Thursday, December 31, 2009

February 9, 2009

Sacred Valley, Peru

We started our morning with a wonderful breakfast of omelets and papayas in the garden of our bed and breakfast. There were beautiful flowers everywhere.




After breakfast, we left Ollantaytambo and drove through the beautiful Sacred Valley to the salt pits at Salinas. The salt pits are very strange looking. A stream of salt water comes out of the side of the mountain and the people have built settling pools to evaporate the water and collect the salt. Families own certain pools and have maintained them since Inca times. We toured the salt pits in a slight drizzle and bought bags of salt to take home.



















Not far from Salinas, are the experimental agricultural terraces of Moray. The terraces were made by the Incas to experiment with growing crops at slightly different micro-climates. Restoration has begun and a museum is planned.







Back to Urabamba for an outstanding lunch at Tres Keros and then we spent the rest of the day driving through some of the most beautiful countryside we've seen. I never knew potato fields could be so picturesque! It was cloudy and rainy all day but people were out working in the fields and the children were always willing to be photographed.





















As we drove back into Cusco, we passed some new houses where the families were making adobe bricks by stomping in the mud to mix in straw.





Back to the apartment about 6PM but no internet so we just sat on the upstairs terrace and enjoyed the view.

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