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We left our main bags in Cusco and took our small bags to explore the Sacred Valley over 3 days and 2 nights. We caught a nice short, 45 minute, bus down into the valley (down from 3,300 to 2,700 metres) to the small town of Pisac. We found a good friendly place to stay, left our bags and headed out to explore the town's market. For the size of the town the market is massive but is supported by the coach loads of tours that arrive from Cusco... and us. It's smaller but more colourful than the Otavalo market in Ecuador and maybe better. The town itself is traditional and very quiet once the tours have left but it also has a foreign hippy element with art cafés, crystals and other stuff that we don't understand. We ended up buying quite a bit of stuff from the market to send home. We also bought a cartoon watercolour painting of llamas (I couldn't stop Katy) from a guy claiming to be the artist but after seeing very similar art throughout the valley we very much doubt he painted it.
We ate fresh empanadas straight from a large clay oven for lunch and then headed out of town to explore the town's other main draw: Inca ruins. The ruins are perched on a cliff above the town and most people, sensibly, get a taxi up and walk down but we walked both ways. The round trip took us 3 hours but we passed beautiful old farming terraces and different sets of ruins the whole way. We were surprised to see more local tour groups (particularly school ones) than international ones. Later we had dinner in one of the arty cafés and then walked home passing kids saying "Hola" to us in the street, which hasn't happened for a while.
After a breakfast of bakery goods and bananas we caught two buses along the valley's floor to Ollantaytambo. When we arrived we got some coffee from one of the cafés in the main square to help Katy through the day as she wasn't feeling very well. As we sat there a group of women and school children, of all ages, passed us with banners protesting against domestic violence. We understand that women in many Latin American countries have far from equal rights and we've seen graffiti saying that women should hold no power (we guess politically).
So after a rest, we explored the ruins at Ollantaytambo; one of the only places that the Spanish lost a major battle. The Incas defended themselves by flooding the valley and hurling missiles onto the Conquistadors. A scary face carved into one of the cliffs adds character and hopefully added to the defences. The Ollantaytambo ruins also contained beautiful terraces and a collection of beautiful buildings and temples with much less walking than the previous day. For lunch we visited a cafe where all profits go to educational projects in the valley where illiteracy can reach as high as 40%. Plus it provided us with pretty good English scones - the home comfort food continued.
We then waited in town for our 4:30pm train to Aguas Calientes or as it seems to be also called Machu Picchu Pueblo (Town). The train was good, as it should be for the price, and had sky light windows to see the tops of the valley. It even had good drinks and snacks. The valley got very steep and windy; no wonder the Spanish never found Machu Picchu in this valley where there are no roads even today (just the train line). I was surprised to see little farming communities almost the entire length of the train journey. As the road doesn't go the whole way they must be very isolated. The environment also changed from agricultural land to tropical forest, which surprised us both as it seemed the altitude hadn't changed much during the journey but we had actually dropped to 2,000 metres from 2,800 in an hour and a half.
We were met from the train station and shown the way to our really nice hostel which unfortunately we weren't going to see much of. On the way we passed through a night market (selling the same stuff that we had bought elsewhere). We then headed out to dinner in one of the best places in town for a treat- recommended to us by other travellers: they were French so we trusted their recommendation of a (semi) French restaurant. (After spending £70 and £30 each on the return train ticket and the entrance to Machu Picchu respectively - two amounts that currently seem incredibly expensive to us - we thought why not spend some more.) It ended up being one of the best meals of our trip and it wasn't actually that expensive for what it was. We had a three course meal with wine for Katy and an imported Abbots Ale for me. First proper ale in over 6 months. My main was a kebab but it can be better described as three good sized steaks on a stick. I had a smile on my face the whole time. We then staggered home with full tummies and went to bed early to prepare ourselves for a very early start for Machu Picchu.
Simon
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