Sacred Valley

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Hotel: Sonesta Posada del Inca Cusco (Cuzco, Peru)
We had booked the tour to the Sacred Valley, Pisac and Ollantaytambo for the day. We had missed the main Pisac market on Saturday, but they still have smaller markets on other days of the week. The Sacred Valley is a very fertile valley along the Urubamba river that was the homeland of the Inca. Over 1000 varieties of maize were at one time grown in the valley. We visited the Pisac ruins, then stopped for a buffet lunch. When we arrived at Ollantaytambo, there was an Epiphany festival going on, with people dressed up as cariactures of the conquistadores. I had already seen the Olla ruins previously, and both my wife and I were feeling ruined out at that point , so we decided to stay in town and observe the fiesta. The dances were great! Several of the masked characters danced drunkenly about while holding a large bottle and sloshing the contents on each other and on the watchers! Sadly we soon had to leave to rejoin the tour (damn tours, they're always on a schedule), when we headed off to Chinchero, another Inca site. We arrived back into Cusco after dark that evening, after another full day. Tomorrow morning we would be flying to Ecuador.

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