The Sacred Valley

​Today we were picked up in Cusco and driven about an hour into the Andes. But first, I had to say good bye to Indy. She was eating breakfast. 

Our first stop was Maras. Long ago, the Andes people diverted a salt hot spring into terraced ponds. Here they farm natural salt in a co-op. Each family in the town has a certain number of ponds to work, and they get a portion of the funds from selling the salt. I loved the idea of farming salt like a community garden! 

Here is a photo of Syd and I with the salt ponds in the back. The salt is from millions of years ago when Peru was under the ocean before the Andes were formed. 

Here are all the ponds. 

Our next stop was Moray, an archeological site. Our tour guide had helped with the excavation there in 2007-2010, so it was cool to hear about his experience. They have not found another Inkan site like it. 

There are four theories of what Moray was used for by the Inka. 1. A reservoir. 2. An amphitheater. 3. A ceremonial site, because it lines up perfectly with the constellation of the southern cross. And 4. This is where they experimented with crops and soil science. All are pretty amazing ideas. They even found mummies of Inkan women at the top, so whatever it was, it was special and important. 

Each terrace level has stairs down, and they call them floating stairs. Once I knew what these were, I noticed floating stairs at other Inka sites too. 

Syd taking in the view. 

Our next stop was the most impressive of the day. It’s an Inkan site called Ollantaytambo. It is right along the river at the intersection of two valleys. It was a major crossing on the Inka Trail. 

Colorful market walking into Ollantaytambo. 

Yesterday, the Inkan sites had big boulders on the bottom and small ones in the top, but today it was the opposite. The largest blocks made out of pink granite are at the very top. Can you imagine hauling it up the mountain before the wheel was invented?!? 

This is us about half way up. Notice the door and windows are trapezoids. This is the brilliance of the Inkan engineering. The slight slant made the structures strong and earthquake proof. The only reason parts of the site has fallen down is because the Spanish Conquerors tried to tear it down to show dominance. 

We climbed up 230 stairs total to the top where there is an unfinished Temple Del Sol or sun temple. These slabs are huge pink granite that were mined in a quarry on the other side of the river. We later found out they built slopes to help get the blocks all the way up. The Egyptians did this too when they build their pyramids. 

Showing the zoomed in photo because you can see three zig zag stair cases carved into the rock. This is known as a symbol from the Inkan cross showing three stairs to the sky (heavens, where we come from), the earth (where we are now), and below (where we will return to). 

At the top, the view of the intersection of the valleys. 

After all the touring they dropped us off in Urubamba at our hotel. Urubamba is a small town with a train station that we will catch the train to Machu Pichu tomorrow. Our hotel is really nice with private casitas spread throughout gardens. The sacred valley is sacred because the soil is so fertile they say you can grow anything here. From the diversity of the gardens, I believe it!

We went to lunch at the hotel and they had a horse show. The food was delicious while watching their beautiful horses. 

They have a number of horses you can ride too. My dad would love the ranch and the ranch hands. We also saw some cute guinea pigs. 

The hotel has a library where you can leave a book and take a book. I left my Kamala Harris book that I finished on the plane. I must say, I cried multiple times while reading it and reliving the hope from those 107 days. 

I don’t usually blog about food, but this was dinner. The most beautiful tortellini I had ever seen. Alpaca tortellini was delicious, and I have officially crossed it off my bucket list (even though I didn’t realize it was on it!).

Adventuring to Machu Pichu tomorrow!