Amazing Sacred Valley

After an overnight stop near the airport in Lima, we head off to Cusco by plane and then transfer to our hotel, Aranwa Sacred Valley, in the Urubamba Valley. The hotel is great, built around a 17th Century hacienda and chapel. Here is our location to visit an Incan fortress and citadel of Ollantaytambo, the scene of a rare victory over the Spanish in 1536. It is a marvellous place, high in the hills and just showed how incredible the Incas were in building such structures, particularly in moving stones weighing over 60 tonnes great distances, but more so in the way these stones were carved then slotted together like a complex lego set. We saw, from a distance, many holes cut in the rocks and were told that these were the burial places of the Incas; the dead were placed there in a fetal position, alongside any valuables they had, to take to the 'other' world. There were impressive cultivated terraces cut into the hillside, a feature throughout Peru that confirmed the Incas were primarily farmers, who used this skill to build their empire. We then went to Pisac and saw an Incan observatory, before looking around the town itself, that had a lovely church and market, with locals selling all sorts of produce, from handicrafts to vegetables. We bought some silver pieces from a silversmith (silver and gold mining is a massive industry here), before Diane got to hold a baby llama with two young girls in the market, in exchange for a couple of sol each. For lunch, we went to the Belmond Hotel Rio Sagrado, that was hidden from the road and located next to the Urubamba River. It was a lovely and peaceful spot, especially with the sun shining. Tomorrow Machu Picchu.