Peru: Day 2 (Sacred Valley)

We had to get up pretty early on the second day in Cuzco, since we had scheduled a 8:30am start to our Sacred Valley tour. After a minor snafu (we had 9 people; the van which initially came to pick us up only seated 8), we were on our way around 9am.

First we headed back up the hill towards Sacsaywaman, stopping briefly for a nice city view. Then we drove into the Sacred Valley itself, where our first stop was at an animal sanctuary. There, we saw a variety of wildlife, including parrots, llamas, alpacas, owls, donkeys, a wild cat of some sort, and more:



At the end, we got to see several Peruvian condors!


I think we were all pretty impressed with the animals, and we left some pretty good tips behind.

Next, we went to see the Pisac ruins. It took some time to climb up to the ruins, and even more time to climb around the hills above the ruins, but it was worth it; the area was gorgeous:




Afterwards, we stopped by the famous Pisac Market for some souvenir shopping. Since it was a Monday, it wasn't too crowded, and we were able to browse and haggle in peace. I ended up buying an "alpaca" scarf (10 soles ~= $3.30) and a toy stuffed alpaca (15 soles ~= $5). I also bought a freshly baked chicken empanada out of a brick oven (2 soles ~= 66 cents), which was pretty good.

After a unremarkable lunch in Urubamba (all-you-can eat for 30 soles ~= $10, but mediocre food quality), we proceeded to the massive Ollantaytambo fortress. We climbed up to the top, where our guide pointed some of the more famous features, including some storehouses and a "face" engraved into the rock on the opposite side. It was late afternoon at this point, so the lighting was really pretty, although hard to photograph:




As we drove back through the town of Ollantaytambo, we ran into some kind of festival; lots of the locals were dressed up in traditional costumes:


Several people fell asleep on the 1.5 hour drive back to Cuzco, but I was awake for most of it, and noticed the scenery was much nicer on the road back; we drove from Urubamba through Chinchero to Cuzco instead of through Pisac as we did on the way there:


We arrived back in Cuzco around 6:30pm, and after a quick shower, we were off to the Llama Path office again for our 7pm briefing meeting. We mostly reviewed information that we had already read before, but it was nice to meet our guide Raul, who would be leading our Inca Trail tour, and for everyone to meet up (part of the group had spent the previous night in Ollantaytambo, so we hadn't actually seen them since arriving in Peru).

After the briefing, we grabbed a quick dinner at a restaurant right next to our hotel. I've forgotten the name (and it wasn't exactly Peruvian cuisine) but most people seemed to like the food pretty well. My grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup was so-so, but my banana split was excellent:


We went straight to bed after that, as we were supposed to be packed and checked out before 5am the next morning.