El Valle Sagrado

Today started off just as beautiful as any other day in Cuzco. Another early morning to tour the ever popular Valle Sagrado, or the Sacred Valley. On our drive throughout the valley, we made several stops to see the finer things of Cuzco. One of those small stops? A llama and alpaca farm! They were pretty freaking cute. I don’t like touching animals because I have stage 2 germaphobia, but feeding them bundle of grass was fun. Of course, after that, I went straight to the bathroom to wash my hands because of my stage 2 germaphobia.

We continue to make our way through the valley to make other stops at Mirador de Curacao and Mirador de Taray. These stops were short-lived, but the view of the valley was breathtaking.

After touring much of the Sacred Valley and its spectacular beauty, we would finally arrive at the hidden archeological site atop a mountain in Pisaq. Similar to the agricultural ingenuity of the ancient Incans at Los Anillos, the site contained carved out pieces of earth that were layered like a baking stencil for a wedding cake. Each level had its own microclimates used for different agricultural purposes such as growing corn and potatoes.

My favorite part of the day took place during lunch where we ended up at Restaurante Tunupa – an all you can eat lunch buffet of signature Peruvian dishes. Oh my Lanta. I had four full plates of food and essentially tried everything there was to offer and one dessert plate. Let’s just say I slept very well later that bus ride.

After our lunch break, we made our second main stop of the day with a tour of Ollantaytambo, a temple located in the Sacred Valley. Our guide for this tour led us up several large steps to garner a greater view of the valley and its archeological sites. From atop, our guide pointed us to several different carvings and features engraved on the sides of other mountains visible from our vantage point. Here, we were able to see the river and face carvings that represented the personification of different gods. We ended our tour here and headed back home after a long day touring.