El Valle Sagrado de los Inkas (The Sacred Valley)

The Sacred Valley is in the southern Andes of Peru and was revered by the Inkas for its special geographic and climatic qualities. And I just think it's beautiful, is all! The towns along the Urubamba river from Pisaq to Ollantaytambo still have many Inka ruins around them and so not only is the Sacred Valley a great place to stop before Machu Picchu to get acclimatized to the high altitude, but it also has some great day hikes to the ruins.

We started off our visit to the Sacred Valley with a stop in the small market town of Pisaq. It's not much more than a few blocks of tiny crisscrossing streets... except on Sunday, which is market day. We happened to be there when everyone and their mother came to sell their alpaca slippers/hats/gloves/scarves/shawls/wall hangings, watercolor paints, corn, inka calendars, silver jewelry, woven belts, you name it in the central Plaza. Our hostal window looked right down over the plaza, too, which was awesome. I took a lot of stalker-ish pictures of the people below from my window. It was really fun walking around... I bought a few things here and there, but really enjoyed spending my time taking pictures of everyone in their traditional costumes in the food section of the market. Women sat around on giant piles of potatoes, or in the middle of every type of fruit imaginable, and children ran around screaming (there is an unnecessarily high proportion of screaming children in Peru I´ve noticed). In the middle of the madness, I managed to meet a student from SDSU! A woman tried to convince me to buy some watercolors from her, but I ended up buying some corn seeds (of about 25 different types). I told her that we don't have corn like this in the US, and she was so excited to tell me that I could actually plant them and grow a ton. Wahoo!

The best story of the day happened when I was stalking another indigenou woman. Well, I was really just taking a picture of a cute cobblestone street and she happened to walk into the frame. As I stood there with my camera pointed down the street, the woman paused, turned around to look in my direction, and then squatted. I thought she was just mad that I was photographing her and was sitting down in protest. It took me a moment to realize she was peeing in the street. She soon stood up, ruffled her skirt, and set back off down the street like nothing happened. I still can't figure out why she even bothered to look behind her to see if anyone was watching, since clearly I was standing there with a camera pointed in her direction and I know she saw me.

That evening the market winded down and people started dismantling all of the stalls around dinner time. We went out to eat at around 8:30pm and the plaza wasn't much more than a bunch of kids kicking a soccer ball around and some women and men sweeping up trash and wheelbarrowing some wooden stakes away to an unknown location. (Oddly enough, the next morning we awoke to discover that at some point in the middle of the night they had entirely rebuilt the stalls and another giant market was going on! Why they took everything down only to put it back up, I really have no clue.) We went to a really cute restaurant for dinner, which seemed to be the only place open at 8:30pm. It was called Ulrike's Cafe. Of course there would be a German cafe in the middle of a tiny Andean town.

That night we didn't sleep well because the air was so dry. It didn't help that at 6am the church bells started ringing non-stop. I believe it was a 10 minute affair, possibly even longer. We were PISSED. I don't think the town wanted anyone to sleep in. I mean, it was another market day, after all. We should be shopping at 6am, not sleeping.

We watched the men set up their stalls thorugh the window as we ate breakfast in our hostal. I also spent most of my breakfast staring lovingly at a cute, white mutt dog who was trying so hard to sleep under the stall closest to us. He kept changing his position every few seconds. I don't think the cobblestones were very comfortable. I told Rachel I wanted to take him home with me, along with all the other billion street dogs. I asked what kind of dog she thought he was. She said probably a mix of 100 different dogs. I'm confident that in time I can manage to mate enough dogs together that I'll end up with his type.

Speaking of street animals, I really can't stop my desire to want to pet them and give them some love... even when they look rabid. (Just kidding, none that I've cuddled with have actually been rabid.) The hostal we stayed at had a cute white cat that unfortunately had a dreadlock problem. I don't know if it ever learned how to groom itself. I had to urge to give it a bath, and I probably would have if I didn't think the hostal staff would think I was a complete psycho. The cat had one blue and one amber colored eye and was really sweet. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that one night in Lima I spent my entire walk home petting every street dog I saw. They were all curled up on the sidewalk, alone and shivering, and it was a really sad sight so I figured it wouldn't hurt to make them feel loved for once in their lives. My hands turned black afterwards (from their dirty coats), but... oh well! Haha.

Anyway, more to come about our adventures in Salinas, Moray, and Ollantaytambo soon...