Rusty's Great Adventures: Sacred Valley

Today was really busy as we visited a market to buy some food for our home hosted lunch, visited a local school, went to explore the Ollantaytambo ruins, had our home hosted meal, and learned how to make chicha (corn beer).

This is the hotel we are staying at in Urubamba in the Sacred Valley.

Our first stop for the day was at a local market downtown.

This lady was very shy but finally shared information about the grains she had for sale and agreed for us to take photos.

We were divided into teams and given a specific food item to purchase for our home hosted meal. It was fun trying to locate our rocotos (chili peppers) and negotiating a price.

This lady was preparing carrots. Some were shelling peas and fixing beans.

The meat section is always interesting as nothing is refrigerated. You can find most anything. This man was using an ax to cut up the meat.

First time I have seen a complete cow head in any of the markets. Very different!

After our market stop we went to a local school to visit. The company I travel through (Grand Circle) has a foundation that takes part of what we pay for the trip and puts it into the communities we visit. This school is one of their local projects providing furniture and helping to build toilet facilities.

The kids are always so loving and seem to enjoy our visit.

Juan telling the kids to pick out someone in our group and escort them into the classroom.

This little fellow is the one that came and gave me a big hug then took my hand and escorted me to his desk. We practiced writing our names and then he drew some pictures for me with different colors. We then named the colors.

The kids sang us a couple of songs and we sang one for them.

I always love this part of the trip.

Next we traveled to Ollantaytambo. The town where an Incan archaeological site is located. It served as the royal estate of Emperor Pachacuti and served as a stronghold against the Spanish. The ceremonial temple they were building in the early 1500's never was completed. The architecture and engineering that went to the building is phenomenal. You can see the ancient crop terraces on the mountain side.

This structure is located on the mountain across for the temple and served as their storage for grains.

Looking down on the town from about half way up to the top.

Notice how the stones were carved to fit together like a giant 3-D puzzle with no mortar. This is on the temple side which was reserved for the emperor.

Now notice on the other side where the crop terraces are and the structure is made of lose stones and mortar. Not as refined craftsmanship.

Huge stones at the top were intricately carved to start the temple.

You can barely see an animal relief that was being carved into the stone.

This is looking from the backside of the temple. The gray mountain across the river was were the stones were quarried. Imagine moving them to this site with only man power as they had no large animals.

This earth ramp on the backside shows some stones that were being moved to the top and left abandoned.

Another feature of the tour company is that they arrange what is called a home hosted meal. We go to a local's home and meet with the family and share stories while preparing and eating a meal. This is where we fixed the food we purchased earlier in the market.