Day 3

Aug. 11th - another spectacular day spent in Peru!  Today's outing - The Sacred Valley.  It's a pretty incredible place!  This is where much of the agriculture takes place - the Incas used to grow things on the side of the mountains - we can still see the terraces everywhere - although they are not used anymore as they are protected land.  I can't imagine how difficult this would've have been - working the land with your hands, and oxen... Today, much of the work is still done the same way - hands and ox - once in a while you will see a tractor - but only rarely.

We began our journey with a drive to the valley.  The morning was filled with fun activities such as the textile coop and shopping in a market. 

They get all these colours of this "dirt"

The textile coop was a neat visit.  It starts with feeding alpacas some grass - and lots of picture taking of course.  We learned how the wool is prepared - from alpaca to product.  It sure is a long process.  I found it interesting how these women use things in nature to dye the wool.  Beautiful colours can come out of dirt and plants - it's all chemistry!  These women work very hard.

She sits there all day weaving - phew! 

This coop had vicunas and guanacos - two types of wild llamas -that can be found at the top of mountains.  We also caught the first glimpse of a viscacha - the cousin of the chinchilla.  What a fast little critter! 

After our visit to the coop and shopping in their store, we made our way to Pisac - where we shopped some more in the village market place.  This is similar to the market in Cusco - just more "high class" more for the tourists.  We spent about 1 hour here.  Way too long if you ask me... as I'm not a big shopper.

As we were driving to our next destination, lunch, we stopped by a street vendor to purchase a Peruvian delicacy: the "cuy" - also known to Canadians as the guinea pig.  this little village had them everywhere.  People will come on weekends just to buy one!  It takes about 1 hour to cook the little fellow.   These were like spit roasted.  They actually quite tasty but very bony.  Not much meat on a guinea pig!  We were told that on your birthday you don't want chocolate cake - you want cuy.  I think I will stick to chocolate cake. 

 Lunch was served buffet style as a beautiful restaurant that used to be a Hacienda.  The gardens were just spectacular.  The food was not as good as the previous meals...but it was edible.  I'm not sure
why vegetables are usually served cold here... I like my broccoli and green beans hot...

so crowded! 

Going up Inca stairs

Our next visit was Ollantaytambo where we climbed something like 300 steps to see a temple and a grainery.  What an experience to walk where the Incas walked and worked in the early 1400s!  Wow!   It was raining and the stones we walked on were a bit slippery - had to take it sow.  Remi, Vesna and a couple others had enough time to walk all the way to the grainery.  Once at arrived at this end of the path, it was less crowded and so we could take time to take it all in.  There were some pretty steep stairs to take - which I didn't particularly enjoy... but you have to challenge yourself from time to time... which makes you proud of your accomplishments.  Jason and Tracey pointed out these stairs sticking out of the wall - Remi and I took time to do them - that was scary as well!  Lots of tears to be had here!  This place is simply magnificent.  It would've been nice to have more time here. 

We were supposed to visit one more site but we weren't able to as it was now dark.  We drove back to our hotel as we have a very early morning - 5am!  Looking forward to tomorrow! We will be going bird watching - just the 3 of us.