The Sacred Valley of the Incas - Part 2
Day 9 of trip - Monday May 14th
This picture illustrates rather well what kind of a valley this was - a large fertile area surrounded by very tall mountains. And if you look at the map in the previous post, it sort of leads from Cusco (the capital) to Machu Picchu (estate with religious significance), so I don't think it'd be a stretch to suggest that the Incas built MP where they did with that in mind.
These Quechua women, who only a couple years ago lived in horrid conditions due to a lack of employment, showed us the process by which they turn alpaca wool into clothes. They went through the process from start to finish, first by showing how the wool is spun into threads, and then into yarn.. or however it works and whatever the proper terminology may be.
We would often see women with large bags full of plants walking around, and this happened not only in the valley but also on the hike.. I had many questions when I first saw something like that, and this sort of explained a bit of it.. The Quechua people know the plants that grow in the region incredibly well - they go on long hikes into the mountains and/or a forest to pick a very specific plant, which might allow them to turn a bunch of wool yellow, fights some disease or ailment, or is a spice... For the colour orange they used a bug that can be found on a specific type of cactus - you squish the bug and a bunch of "paint" comes out.
Anyway, it was very interesting stuff. It took place in a store set up by some program initiated by the government a couple years ago to help the locals in the mountains lead better lives.. So not only does it provide a unique tourist experience, and not only do you learn a lot of interesting stuff, but a lot of people with money end up passing through this thing and buying a lot clothes that these women make... so the locals end up with jobs, a stable income, good tips from tourists, and better lives for them and their families.
I bought an alcapa scarf for my mom for mother's day (remember the mother's day celebration the day before? My first thought when that happened was "Crap, I need to call my mom".. but I couldn't. So she gets a scarf).
Oh and.. there is a guinea pig in this photo somewhere. Can you spot it?
See the thing carrying water down the middle of the street? That's an Incan aqueduct and one of the only ones still operating. You would often see such "channels" in Peru and until this moment I had no idea what they were for.
Our guide was the guy on the left btw.. He carried around a stick with a Peruvian flag on it, as well as an Incan rainbow flag attached, which bears a striking resemblance to the pride rainbow, or whatever that thing is called. I think the difference is just 1 colour.. If you didn't know any better, you'd think that all of Peru was gay because those flags were everywhere. (We were explicitly told not to joke about that with locals). And if you're wondering about the guide and the flags - when we were at ruins there might be 5-10 different groups wandering around, so it might be easy to get lost.. All the guides had different flags.
This guy is making jewellery by sanding down pretty looking stones to fit exactly inside of something he prepared earlier.. I think that part might have been out of silver (The place where this is happening at specialized in silver) so in the end an earring might be a bunch of silver with holes in it and these stones in the holes.. It doesn't sound very pretty or jewelry worthy, but I'm just not explaining it right. Either way, it was neat.
Here's a market with all sorts of hats, knick-knacks, chess boards, gloves, t-shirts, pipes, souvenirs, etc. There was tons of the stuff and when you bought something it was usually expected that the asking price was a bit too high - and that you'd haggle it down. Everything still seemed rather cheap to me though, even though the place was very obviously targeted at tourists and all the prices were inflated.. so I didn't mind paying bit more. It might sound stupid but I was happy to contribute to the local economy.
What I bought was a funky looking pipe, a part of which was made out of some sort of bone. I ended up haggling for it, the first time I think I haggled ever.. Figured I might as well do it once. What I did was I approached the stand that had the pipes, and looked around at random stuff but always casually back at the pipes.. I tried to look kinda 50/50 in terms of if I was going to buy something or not. She of course eventually asked me if I wanted to buy anything, and I picked up a pipe I liked (I wanted a cool souvenir and these pipes were neat).. She quoted a price and I put it down right away and started walking away.. Then I would stop and look at the pipes again and tried to look like I was really trying to think about it.. anyway, this went on back and forth like that a couple times, until she finally said "What do you think a fair price would be?" AHA! I had her. I quoted something less than 70% of what the price initially was.. back and forth we went again and I ended up getting it about 40% off overall. Not bad for a n00b, I think!
I also bought a cool beer opener, a scarf, and a shirt that says "Coca Cola", but the "Coca" is a coca leaf. Sergei was wearing that shirt on one of the days during the hike and I really wanted one.. I did not haggle for any of these other things.. It was too time consuming and annoying.
That tree was just giant. It provided shade for a rather large part of the market.
We had lunch at a restaurant named
"Tunupa".
(If you go to the site, some of the pictures in the banner are from their Cusco location. You can scroll down for pictures of the restaurant we ate at). The restaurant was very classy and I would have a hard time not describing the food as "gourmet". We definitely did not expect anything like this when we paid $25 for the whole day! There was all sorts of food and a lot of Peruvian goodies.. I tried to sample as much of it as I could and didn't mind indulging myself at all.. There was one table dedicated to sushi and ceviche.. mmm.. Also a lot other traditional Peruvian dishes as well as food that wouldn't be out of place in a family diner in north america. There was also an amazing dessert table, with all sorts of cakes and Peruvian sweets.. That low-carb diet I did right before this trip? That was long forgotten ...
The whole time we ate we heard music.. and we assumed that it was playing on the radio or off a CD.. but no, it turned out that there was a band playing in a clearing right behind the restaurant.
This alpaca was relaxing by the entrance. He had a very.. "special" look on his face
They also had parrots chilling by the entrance.
This guy was just beautiful
This guy not so much
What's strange about the above picture is the rainbow in the bottom right corner.. The Inca symbol is a rainbow and this was pretty much the only photo I took the entire trip of a guy dressed up in traditional high priest Indian garb.. Strange coincidence
After lunch we of course went to explore more ruins. These are close to Ollantaytambo IIRC. If you look closely at that mountain in the distance, you will see that it has several temples on the side and a trail leading to them.
The terraces I took the picture from were rather extensive. It wasn't easy to get up all the way to the top, at least for me. I was friggin exhausted from the hike and my left foot was beginning to hurt.
Our guide had some crazy theories about the Incas btw.. He made connections to the Egyptians, atlantis, easter island, God, and.. probably aliens, I can't even remember anymore. I didn't take him very seriously, and when he showed us a picture he took @ Machu Picchu, where the sun produced a weird glare that kind of looked like a face, and asked us what we could see, I loudly exclaimed: "I think that's my mom!". Turns out it was supposed to be "God". Whoops! He didn't really appreciate my comment, but I shut up after that and let him tell us about whatever without being sarcastic. It wasn't easy, but I didn't want to be a jerk.
Here's some more precise Incan stonework/masonry/magic
We were also showed several structures that were designed to be earthquake proof. I don't have any good pictures of those, but it was basically rocks connected in such a way that some of them were allowed to move and slide on eachother during an earthquake, preserving the structural integrity of the whole building. It was pretty impressive and I took everything this guy said with a grain of salt, but this particular thing I believed.
After a long day of exploring ruins we eventually ended up back at our hostel, ate dinner, and watched some of the NJ vs Islanders eastern conference finals game 1 while enjoying cold Peruvian beers.. Our hostel had a projector set up in the bar/lounge area and would show pretty decent quality online sports streams.. It was usually football (soccer), but also rugby and to a lesser extent hockey.
I forget when we went to sleep, but the next morning we had to wake up at 6am. We were headed back to Lima.