Peru: The Sacred Valley and Cuzco

Our last adventure in Peru was a tour of the Sacred Valley which is not too far from Cuzco. We set out with a small group of others in a van to drive to the Sacred Valley and tour various sites for the day. We stopped at a couple of scenic overlooks on the way:


Then we stopped for a brief time at the bustling market at Pisaq. We went on a Tuesday, but the market is much bigger on Sundays. I posted some more pictures of the Pisaq market in a previous post so I'll just add a few here:

The white flowers indicate that these girls are unmarried (of course)

empanadas fresh from the oven

Caleb enjoying an empanada and watching cuy (Guinea pigs)

dyes

From Pisaq we continued on to Ollantaytambo to climb the ruins.

Ancient pre-Inca storehouses high on the side of the mountain.

terraces

modern village mixed with ancient ruins in Ollantaytambo

Temple of the Moon at Ollantaytambo

huge pre-Incan stone walls at Ollantaytambo

Fountain

family of ducks in the water channel that provided great entertainment

After Ollantaytambo we stopped for lunch in Urubamba. We decided to skip the buffet lunch on the advice of our tour director and opted for snacks in the plaza.

We were highly entertained by pictures made in the cobbles on the sidewalks along the plaza. We went from panel to panel trying to identify each thing. The one above is the sun, but there were many, many motifs.

tree in the center of the plaza in Urubamba

snacks we purchased at a small bodega--coke with real cane sugar instead of corn syrup (much tastier) and a bag with mixed potato chips, Cheetos, pretzels and spicy cheese crackers--quite a yummy combo.

From there we made our way to Chinchero to tour the old church with beautiful old frescos and spent a few minutes at the local market. Chinchero was really our favorite market because many of the craftspeople were selling there own items and demonstrating their skills in person.

Chinchero

The next day was our final day in Peru. We walked around Cuzco in the morning and found an interesting textile market and museum (below) and several small museums which were on our Boleto Turistico (tourist ticket) that we had already paid for.

Caleb purchased birdseed from a lady and fed the palomas

In the afternoon we collected our luggage and were transferred by our tour agency to the airport and helped through the somewhat complicated check through procedure. We flew to Lima and then on home.

We had a fantastic trip! Read back through our posts for all of our adventures over our two weeks in Peru.

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