Meandering through the Sacred Valley

Traveling with Judy and Sara through the Sacred Valley, the green, mountainous countryside between Cuzco and Machu Picchu, was a welcome counterpoint to the coastal desert of Lima. Thanks to Sara for some of her pictures!

Getting ready to walk in a parade in Cuzco

At the market at Pisac on Easter Sunday

When our guide at Sacsayhuaman wasn't sharing some of the details that Sam remembered from his tour in March, he started pointing things out to us. Here he is showing us the rocks forming a puma's paw; you can see a photo of the paw in an earlier post. Simon, as usual, was focused on his excavator and pebbles.

Simon started taking cues from Sam and our guide and helpfully pointed things out... which I remember nothing about, since I was so keen to take this photo instead.

One of my favorite meals: at a bar in Aguas Calientes, full of comfortable couches, good music, and - the best part -  a wall of encyclopedias! Simon and Sara took full advantage of the tomes at their disposal.

When we visited the ruins at Pisac, we enjoyed incredible views while listening to a flute player as he walked slowly out to a bluff.

He sat down and continued playing. His ethereal music was the perfect counterpoint to this peaceful, solitary moment.

Then a group of high school students came around the bend and thought he was pretty photogenic too.

This is my favorite photo from Pisac: a woman, carrying her child on her back, walking across the edge of the ruins. 

The day that we visited Pisac, we hired a taxi to drive us around. We had some ground to cover that day and wanted to ensure we didn't have to haggle for the next stage of our trip each time we finished visiting something. So our taxi driver dropped us off at the entrance to the Pisac ruins early on Easter Sunday, and we agreed we would meet him back there two hours later. 

When we got back to the entrance, it was packed. Tons of tour groups had arrived. Their buses filled the road that had been empty when we walked in. We wondered where our driver was in this mix. "Probably down at the end of the road," we told each other. "No way would he be stuck in this mess! We'd never get out!" 

As we started to walk down the road, I saw our driver off to one side. "Where is your car?" I asked him. "Right over there," he pointed. We blinked when we saw his location: jammed in between cars and buses, very close to the entrance and far, far away from the exit. The space in between the tour buses parked in front of the taxi wasn't big enough for us to squeeze through, let alone maneuver through the dozens of tour buses behind it. We looked at our watches, figured we would miss our afternoon plans since it would surely take a couple of hours to get out from this mess, and settled in. 

We were too large to squeeze in between these buses...

Thus began lots of negotiation with other drivers. The tour bus closest to us started to back down the hill once the driver had some wiggle room.

We tried not to worry when another bus started to move too... its bumper was inches from Judy's face!

The bus inched slowly down the hill and we followed right behind it...

It pulled carefully into a space newly vacated by another tour bus...

And then we dodged between the last few tour buses until we were free and flying down the hill! 

Total elapsed time between getting in the taxi and getting free of the traffic: five quick minutes. We tipped our driver extra and promptly hired him for another day. 

We visited the salt mines at Maras, thousands of little plots that have been handed down within families for generations. It's still being worked today, but we didn't see anyone there while we walked around. A decadent chocolate shop near our apartment features truffles made with this salt.

We hiked in and around the concentric ring terraces at Moray. Apparently each of these rings is in a different microclimate, so the Incas experimented with different crops here to determine their optimal growing conditions.

To walk down each ring, there were four rock steps jutting out at various points around the ring. You can see similar steps in the photo of the Inca Bridge at Machu Picchu (if you look closely!).

The landscape between the salt mines at Maras and the rings at Moray was beautiful, at various points full of fields of quinoa, amaranth, potatoes, green beans, and wheat.

We hadn't expected to have time to visit Ollantaytambo - we thought it was a casualty of our decision to see Maras and Moray - but our crafty taxi driver had other plans. He budgeted our time so that we had exactly an hour to see Ollantaytambo before our train left for Aguas Calientes/Machu Picchu. "You either need to see everything or nothing at all," he explained when I thanked him.

Colorful lichen at Ollantaytambo

Walking down the steps of Ollantaytambo 

And yet, after all that, the best vistas (in one small traveler's mind) are at the plaza down the street in Cuzco, where water, dogs, and kids are plentiful.