Sacred Valley Of the Incas
Near Cusco is the Sacred Valley of the Incas. This highly fertile area was a major source of food for the Incas and so was treated as sacred. Many people still live here and I got the chance to visit a small village where local people still practice traditional handicrafts.
The local people in this small village mainly survive by farming, but the growth in tourism to the area has provided additional opportunities for them. The woman of the village use the wool from their alpacas to weave traditional items to sell to tourists and then men work as porters on the Inca Trail. In fact some of the men from this village would be in my team of porters when I hiked the Inca Trail a few days later.
Near the town of Pisac are some Inca ruins with this huge area of terraces. The Incans terraced the land to grow crops and make the best use of the land. Our guide led us around the ruins on a short hike to make sure we were up to the task of hiking the Inca Trail the next day. The altitude certainly made it interesting and left us short of breath, but it certainly helped prepare us for what was to come.
The Incan masonry is amazing, each stone was carved by hand to fit perfectly with the stones around it - no mortar was needed to keep these buildings standing - just precision workmanship.
Leaving Pisac I headed to the start of the Inca Trail at Ollantaytambo - another Incan city.
Looking at this mountain it's hard to imagine trying to climb it, but the Incas did and build a number of buildings on it. That alone is pretty impressive, but if you look closely you can see two faces carved into the rock itself. To see the first, imagine a line between the two buildings, about half way along that line is a face looking to the left. The second is smaller and harder to see, it's on the top of the mountain on the left, you can just see a face in profile, with the nose sticking out from the side of the mountain.
Climbing around Ollantaytambo left everyone tired and short of breath thanks to the high altitude, but it was just a warm up to hiking the Inca Trail so after buying a walking stick we all went to bed early, because tomorrow was an early start and a lot of hiking.
Sacred Valley photo gallery