Sacred Valley Tour

Day 3 in Cusco I did the Sacred Valley Tour (last Tuesday, Jan 13), which takes you out of the city and to some interesting ruins and sites. There was a mini-bus of us on the tour, about 12 people all together and Karem was our guide for the day. The tour was in English and Karem’s English was definitely not bad. However, it sort of seemed like she was rehearsing it all, almost like a robot. Like she had every single line memorized! It was a little strange, but at least she had it all covered.


Chinchero

Our first stop was about 30 minutes out of the city, to a colonial city called Chinchero. Chinchero was once an Incan settlement that was invaded by the Spanish. The site has an interesting mix of Incan ruins, and then colonial/Incan architecture.

Children watching all the tourists puffing up the hill

The main plaza was also filled with local women selling different textiles and souvenirs

The most interesting part of this stop was going to the Textiles Workshop. They demonsrated the whole process of cleaning, spinning, dying and weaving the llamas wool. They use a variety of resources for natural dyes including fruit, flowers, plants and even cactus parasites. Adding salt to a colour can also change it so you get different shades.

Washing the wool with a natural soap from a plant root

Natural Dyes

Dying the spun wool

Weaving the textiles

Every feature of the pattern along the edge of the textiles represents something to the Andean people. From the mountains, to the sun, to the puma and snake, which are important animals in their religion.

Guinea Pigs

More on Peruvian food later, but I did catch this photo of a few guinea pigs outside one of the houses in Chinchero. “Cuy” is a typical Peruvian dish. Guinea pigs are definitely not considered pets in this country!


Despite having to spend a few hours in the tourist bus that day, it was actually quite enjoyable. The scenery along the way was gorgeous. Rolling hills of farm land with amazing mountains in the backdrop.






Moray

Our next stop was Moray- a very impressive agricultural site that consists of a huge crater of terraces. There are actually 4 or 5 of the craters in the area, but we only visited (and climbed down) the largest one. It was 90 metres deep! Again, different parts of the crater and areas of the terraces would have been home to different crops due to the varying microclimates.








These “stairs” enabled the farmers (and us!) to climb down the terraces. Each level of the terrace was probably 4 to 5 feet high.

Needless to say, the walk back up out of the crater took some time….


Ollantaytambo

Definitely my favourite stop of the day was at Ollantaytambo. Ollantaytambo was once part of Pachacuti's Incan Empire and features extensive farm terracing and irrigation where it is situation in the Urubamba Valley. During the Spanish conquest, the site then served as a base for Manco Inca, the primary resistor of the conquistadors, after Cusco had since been lost to the Spanish. In the 1500s, Manco Inca even managed to defeat a Spanish expedition from the site, which was an important victory at the time.
Ollantaytambo now contains some of the oldest continuously occupied dwellings in South America.

Yet another hike at 2,800 m above sea level

Typical Incan architecture

More Farming Terraces

See the face carved into the side of the moutain here (above)? The face is looking to the left and is located on the same level, to the left, of the four rows of lighter stone. This is pretty interesting, hopefully I can explain it properly. One recurring theme in the Incan culture is the Sun. They worshiped a sun god (Inti) and also tuned into the sun and its cycles to help with their agriculture. On the 21st of June (the southern hemisphere's winter solstice), the sun perfectly hits this face on the side of the mountain as seen from Ollantaytambo and the Temple of the Sun and marks the beginning of the sun festival.

The fountain in the Sun Temple

One of the crazy stories behind this ruin is that the quarry where all of the rocks came from is on the next mountain over, 4 km away! The Incans rolled the rocks down the hill from the quarry, somehow got them across the river in the valley, and then waaaay up the next mountain again. An English guy who was in my tour group made the observation: “Why wouldn’t they just build it on the mountain where the rocks came from? That makes more sense to me…” Good point.