Day 20: Sacred Valley, Peru

What Frank generously failed to mention in his last post is that, upon arrival at the train station in Ollantaytambo (in the Sacred Valley), I promptly tripped over an unseen step in the pavement and sprawled in front of the poor girl holding the sign with our name on it. There were a few moments when I was worried my poor knees would keep us from extensive walking the next day, but I was administered a strange rosemary-based concoction by the owner of the B&B that is supposed to help inflammation (see photo below), and that - coupled with some ice applications - worked wonders. So today I was up and ready for exploring the Sacred Valley, which is a good thing because it was absolutely amazing.



The owner of the B&B arranged a driver for us for the day and he doubled as a fantastic tour guide and local expert. We dragged our new friend Cara (a volunteer at the B&B which also does organic farming) along on our exploration and ended up having a fun, random, and interesting day. En route to our first destination, we stopped to take some photos of the Sacred Valley, pictured here with and without us in the way.







Our driver also kindly stopped the car so I could jump out and take a picture of this "burro" and his owners. The ceramic jars that the donkey is carrying are filled with an alcoholic drink made of corn called "chicha" that these people are bringing to the farmers working nearby.




Our first site of the day was an area called Moray which is an area of concentric circular terraces that was used by the Inca for agricultural experiments. Apparently the center area is supposed to have positive energy so we made the trek down and all absorbed some, which should come in handy for the rest of the journey.




Then we went to Las Salinas (salt flats) in Maras, which were also very visually interesting when viewed from above. The various "pozas" are all owned, in varying quantities, by the local people of Maras. The salt flats were restored from the original Inca construction which takes advantage of a natural salt water spring that flows out of the mountain.




The next stop was a ceramics workshop which also doubled as a museum of some ancient pre-Columbian ceramics from the various tribes who lived in Peru. We were given a special tour that walked us through the entire process and also were able to see the gorgeous courtyards filled with flowers and animals (our favorite being the owl monkey, which was adorable, although sadly in a zoo-like enclosure).






Lunch was in Ollantaytambo at a place recommended by our trusty driver and guide, Jorge. We were the only ones there as it was well past the traditional lunch time, but we had some Cusquenas (a local beer) and I tried alpaca ravioli which was pretty good. My assessment was that alpaca tastes like beef, in case anyone was curious.

After lunch, Jorge arranged for a friend/local guide to give us a tour of the Inca ruins right there in Ollantaytambo. They were very dramatically situated in the mountains and the tour was very informative; however, it was extremely windy - apparently the norm there - and the sun was behind the mountain at that hour so we were pretty chilly.




In the evening, we went to a "fancy" restaurant in Urubamba which had very good food, but we were all still full from our late lunch so didn't get to try anything too crazy or interesting. We had an uneventful cab ride back to El Huerto Paraiso (our B&B), which at that hour literally feels like it is in the middle of nowhere. (daylight picture below) Given the lack of light pollution, the stars were unbelievable and we avoided any obstacles, such as the drunk man lying in the middle of the dirt road that we encountered on our way to dinner.



We highly recommend the Sacred Valley (and Cusco and Machu Picchu) to everyone willing to rough it just a bit. Peru was a fantastic experience, and now tomorrow we are off to Chile to meet our friends Archana and Richard, which we are really looking forward to! Hopefully they feel the same way...

Note: We had to post yesterday's blog in a rush so please forgive the un-captioned photos and the one that is sideways. The animal is some type of rabbit, we believe. It looked like a rabbit but didn't hop and had a long tail. We tried asking the local guide but he just said it was a type of mountain rabbit. I couldn't find anything online.

ILM