We've been in Peru for several weeks and are headed for Ecuador as part of our South American Adventure. The price of airline tickets to Ecuador from Peru are exhorbitant so we had to wait on better prices before we booked the next leg of our trip into Ecuador, in the interim we headed to the Sacred Valley of the Incas and Machu Picchu as it is the off season so the prices aren't as insane as in the high season. So we flew from Lima to Cusco, suffered through a bout of altitude sickness and then hired a car and driver to take us over the mountains into the Sacred Valley and Pisac.
Pisac is an ancient Inca city where we hired a local guide to show us the sites, Meriam effortlessly walked us through the ruins and along a section of the Inca Trail with her baby strapped to her back as we huffed and puffed along behind her. When you are used to the oxygen rich air of sea level Bermuda, the thin air of Pisac which is two miles above sea level is like trying to breath through a soda straw. Dizzying drops and climbing though tunnels and ancient staircases made this an interesting journey.
[attachment 190580 IMG_3223.JPG][attachment 190581 IMG_3216.JPG]
We moved on the next day to Urubamba and stayed at a newly completed inn near the Urubamba River, the place had a butterfly garden in the middle of the grounds that was literally swarming with hummingbirds.
[attachment 190582 IMG_3500.JPG]
From this little inn we explored the surrounding countryside with our new driver Achilles who took us through the back roads to the Inca botanical research center of Moray and the salt pans of Salinas. Moray is believed to be a facility created by the Incas to develop crops that were resistant to drought and variations in temperature. Salinas is the location of a salt spring that wells up from an saline aquifer deep within a mountain, the water is collected in salt pans where the water is evaporated off and the salt collected - this has been going on for millenia, first by the Inca, then the Spanish and now by the Peruvians.
[attachment 190584 IMG_3347.JPG][attachment 190583 IMG_3432.JPG]
After a few days we moved on to Ullantaytambo which is at the far end of the Sacred Valley and the jumping off point for the trip to Machu Picchu. Normally, you would take a train from Cusco to Aguas Callientes and then a bus up the mountain to Machu Picchu but last year's flooding damaged the rail line so the section of track between Cusco and Ullantaytambo is out of commission at the moment. We stayed at the El Albergue Inn which is right above the train station and a historic site in itself, then we took a day off to visit the ruins of Ollantaytambo which is the site of the greatest victory of the Incas over the Spanish Conquistadors during the war for control of south america.
[attachment 190588 IMG_3603.JPG]
Now that we were rested up we booked our passage to Machu Picchu, which is another story altogether.
Cheers,
BDA
Pisac is an ancient Inca city where we hired a local guide to show us the sites, Meriam effortlessly walked us through the ruins and along a section of the Inca Trail with her baby strapped to her back as we huffed and puffed along behind her. When you are used to the oxygen rich air of sea level Bermuda, the thin air of Pisac which is two miles above sea level is like trying to breath through a soda straw. Dizzying drops and climbing though tunnels and ancient staircases made this an interesting journey.
[attachment 190580 IMG_3223.JPG][attachment 190581 IMG_3216.JPG]
We moved on the next day to Urubamba and stayed at a newly completed inn near the Urubamba River, the place had a butterfly garden in the middle of the grounds that was literally swarming with hummingbirds.
[attachment 190582 IMG_3500.JPG]
From this little inn we explored the surrounding countryside with our new driver Achilles who took us through the back roads to the Inca botanical research center of Moray and the salt pans of Salinas. Moray is believed to be a facility created by the Incas to develop crops that were resistant to drought and variations in temperature. Salinas is the location of a salt spring that wells up from an saline aquifer deep within a mountain, the water is collected in salt pans where the water is evaporated off and the salt collected - this has been going on for millenia, first by the Inca, then the Spanish and now by the Peruvians.
[attachment 190584 IMG_3347.JPG][attachment 190583 IMG_3432.JPG]
After a few days we moved on to Ullantaytambo which is at the far end of the Sacred Valley and the jumping off point for the trip to Machu Picchu. Normally, you would take a train from Cusco to Aguas Callientes and then a bus up the mountain to Machu Picchu but last year's flooding damaged the rail line so the section of track between Cusco and Ullantaytambo is out of commission at the moment. We stayed at the El Albergue Inn which is right above the train station and a historic site in itself, then we took a day off to visit the ruins of Ollantaytambo which is the site of the greatest victory of the Incas over the Spanish Conquistadors during the war for control of south america.
[attachment 190588 IMG_3603.JPG]
Now that we were rested up we booked our passage to Machu Picchu, which is another story altogether.
Cheers,
BDA
