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.

The road to Puno is closed today...

Nothing like taking a bus 30 minutes out of town (at 8:00 am) and then having to turn around and come back! Turns out there is some civil striking going on in the province/state of Cusco today and there were enough protesters to cover and close a bridge on the way to Puno (near Lake Titicaca- my next stop). I had heard something about a potential strike today when I was on my City Tour yesterday. One couple that was also in the bus received a call from their travel agent saying that they were expecting that the train to Machu Picchu may not be running tomorrow, due to strikes, and that they should try to get out of Cusco that night. I haven't heard anything else about that, but since they were striking elsewhere, I'm going to guess that the trains weren't running either. I feel bad for those people who had planned to go up to Machu Picchu today and then weren't able to. That train is usually booked a few days in advance at least and most people can't be so flexible with their travel schedule... I'm just thankful that didn't happen to me a couple of days ago!

It's always interesting watching how people react in those situations. Obviously it's not the bus hostess' fault that we have to turn around and go back to the city. Yet people still feel the need to get upset. RELAX- you're on vacation!

So we get back to the bus station and it's still before 10 am. Y que hacemos? (And so what do we do?) The staff at the bus station offer to leave again at 6 pm, as they are guessing by then the road will be open again. Of course they can't be 100% sure. The other thing is, the reason I had originally chosen this bus company because they do a few touristy stops along the way to different churches and ruins and do guided tours, plus it includes a buffet lunch. It makes the ride longer and cost more. With the 6 pm departure we obviously wouldn't be able to make those stops and they weren't going to give us any sort of discount on the ticket price. After humming and hawing over it, a kiwi guy and I decided to get a refund and head over to the main bus station to see what was going on. Of course, no buses were running from there either, bus we found one company with a sleeper bus that is leaving at 11 pm for much much less. So that's the plan for right now- catch the 11 pm bus to get us into Puno at 5:30 am, just in time to look for a boat to take us out to the islands on Lake Titicaca for the day.

I didn't really mind being in Cusco for an extra day. I actually haven't had much of an opportunity to wander around the city and see the museums because the tours that I went on mostly went out of the city. Gave me a chance to visit a few museums and relax with no real place to be.

Let's hope that I can make it through to Puno tonight, otherwise I'm not sure what I'll do...

In the hills over Cusco

La Plaza de Armas

The sickness caught up with me in Cusco

I guess it was bound to happen. And I definitely helped it along by staying out until 4 in the morning before catching my 8:30 am flight to Cusco. I was already starting to feel a little under the weather and was considering not going out salsa dancing, but Gean Carlo wouldn't have any of it and insisted we would be home by 1 am. Yeah right- I should really know better by now. We did have a pretty amazing time though: we went to some salsa club with a live band and Gean Carlo's friend Orlando came, who used to teach salsa in Argentina (!!) I wasn't really into it at first and it took a couple of drinks to help me forget about feeling sick and start dancing properly. But there was no looking back, and before we knew it it was almost 3:30 am! We got home, I packed my bag, barely slept and then headed off to the airport.

The flight to Cusco wasn't very long and I was there by 10 am. A few days before, Gean Carlo had helped me book a little tourist package (he insisted it was the best way to go since I only had a limited time in Cusco) and so there was even someone there at the airport to pick me up. That afternoon I was meant to go on my "City Tour" of Cusco, but opted out and thought it would be better to get some rest. Sure enough I slept on and off from about 10:30 am to almost 8 pm when I thought it would be a good idea to go find some food. I slept again through to almost 3 am when I couldn't really sleep anymore. That was okay though because I was being picked up at 6 am to make the journey to Machu Picchu on the train. Although I still wasn't quite feeling 100%, I definitely appreciated that extra sleep.