Day 140 - Cusco (Sacred Valley)

  Cusco, Peru
Sunday, January 20, 2008

We woke up before our alarms woke us up, got ready for our tour and even had time for a bit of complementary breakfast, which we didn´t know anything about the previous 2 mornings... D'OH!

Again the tour guy was bang on time, so after waiting for a Japanese guy (also on our tour) to stop fannying around, we were ready to go.

Our "guide" spoke about as much English as we do Spanish, so we thought it might be rather a long day.

There was no bus outside the hostel, so we had to walk down the block, and then jumped in.

The bus was smaller than we'd expected, which was a good thing because we were expecting a full 35 seater, with one guide, which would have been hellish.

We went to one more hostel, picking up one final guy and then drove down to the tour agency offices, where we were asked to get off the bus and wait. Which we did, for about 10 minutes.

We were then asked to board a bigger bus. Here we go, we thought...

More people got on and we spent the next 30 minutes driving around the city (twice) collecting more guests, plus collecting other people to drop off at their office for other tours, which seemed a bit much.

So finally (1hr 15mins after we left our hostel!) we started to leave the city and head for the Sacred Valley.

The one good thing was that at the final stop before leaving we collected our guide, called Cesar; his English was excellent and he seemed a really nice guy. Oh, and the bus was half empty, which was also a good thing.

He told us that our first stop would to be the town of Pisaq, which is famous for its Inca ruins, and also its Sunday market. Katie & I had deliberately waited to do the tour today so that we could see the market, so we were really looking forward to it.

The views as we drove through the valley were fantastic.

The Incas called this valley "sacred" because so much of their food was grown in this very fertile area.

The valley itself was formed by tectonic activity rather than glaciers (the opposite of the Colca Canyon), and thousands of years ago this entire valley was one huge lake.

Apparently an earthquake cracked the earth's surface, the water disappeared, but it left very fertile soil behind.

Cusco was the Inca capital and the Sacred Valley was more or less responsible for feeding all of the city, which is quite something.

Especially considering it's a good hour in a bus away from Cusco, and in those days the only animals used to carry loads to market were llamas, which could only carry 40kg because they have 'soft' feet.

Before we reached the first town, we drove very slowly past an area which was full of llamas, alpaca and the crown jewel of the llama family: the vicuna, which is rarer and whose wool is therefore extremely expensive.



As we passed along the valley our guide pointed out some of the narrow paths running along the mountains, which he described as 'Inca roads', which really brought home what a journey this food went through in order to make it to the city of Cusco.

Just before we turned to head down to Pisaq, we stopped to take some photos from the side of the road, which gave great views over the town and down the valley.



10 minutes later we were pulling into town, which was very busy with both locals and tour buses.





After walking through the main area of the market, we followed our guide to a bakery, which was no doubt owned by a mate or sponsor of his, but they did make some very tasty empañadas!



Being a Sunday, there was both the normal 'tourist' market, and also the regular 'local' market, when all of the local farmers sell their produce direct to other residents of the valley. It was like an open air supermarket, if you will.

Katie really wanted to buy a warm hat and pair of gloves for our Inca Trail trek and also some warm bed socks because she's always cold in bed at this altitude!

At one point we passed what must have been the entrance to the church, and heard loads of girls singing local songs. I'm sure it was just for the tourists, but the music was lovely and they were all wearing their local dress and looked really cute.



We must have walked around the entire market before Katie found a set of gloves & socks that she liked, even if I have a feeling she ended up buying some children's socks.

I decided that I'd rather buy my bits & pieces in Cusco (even though it's probably identical stuff to here) just because markets like this one can be a real tourist trap.

Katie's stuff looks ok though and she got everything for 20 soles (3.5 quid) so I can't really complain.

After a good look round we were back on the bus and heading along the valley to the town of Ollantaytambo (I'm not making this up!), which is famous for its hillside temple ruins.

It was about an hour run, taking us through the largest town in the area, called Urubamba, where we would go back for lunch later.

The views along the valley were fantastic, you could really see how fertile it was.



Ollantaytambo as a town was nothing much to look at, even if some of the houses dated back to Inca times, with the traditional Inca doorways, which are larger at the top than at the bottom!

They had their own market in the square, but it was considerably smaller than the one earlier!



The ruins however were spectacular.



The town was settled before the Incas, but when the Incas were the dominant group they took over the town and expanded it.

They also added to the hillside temple, adapting it for their own purposes, including ritual sacrifices to appease the gods and totems which they worshipped.

(Their Gods included the sky, the mountains, water, the earth, whereas their totems were things like condors, pumas and snakes which they believed carried the Gods will and powers)

To get into the temple we had to buy a 'tourist ticket' which was a total rip-off, 70 soles (12 quid) for 10 days, or 40 soles (7 quid) for 1 day! That was it, there were no other options.

We wanted to visit the Saqsaywaman ruins tomorrow so we had to get the 10 day ticket, otherwise we would have to buy 2 of the 1 day tickets, which would be more expensive! How ridiculous.



Once through the gate, we climbed up the hillside in stages, which was just as well because it was knackering!



However, once we got to the top we did enjoy a series of amazing views over the surrounding area.






As well as a temple, the position was also perfect as a strategic look-out, as it sits on the corner of 3 valleys. So it was part fortress, part temple, and part farm, as many crops would have grown on the stepped terraces which ran up the hill as far as the eye can see.



After a good look around it was time to head back down, so Katie and I weaved through some of the oldest parts of the site, including some pre-Inca areas, and then walked along a cliff path to get to the other side of the market, from where we were being collected.

One of the coolest things about these ruins was that the Incas had carved the face of a man with a crown into the hillside directly opposite the temple. The town nestled in between these two charismatic mountains, safe as houses, as it were...



The face itself was very detailed, and followed a legend which again dated pre-Inca about a very tall, strong but skinny man who one day rose out of Lake Titikaka, walked through the Sacred Valley and past Cusco, and dove into the water when he got past Lima on the coast.

This man was very important for the early Peruvians, so the Incas chose to commemorate him by carving his portrait on the mountain, and giving him a 4 pointed crown to symbolise his divine status. Very cool.



After a good look around we were back on the bus and heading for lunch.

This was where the tour really took a turn for the worse. The bus had people from 4 different tours, but with a shared guide. Fine.

The problem was that the 4 tour companies all used different lunch providers (restaurants), so we had to drive all around the town of Urubamba dropping them off, which took bloody ages!

Katie had booked our tour and wasn't sure if our lunch was included or not, so we waited to see what happened.

When we got to the last lunch spot, our guide said "ok. Mr Smith has pre-paid, the rest of you will have to pay for lunch". Our spidey/rip-off sense started to tingle...

Sure enough it was a total scam, the buffet lunch cost us US$10 each, which I know isn't ridiculous by European or US standards, but for here it was a joke.

We had no choice because we were in the middle of nowhere, so we just had to suck it up.

Worst of all, the food was atrocious, tiny bits of meat with beans in various rank sauces. The raw veggies were ok, but I'd love to know how many of them we would have to have eaten to get value for our US$20!

Our tour tickets only just cost more than that, for a full day tour! It was a disgrace, but we really should have known what questions to ask by now... We won't make the same mistake again.

The only good thing about lunch was that we were able to watch hummingbirds buzzing around the garden and I managed to get a photo of one of them.



With lunch over, we had to collect all the others from the other restaurants and then made for Chinchero, which was another town mid-way back to Cusco.

There wasn't much there, so it was obviously a convenient place for another stop on the way back to the city!

There was a Catholic church which the invading Spaniards built after detroying an Inca temple on the site; they even had the nerve to build their church on the Incan foundations!

The climb up to the church was quite cool, with modern looking steps and a storm drain carved down the middle.



The church look really nice from outside, and had good views over the valley around us.



Inside it was also picturesque, with a huge altar carved in cedar wood, and then covered in glue and gold dust (leaf) sprinkled all over it, so it looked like a huge piece of gold.

Outside the church was another tourist market, and some pretty amazing terraces around the back, plus a flat area where the Incas used to tether their llamas after the long journey.

These were the terraces:



It was half an hour back into Cusco, we were dropped off in the main square and made our way back to the hostel.

We'd enjoyed today, apart from lunch, it was good to get out to the countryside, see more evidence of the brilliance of the Incas, and also get some practice in climbing up steep hills!

We went back to the same restaurant as last night because we didn't want to get ripped off and we knew it was good food.



After that we headed to an internet cafe where I'm going to try to add in some photos for Arequipa, the Colca Canyon and other entries, fingers crossed!


Lots of love,


Al & Katie xx