The Sacred Valley

Yesterday I took a day tour of the Sacred Valley to see three different villages and their Incan Ruins.  It was only $13 for the whole day with a tour guide.  What the tour company left out was the fact that, in order to live closer to their gods, the Incans built everything on the tops of the mountains.  Can you say stairs…big perilously uneven, steep stone stairs with loose crumbling rocks.  It was a good workout but, as you can see, totally worth it.The green down at the bottom is corn which will be harvested in January.  Their corn has giant kernels that make our kernels look puny and pathetic.  They also grow over 900 varieties of potatoes here.  This was the beginning of the trip so I was very impressed with how lovely the Andean Mountains were…how innocent I was! 

The ruins at Pisac…they used these terraces until very recently and the irrigation systems still work after 600 years.

Look at the view from the top….taking lots of pictures was a good excuse to stop climbing for a bit. One of the great things about Peru is that there are no ropes or signs that say “don’t touch” so we could clamber all over the ruins and follow narrow passageways to our hearts’ content…that is if your heart hadn’t given out by then. This is Ollantatamba which looks totally different with the large cut stone because it was a temple.  All those large rocks would have been covered with sheets of silver and gold before the Spanish came and stole it all.  240 steps to the top…at least that’s what the guide said, none of us could keep count. After the ruins, we went to a high mountain village that specializes in traditional weaving.  It’s not unusual to see women dressed like this even in the city. High Andean plateau lake.  The farmers here are all still using teams of oxen to plough their fields.