The Sacred Valley is a valley that runs from north of Cusco to Machu Picchu. It’s a fertile valley irrigated by the Urubamba River and the views of the mountains on either side of the valley are gorgeous. Machu Picchu is the most famous of the tourist attractions here, but there are many other things to see, so if you visit Machu Picchu, you should plan at least an extra day to see some of the other attractions.
After we had breakfast, we checked out of the hotel and we were picked up by a driver and a tour guide. Our first stop was the Inca ruins at Ollantaytambo. During the Inca Empire, Ollantaytambo was the royal estate of Emperor Pachacuti, and during the Spanish conquest, it served as an Inca stronghold. It was great having a tour guide take us through the ruins, as he told us a lot of the history and answered our many questions. Wikipedia has a good description of the town and the ruins here.
The views of the town and valley were really pretty from the top of the hill.
Can you see buildings in the side of the mountain to the right of the picture below?
Outside of the museum entrance, there is a busy little market with stalls full of tourist goodies. I wish we’d had time to explore along the side streets of this little town.
On the way out of Ollantaytambo, we saw this guy directing traffic. It was at a blind T intersection. At the time I thought this was just the way they handled traffic at this intersection, but looking at the picture, maybe he was there because of some construction. It certainly wasn’t a big intersection and it seems like normal stop signs would work, so construction seems like a logical explanation.
We drove for awhile through the valley and drove up into the mountains on some small dirt roads. It seemed a little crazy at times, with some hairpin curves, and we joked a little that maybe this was the point in our story where they drove us to a hideout in the mountains and then demanded a ransom from our loved ones. As a side note, since our return from Peru, I’ve had several people ask me if it was safe. Even in the big cities, there was never a time when I didn’t feel safe. This mountain ride was the only time that something shady even crossed my mind and we were perfectly safe.
After 30 or 45 minutes, we arrived at our next destination, the Inca ruin Moray. This is an archaeological site of terraced circular depressions. The site also has an irrigation system, so it is believed to have been used for farming. Because of the way the terraces are oriented to the sun and wind, there is about a 10 degree difference from the top terrace to the bottom, so, it’s thought that perhaps the site was used to create different little micro climates, sort of like we use in greenhouses today.
There are always vendors at the tourist attractions LOL.
After Moray, we drove on mountain roads to the little village of Misminay. The altitude of Misminay is about 12,600 feet and the views out over the farm fields of the Andes were spectacular.
We were greeted by a family dressed in traditional Peruvian clothes. The men were playing instruments and the women were singing and clapping. After their song, they took us into their courtyard where they went around in a circle and introduced themselves and told us that they were very happy to have us visit.
After greetings, they took us into the dining room and served us a traditional lunch. First, an appetizer with dried fava beans and the biggest corn kernels I’ve ever seen. They tasted sort of like cornuts but with no salt. We were told there are over 400 varieties of corn grown in Peru. The soup was a corn soup with a whole peeled potato in the middle of the bowl. The main course was rice with a sort of meat stew on one side and potatoes in a cream sauce on the other side. It was all really good! We had fun at lunch and our tour guide told us some interesting things about the local people. At one point he showed us an extremely dimpled potato (one of the many thousands of varieties grown in Peru) and said it used to be thought that if a young woman could peel the potato without losing too much of the meat of the potato, then she was ready for marriage. As my son pointed out, it was clearly a test of patience.
This was the view from where I was seated at the lunch table. How would you like to have that view every day!
This little boy was so cute – he was running around having a good time. He happily posed for me, even though he doesn’t look like he was too excited about it.
After lunch, we walked around the farmyard for a minute. They had two llamas there, presumably for us tourists. Again, the views! I think I could live in this remote little village and be very happy!
I call this next picture “Who Will Spit First” ;-D.
As we left the village, we saw some farmers having their lunch. It would be easy to think this was staged for us tourists, but in all the farm fields that we drove by that day, we only saw one tractor in the field, but several oxen, so they must still farm this way.
Everywhere we turned in Peru, there were dogs in the streets. These were just a few that I took pictures of as we drove through a few more towns after lunch.
Our next stop was the Maras Salt Mines. I’ve been to underground salt mines, but this was all above ground. The mines have been in operation for over 500 years and the water is supplied by a spring that is fed from prehistoric underground salt lakes. The water is channeled into the pans and then left to evaporate which produces the salt.
Our last stop of the day was to a little craft cooperative. There was lots of yarn (Yay!) and a woman in Peruvian costume who showed us how the yarns are dyed from natural plants (and in the case of cochineal, bugs.)
They had a little guinea pig area here — we’d seen one in Misiminay also. They’re really cute — too bad they eat them!
They also had a few llamas (again for us tourists LOL). They look so sweet and cute, but don’t let them fool you. The one in the front kicked me and the one in the back spit at us.
The co-op was our last stop for the day and after we left, our driver and tour guide took us to Cusco to a hotel. By the time we got checked in, it was dark but we wandered around the streets a little and found a nice place for dinner. We’d purchased a chess set (Incas vs. Conquistadors!) at the co-op, so we played a few games of chess when we got back to our room.
It was a busy, fun day!
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