The Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu

The Sacred Valley of Peru is amazingly beautiful. Majestic mountains that rise out of the valley floor so sharply with no foothills - just straight up! The mountains are quite baron with cactus and mostly scrub land and lately Eucalyptus trees from Australia have been planted. These trees grow quickly and provide beams for house construction and many other things.
Our first stop in the Sacred Valley was Ollantaytambo, one of the few intact Inca villages. The village is surrounded by lush farms and a rushing Urubamba River. Corn is the crop mostly grown here and since it is Spring in this part of the world the healthy young crop was well underway.

We climbed the ruins at Ollantaytambo, which has steep stairs rising through terraces once farmed by the Inca. It is so mind boggling to imagine just how this site was built. Huge stones were moved from a quarry 6 kms away and when the river got in the way, they just diverted it around the rocks.

Another Inca site we visited was called ‘Salinas’ where water from a hot spring fills huge stone pans and evaporated to produce salt . This is still in operation today.


Not far from Salinas, ‘Moray’ an Inca agricultural site that was built like a huge amphitheater. Each level of the theater was planted with different crops and they were then able to see which crops grew best at each elevation. The Inca’s were masters in engineering and these sites had built in irrigation and drainage. One of the trademarks we have seen in all the sites we have visited is very precise craftsmanship. The huge rocks fit together perfectly with no need for any filler. All corners and edges are perfectly straight. Amazing!

October 15th we took the Perurail Vistadome train to Machu Picchu.
This trip was totally mind boggling with the steep mountains so close to the train that you had to look through the roof to see the tops. When we got to Aqua Calientes, the town at the base of Machu Picchu, it was raining so we waited till the afternoon and luckily the sun came out. The bus trip to the top of the mountain is about ½ hour on switch back roads with scenery that just no words will support. The site was so much more than we expected and I think it was the incredible setting of Machu Picchu with the huge surrounding mountains that make it so. We hiked the whole site and just knew that it would be an experience neither of us would ever forget.

Back in Cusco, we took a day trip to another small valley town called Pisac.
This town is also at the base of another incredible Inca ruin and on Sundays they have a huge market with goods from all over the valley. We hiked the amazing ruins first and then took in the market.

October 2008 - Peru!

Brian and Marilyn left Victoria at the end of September and 6 planes and 2 days later we were in Lima, Peru.

We try to always find good things to say about a place but we are hard pressed to come up with too many superlatives about Lima. The Plaza de Armas, where the Presidential Palace and the Cathedral are located is a lovely square, as is Plaza San Martin but the rest of Lima is just large and noisy. Hostel Iquique, where we stayed, was also great and they are keeping two large bags for us full of boat parts destined for Icarian.

After 4 days in Lima we flew to Cuzco, a charming town at the elevation of 3326 meters in the Andes Mountains. The day we arrived was sunny and hot, a treat we were not expecting but it proved to be kind of a fluke as the temperatures are for the most part very chilly here. Cusco is beautiful with cobblestone streets, quaint restaurants and is nestled on a valley surrounded by steep mountains. The people here have been great.

Tomorrow we are heading to a small village in the Sacred Valley called Ollantaytamba. We wanted to experience the feel of a village where not too many tourists come and this Inca village has been continuously inhabited since the 13th century. This should prove to be a very interesting stop on our way to Machu Picchu.
bye for now
Pixs: Lima Central Square, 3 in Cusco