Casa Andina Sacred Valley Urubamba

Day 1: Miami – Lima – Cusco – Sacred Valley

Afternoon excursion to Ollantaytambo

According to our guides, it took the Incas 1 day to travel the 102 km from Cusco to Ollantaytambo by foot power. It took us 1 1/2 hours for roughly the same distance to our hotel in the Sacred Valley by private car. The Incas took short cuts over the mountains. Our first insight into the Incas is that they must have been incredibly physically fit. Our first experience with our p...

The drive to Maras, Moray and the Salt Mines brought into view broad expanses of rolling hills with snow capped mountains in the distance. The fields dressed in their winter brown were feeding grounds for sheep. It seemed as though we were the only car on the road although we sometimes had to stop for the sheep or donkeys that were also using the road. Children were watching their flocks.

In Maras, we walked to a Catholic Church with a mass service and listened to the singing and the p...

In the mountains beyond Pisac, our driver Julio expertly maneuvered on the narrow winding dirt roads to a potato preserve that grows more than 1,300 varieties of potatoes (http://www.parquedelapapa.org/). This highland area has a few villages where the residents are experts in growing potatoes at varying altitudes. Their primary diet is potatoes, where the people consume 4.4 pounds of potatoes per day or more than 1,600 pounds annually. According to Gourmet Magazine, the average American eats...

In the mountains beyond Ollantaytambo is a small village called Huilloc where women weave colorful tapestries for their families and offer them for sale at a local cooperative. We joined several women for a few hours sitting on the grass with them as they wove and Jaime, our new guide, acted as interpreter of their Quechua and our English. Their first question to us was whether we wanted to be buried or burned when we died. They had heard over the radio about swine flu and wondered what we kn...

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