Day Four: The Sacred Valley

(Allow me to begin by apologising for the hiatus. I was, you know, doing stuff. Which, if I ever finish blogging this trip, I may blog about.)

So, We woke up in our reasonably decent hotel in Cusco, ate a reasonably decent breakfast, and didn't even have to be picked up by our liason (Celia! That's her name!!) until 7:30, which by this time seemed like the greatest luxury. We were heading off for a tour of the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Along came Celia at the appointed time, and got us onto a huge bus, which proceeded to cruise around Cusco to various hotels, picking up tourists, till the bus was full. Then we circled the same city block about thirty times, trying to find our tour guide for the day, while certain members of our party stewed mutinously. Finally, we set out on the road. After a brief Joffre meltdown close to the beginning of the trip, the kids held it together pretty well. We got through the mountain pass leaving Cusco, and entered the beautiful, verdant Sacred Valley. Although I know I'm being a wet blanket, I think the less-romantic Useful Valley would be a more accurate name. The valley of the Urubamba River is unquestionably gorgeous, and fertile, and temperate, and strategically useful (although not, as it turned out, ultimately enough to fend off the Spanish), but I'm not sure that it was sacred to the Inca, per se.

After stopping at a lookout for panoramic photos and the ubiquitous handicraft peddlers, we switchbacked down into the valley to Pisac, a town famous for its enormous market. It also has an impressive ruined Inca fortress far up the mountain from the town, but our tour did not visit there. We had about an hour or so to wander around Pisac market - the men in our group hiked up toward the ruin instead - and then we were off through the valley again.

We stopped for lunch in a sprawling hacienda-style buffet restaurant, which exists exclusively for tour groups, and rested for quite a while before the bus picked us up again. Then we were off through the rest of the valley, to the fortress town of Ollantaytambo. This town is the best remaining example of Incan town planning and architecture, and is just flat-out lovely. The fortress has some of the most amazing stonework in the Andes, which is saying something when one considers the Incas' reputation for spectacular masonry. Of course, I discovered all of this on my second visit to Ollantaytambo, because on this day both of the kids fell asleep and I spent the whole visit to Ollantaytambo in the bus in the parking lot.

The bus left Ollantaytambo at around 3, and wove its way back through the Sacred Valley to another pass, much higher than the first, which offered us amazing views and a bit of a glimpse at high-altitude subsistence farming. Our last stop of the tour was Chinchero, the "birthplace of the rainbow", and as the sun went down we hiked up into the town and church square, before trekking back to the bus. A big cob of boiled corn kept the kids quiet until we finally got back to Cusco, after dark, around 7:30. The Gunsons and Keelers blessedly took care of Joffre while Alec, Aaron and I went out for some Chinese food, made by real Chinese people!

It was an incredibly long day, but overall quite enjoyable, and we certainly saw a fair bit of the Sacred Valley. But I resolved that my next tour would not be in a bus with 30 other people.