My Journey Round The World

After Puno and the Lake Titicaca, we head toward Cusco where we met our next guide – Percy - to visit the Sacred Valley.  Following a good night in a nice hotel – Casa de Campo http://www.hotelcasadecampo.com/-  surrounding the city, which offer a great view, once you reach the top after several stairs…  Good traning for the Inka Trail! We made our way the next morning with Percy and a friendly chauffeur to the famous valley. The Sacred Valley start from Pisac and run alongside the – especially impressive in Aguas Caliente - Urubamba river up to Ollantaytambo.

First stop at Awana Kancha, a project of private initiative associating 14 communities (420 families) of native people, who as made the weaving ancestral process their principal activity and way of life. We could watch the process of weaving with people in their local clothes as well as learn how they get the natural color of the famous alpaga wool. At the end there is of course a shop, pretty expensive but with really high quality products! I’ll come back with more money one day! They also have a lama farm – where we did all those nice pictures

Ollantaytambo – 2 800m – was our second stop. We visited the massive fortress dominating the city, which was never achieved due to the Spanish conquest but which still really impressive – especially when you learn how they build it! - offering a wonderfull view! This was one of my favorite site! We quickly visited Pisac market – not as authentic as Awanakancha – before heading toward our hotel Casa de Campo – really charming but totaly lost on the top of Urubamba city – anyway the city is not really nice! We ended up there with the same really loud French group as the night before, waking us up at 5am while leaving for the Machu Pichu…

Next day, we had a quick stop at Maras Salinas, still running for local use – quite impressive to see that people usually work there barefoot! We made there our stock of bananas chips and grilled maize and beans for the Inka Trail

We then went to Moray amphiteater-like terraces where the Inkas are thought to have used them as an agricultural laboratory. Interesting…

Back to Cusco where we of course had a great diner before getting ready for the Inka Trail starting the next day