Sacred valley
This day we will spend the entire day out of Cusco, visiting a number of important sites in the Sacred valley, a a long, narrow valley home to several towns that was important to the incas because of it’s rich agriculture and access to the Urumbamba river.
Due to lack of blogging time, I won’t be able to go into detail for a week or more, but in the meantime, here is a brief outline and some photos.
7am wake up to meet our driver, Jesus, and our English speaking guide for the day, Diane.
Stop to see and feed different varieties of alpaca and llamas. Learn a little bit about traditional Incan weaving.
Meet a silversmith at his artisan studio and learn about how they craft silver jewelry
Tour of the archeological ruins in Pisac. This was an incredible tour, which led us through cloud covered mountain sides, ancient Incan terraces and ruins. I’ve heard that this location doesn’t hold a candle to what we’ll be seeing when we get to Machu Pichu, which is hard to believe, because this stop was breathtaking.
Tour of the Pisac market. Sarah got to hold a baby llama here, which I think nearly made her explode with joy.
Lunch. Buffet style. Mostly typical Peruvian fare. Eric got a dirty look from the server at the dessert counter when he went up for thirds.
Another archeological site at Ollantaytambo. Again, more beautiful Incan terraces, ruins, and amazing mountain views. I think the most amazing fact I learned about here was that when the incans ran out of places to gather giant stones for their construction, ther made a new quarry, on another mountainside 7 kilometers away. They would move stones from this quarry weighing multiple tons, by hand, using only ropes, logs, and manpower.
Visit at the salt pools at Maras (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maras,_Peru). There are over 3000, man made pools on this hillside, all fed by a single hot spring that has a super high salt content. The pools evaporate leaving the salt that can then be harvested. These pools were built before Incan times, over a thousand years ago, and still in use today.
Dropped off back at our hotel. We went out to dinner at a restaurant called Uchu, then back to bed, exhausted.