The Sacred Valley

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Day 54
29th October

The Sacred Valley, although this did not appear on our itinerary until we arrived in Cusco (seriously, it wasn’t on the original one we have from September!), we are very glad it was included. The day started with being picked up from Cusco at around 8.30am and a long drive up to our first stop, Pisac. On the way, the bus stopped at a viewing point overlooking the Sacred Valley and I have to say, it was beautiful, with the green fields of the valley below us and snow covered mountains above us. We stayed there for a while with the whole group taking lots of pictures and then got back on the bus to head to Pisac. Pisac is at the entrance to the Sacred Valley and is well known as the silver town of Peru. While some of the jewellery is excellent, there is now a lot of poorer quality stuff there as people try to cash in on gullible tourists. We were warned of this as we arrived and our guide actually took us to a reputable shop where we were given a demonstration on how the jewellery is made and how to tell whether the quality of the silver is good or not. We then had about 30 minutes to look around the shop, there were many beautiful things on display and Ellory and I ended up getting a ring each, Ellory got a ring with Nazca symbols on it to add to his fake wedding ring which was a bit loose and getting very battered and I got myself a big bling ring with Pau shell. Very nice indeed and pretty cheap considering the quality.

As everyone on the tour had booked with different companies, we had all been booked into different restaurants to have lunch. We were in a restaurant called Alpamanka, which had a buffet lunch, one of our favourite things about South America! The sun was shining, the food was good and there was some excellent live music, we liked it so much we ended up buying the guy’s CD! So a very pleasant lunch indeed and we had a chat with a little girl outside the restaurant who I think was a bit curious about the gringos, before we were picked up again and went on to Moray (think that was what it was called) which is a beautiful Inca site up in the mountains and is a big agricultural hub.

Our next stop was the site of Ollantaytambo, a huge Inca settlement of considerable historical importance. We saw Inca temples, an astronomy centre where the Inca observed the stars and celebrated the winter and summer solstice. It has been built so that various windows will line up with the sun exactly at these times of year, pretty amazing. As Ollantaytambo is built on the side of a mountain, the Inca created huge terraces to grow crops on, again, god knows how they managed it, the terraces are massive and just go all the way up the side of a flippin mountain! We got some good practice for the Inca Trail in walking up loads of stairs all around the mountain 

Our final stop before the sun went down was a small town near Ollantaytambo which is well known for its hand woven crafts. We were taken to the factory where we had a demonstration on how they hand spin the wool from the alpaca and weave it on these hand-made looms to create beautiful wall hangings. They also showed us how they make the natural dyes using things such as black corn to create all the different colours and finally dyeing the wool in massive pots, the longer they left it, the deeper the colour. They also had a market, and of course Ellory and I bought ourselves some items (to support the community!), we got some hats, gloves and bracelets and I have to say, alpaca really is warm!
We then had about an hour ride back to Cusco where we were to meet with our Inca Trail guide and the other people in our group. We were a little late so they had started without out us. Maria, our guide, talked us through the 4 days of the trek and sorted out who needed sleeping bags. Then it was a night of repacking our gear into things we needed for the next 4 days and what was to stay behind at the hotel. That done we fell into bed and tried to get as much sleep as possible before our pickup time of 5.15am (grim!!)

Love Liz xxx

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