Sacred Valley, Peru

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Sacred Valley - Chinchero - 3760 meters altitude.
We had driver, Herman, and English speaking guide, David. ( [e-mail] ) This was a bit of a splurge but we wanted to understand what we were looking at and David gave us a full history lesson. We drove from Cusco into the Sacred Valley but along the way we would stop at some villages in the mountains with beautiful ruins and churches. Chinchero has a colonial church with a painted ceiling about 500 years old sitting on top of the Inka ruins which are even older than that. Maras was the next stop, all the homes are made of adobe brick which is just the red soil and straw mixed together (the soil here is like PEI, dark red). Along the drive we see men making the bricks in a lot of the villages. The homes in Maras are tight up against the narow streets and they have colonial doorways, imagine basically a mud hut with an ornate colonial doorway! Not what you would expect to see. We walked through the town square where the ladies were cooking up chiccarones, bits of pig fat and the men were drinking chicha, corn beer. It was a festival day and the kids were out of school early to take part in the festival. As we drove through the rural areas, the native quechua ladies were just as you see in magazines, their colorful skirts and scarves, carrying babies on their backs of a load of produce, and bowler hats on their heads.
Moray, just outside of Maras, is a large circular agricultural terrace. As we walk down into the terraces, once again we are struck by the sun and heat. A bunch of school kids hop down the steps, down down down into the center they go. We declined to go all the way down, knowing we would have to climb back up again and knowing how hot it would be in there. It was basically built to work as a green house. Next stop was Salineras, the salt mines built by the Inka. The ride to it was an adventure, wash-board gravel roads, sheer cliff on one side and room for only one car, the driver honks as we go around the bends because you can´t see what´s oncoming. We met one car head on and he had to back up. The fact that we had no seatbelts wouldn´t have mattered anyway I kept telling myself because if we go over the edge it wouldn´t do us a bit of good. The salt forms from evaporation in the pools of water in terraces built by the Inka. The men working the mines divert the water from one pool to another. The hot salty water comes from a natural spring in the mountain. David took us out into the mine, balancing on the little channels, feeling dizzy, hoping not to fall into a pool. He assures us they´re only about 6 inches deep, but the drop down from one pool to the next is about 10 feet all the way down the side of the mountain.
Next stop - Ollantaytambo. Another amazing ruin, unfinished temple and aquaducts. David gave us the history, the site of the final war between the Inka and Spanish where Inka´s were defeated. There are lots of theories about how the Inka moved these stones so far and cut them so intricately and fit them perfectly together without mortar. The city below the terraces and temple is all inka built and the descendants still live there. David speaks Quechua, he´s originally from this area, he took us into a house which was all one room with 3 beds and a place to cook. The kids were playing soccer in a cobble stone courtyard out front which is shared with 3 other houses in a square. The courtyard was criss crossed with ankle breaking aquaducts. I don´t know how the kids manage to avoid stepping in them as they play. On everyone´s roof we see 2 bulls, a christian cross and a bottle of beer, an offering to both Andean and Catholic gods for good luck. Inside the house it´s dark and smokey, the Dad shoos one of the kids out of bed as we walk in. Immediately I notice the ground / floor is crawling with guinea pigs. They farm the pigs, called cuy, which is served in the restaurants here. The cuy lives with the family. I´m thinking our kids and dogs would love a house full of guinea pigs. This was a 10 hour day that exhausted us again. Doug remembered I mentioned the need to get in shape for this trip. Resting tomorrow - the strike.

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Photos

Chinchero.
This was the highest altitude of the trip.

Approach to the saltmines.
We're standing on the edge of a cliff / the road, the next mountain over is the saltmine, Photo just doesn't capture the height we're at.

Buy a souvenir...
you get to take a photo.

Ollantaytambo
A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.

Cuy
Their guinea pigs.