El Valle Sagrado de los Incas

Actually, the Sacred Valley covers more than just the four ruins found just outside of Cusco that we visited today, it actually includes Macchu Picchu, Ollantaytambo and Pisaq to name a few. But when tourists do a Sacred Vally tour, it usually just includes the ones that we visited today.

Of course, we didn't take no stinkin' tour! We are independent travellers so we were determined to visit the four sites at our own pace. The day started nicely enough as we jumped on a local bus and told the conductor that we wanted to get off at the first of the sites, Tambomachay. The four ruins that we were targeting today are within 8 km of Cusco so we decided that the best way to get around would be by foot. Map in hand, water in our backpack and the shining sun to warm our steps, what could possibly go wrong?

Now I could just go on with some history or story about each ruin, but to be honest, one Inca ruin is pretty much like another and as we started to climb the hill to the first site when disaster struck! It started to rain. No problem we thought as I dutifully took out my rain poncho now affectionaltely dubbed "the tent", it's only 9am, the real rain isn't supposed to start until at least 1pm so this must be a glitch. But this was no glitch. The rest of the day followed the now familiar pattern. While we were walking to the next ruin, the rain thankfully eased up a bit and when we arrived at the ancient, priceless, Inca site, the rain started to bucket.

Nevertheless, we did enjoy our day and the sight of the impressive stones at Saqsaywaman or the labyrinth at Q'enqo made the day worthwhile. And as we sat at Jack's Cafe in Cusco tucking into our sandwiches we both agreed that we had had and amaizing day.