Sacred Valley

Thursday 8th May

Today we were doing a tour of the Sacred Valley. This is a valley outside Cusco which has loads of archelogical sites from the Incas. For those doing the Inca trail it was the beginning of their trip to Machu Picchu, although us doing the Lares trek were actually going to be able to spend the night back in Cusco.

The trip started with the short drive to Sacsayhuman, the main palace of the Incas in Cucso. It is perched on a hill overlooking the town and you get some good shots of the town. But it is impressive, the Spanish mostly took it apart to build other buildings when they conquered the town but it must have been massive. We didn't really have much time to explore the ruins though, as we had to get to the Sacred Valley.

After a slightly unneccessary stop at a local market (where the others still bought stuff despite having seen it all before) we reached the valley. The scenery was pretty spectacular. We had a few stops for scenery shots before we reached the Inca town of Pisac. These ruins were massive, extending over a very large area, and it took us 2 hours to walk round them with our guide, Martin. He was very good and gave us a lot of background information, and made the tour quite informative.

After we went for lunch in the current town of Pisac. This is a small little town with a very crowded main square. We had an hour and a half for lunch and we needed every bit of it as we waited for our lunch to be served in a cafe on the side of the square. Luckily there were food vendors selling deep fried stuffed peppers, so we were able to buy from them to avoid starving while waiting for lunch.

After lunch it was on to Ollantaytambo, another big Inca site. But not before a quick stop in Urubamba. The mother of one of the girls on the trip had lived there for a while and we were going to speed through it. I thought she should get a photo of her in that town, rather than just see it from the bus, but she didn't really want to stop it for a personal photo. But I asked th tour guide to do it anyway, and she got the photo.

You would think we were getting sick of Inca ruins by now, but actually Ollantaytambo was as impressive as the others. It was similar, but what impressed me was the placement of it. They had managed to find a single spot in all the Andes where they could get the Summer and Winter solstices and the two equnioxes, marked by the shadows of the mountains. No man made standing stones here.

Interestingly enough the guide knew enough to compare it with Newgrange. The guides in Peru really know their stuff, but its not surprising, they have to do a 5 year university course to qualify.

We dropped off our Inca trail colleagues in Ollantaytambo, from where they would depart the next day, and myself and the two girls doing the Lares trek with me headed back to Cusco, and again to the Irish pub for dinner (the food was very good). As we had an early 6am start the next morning we didn't stay out late, but I did at least have one beer this time.