We have an all day tour of the Sacred Valley of the Incas today.  As we walk to  meet our tour group in the Plaza de San Francisco, we take the opportunity to take a photo of the Inca wall along the way.  Inca construction is unique as they do not use mortar and the stones have very straight lines.  This does not mean they are square.  They have multiple corners.

 

We travel for a while into the Sacred Valley.  The terraces look a bit odd to us.  As we get closer we notice that there is snow on the hillside.

 

 

 

 

We stop at a lookout of the valley below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sacred Valley behind us.

 

 

 

 

 

This is a photo through the bus window of the terraces in the mountains.  They seem to run right off the cliffs.

 

 

We come to the first little town of Pisac.  The women in their traditional dress are there for us to photograph.  They have a very cute little girl who is also carrying a baby Alpaca.  I couldn’t resist paying the 1 Sole ($.40 CAD) for the privilege of having my photo taken with them.

 

Our stop in this town also includes a tour of a silver factory/store.  In Cusco we are approached multiple times a day by people selling silver jewelry.   We learn in this shop that if the price is too cheap, then it is very likely not silver, but nickel.  Since it is my birthday I purchase this little bauble.  It is a ring with a disc that has two different patterns on it.  The top photo is a design of Machu Picchu and the other side is what they call Patchamama or Mother Earth which is a very big Incan icon.

 

 

 

 

We drive from Pisac to an Archaeological site above the town.  From this photo you can see some of the large terraces that the Incas used to grow crops on.

 

 

 

 

Some of the ruins at this site.

 

 

 

You can see holes in this hillside.  These were tombs of the Incas.  They placed the bodies of the dead into these holes.

 

 

 

The next site we see is at Ollyantambo.  When the sun aligns on the summer solstice it shines through this portal from the valley.

 

 

 

 

Across from the mountain the temple was on (above) is this mountain.  There are structures on the side that the Incas used for refrigeration.

 

Up on the Ollantaytambo site there are other structures that are likely houses.

 

 

As we head back to the bus for the trip back to Cusco, Stu captures this dramatic sunset.  These clouds would prove to be very stormy as Patchamama gave us an unbelievable light show for an hour as we were on the road.  The skies opened up with a torrential downpour that included hail.  The roads above Cusco were like roaring rivers.

 

As we arrived in Cusco at about 7:30 we ducked into the nearest restaurant to escape the rain.  We enjoyed a good meal.  We hoped that when we were ready to leave the rain would have stopped.  Not to be!

We scurried single file hugging the wall and trying to keep under the overhang.  We skirted Plaza de Armas the long way, going through the covered colonnades as far as we could.  The last bit we took advantage of the small overhangs but arrived very wet to our hotel.

What a night.