Sacred Valley
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| The concentric rings of Moray |
I learned today that sacred valley is not a place but a region. =)
The Urubamba River fed into this valley and it's a fertile area for agriculture, spiritual areas of the Inca Empire.
The practical aspect of going there is you need one more day to acclimate to the altitude. The sacred valley is around 2000 to 3000 meters so it's recommended that you take a day trip before hiking MP
Cusco has a tourist attraction sites call BTC Pass and it's slightly confusing. You can do the full one but realistically we never needed more than 4 for sacred valley and 1 for Saksaywaman due to lack of time. The Cathedral and salt mines are separate entrances. But this is why some of the tours put optional entrance fees for sites. They usually just go to the first site and confirmed who has the BTC pass and who doens't. And you can do a partial BTC pass.
Sacred Valley tours typically include 4 different Inca sites in different order and they usually throw the salt mines in there too. The 4 sites are Chinchero, Urubamba, Ollantaytambo, and Pisac.
Our first stop is Chinchero. This is the coldest out of all the places we went.
We visited the Andinas women community. They showed us the parasites on the cactus that was used to color the alpaca wool naturally. And how they washed the wool with a natural substance.
But I didn't feel comfortable buying alpaca from them as they felt very pushy.
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| Andean Women community |
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| Washing the wool with natural soap |
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| Coloring using the cactus parasites and changing colors with it |
After that we walked to the historic site. It has colonial style mixed with Inca ruins. The ruins are niches that's been cleared out by the Spanish when they are conquered. This is the place that we can see an airport area is being built. But we truly can't tell how the area can support a huge international airport. Let's see.
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| Chinchero historic sites |
Next stop is Moray. The guide explained that Moray is a sink hole and the Inca used it to experiment crops with different microclimates as created by the sink hole.
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| Sink holes in Moray |
The salt mines are next. They are really ocean floors created into mountains during plates movement. And for a very very long time, the sea water came out from the aquifers and are collected to form salt. They form 2 layers, the white and pink salt and harvested according to the layers. There are 3500 salt mines.
And they sell tickets and the salt to fund 600 families who are part of the original ownership. But we are told that the salt water will only last 50 years more.
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| Salt mines |
After that we stop for buffet lunch at Urubamba which we tried a typical Andean buffet lunch.
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| Buffet lunch at Urubamba |
Next stop is Ollantaytambo. If it sounds familiar, it's the place where you catch the train for the hike or to go to Agua Caliante to catch the bus. If it sounds closely connected to MP, it is. If you decide to do the 4 day Inca trail, this is where you start, just like the Inca times.
Our guide Eddy told us that during those times, the villages are made up of a agricultural area (the terraces), a worship area (the sun temple) and a residential area (the villages outside the terraces).
Ollantaytambo is an important area and they think it's a research lab to experiment with crops and close connection to MP. The sun temple during the equinox will have the sun light out of the profile of the sun god. There's also a face of a profile formed naturally by the mountain.
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| Ollantaytambo ruins |
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| The mountain face profile |
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| The sun temple in Ollantaytambo with the profile face in the mountain |
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| The view of the terraces |
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| More cute alpacas! |
Final stop is Pisac. The sheer volume of terraces there indicates the Inca used it to mass produce and food storage.
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| Pisac |
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| Beautiful mountain view in Pisac |
After the terrace, the guide brought us to Pisac town. It's a mining town and there's beautiful silver and stones jewelery.
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| Beautiful jewelry in Pisac |
After the tour, we got back to cusco and called the guide to make arrangements for the pickup the next day for our 2 day Inca trail. We had to miss our briefing at 6pm as we got back to Cusco at 7pm. Apparently not a lot of people make it for briefings as a lot of folks usually go do Sacred Valley tour before the hike 🙄
Site note: the Sacred Valley really can use 2 full days as you barely get 15 mins to walk the ruins and there's a lot to see. Out of the 12 hours, 4 are on the road to get there from Cusco.
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