities to observe and also converse with Zenobio, who had been out of touch for about two weeks. We found Zenobio at his house early in the morning, we discussed the assembly, when I would present the results of the survey to the Community Board and also asked about some rock paintings that Daniel was told about.
Zenobio confirmed the existence of the drawings and indicated roughly where on the mountain they're located. Thankfully there was a wait for the mayor to arrive and Zenobio was able to guide us up the mountain to the drawings, which were pretty well hidden. The quality of the drawings is not so good, considering they've been abandoned for any number of years. On the hike up the mountain we passed several Incan farming terraces, while not refinished they are in good condition. In addition to these sites, Zenobio told us that there is a lagoon on the peak of the mountain.
Upon the discovery of these sights in Media Luna, it became apparent that we should bring these sites to the attention of the municipality of Urubamba. It is the responsibility of the municipality to preserve these sites, the first step is to bring an archeologist to the site of the paintings to determine when and by who they were created, the second is to take the steps necessary to preserve the paintings and terraces, then we could discuss the possibility of using these sites to generate tourism revenue for the community of Media Luna.
We went to speak with the Department of Tourism at the municipality this morning about the sites. They were very receptive and asked for us to submit a proposal of action, defining the objectives of the project.
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