Posts Tagged ‘Incas’

We had a little time before our tour to the jungle, so we decided to check out the Sacred Valley and some more Inca ruins.  This valley is about 45 minutes from Cusco and has a bunch of little towns near to some cool archeological sites.  We settled on going to the town of Pisac since it is on the closer end of the valley and is known for its market.

We thought we’d catch the bus over, but after a lot of confusion and uncertainty about where we were going decided to get a taxi instead.  Finding a cab was easy (and not as expensive as you might think!) and we had an uneventful journey over the mountains to get to the valley.  As soon as we got our first view of the valley I knew we had made the right decision.  I also could tell why it is called the Sacred Valley.  Very steep mountains rise up on both sides and the whole scene is lush, green, and spectacular!

We spent the our afternoon at Pisac’s famous market (another wedding quilt fabric post coming soon!) and had some tasty coffee and dinner.  The next morning we were up bright and early to take a look around the ruins.  We grabbed a cab and headed up the mountain.  Turns out that these ruins are HUGE.  We had no idea how big they were going to be.  After walking for 2 hours we still had not seen everything.  The terracing systems were especially impressive and were absolutely enormous.  There were also fortified areas, running fountains, a tunnel through the rock and spectacular views.  It was right at the top of the hill and some of the paths were winding along the very edge of the cliff.  I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.  You can see why we were glad we had the chance to see this!

Impressive Inca Walls

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The bus to Cusco was a pretty smooth ride. Well, except that the kph monitor was malfunctioning and beeped periodcally throughout the night. At least Hazel got to sleep!

Cusco Cathedral

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