Sacred Valley tour around Cusco

the tour started at 8:30 am... well actually at that time the bus started to gather people from hotels all around Cusco... i was the first one in the bus :) in order not to be bored out of my mind i clicked some pictures of the city in the morning. you never really see the locals hurrying here at all.. except in the morning.. then everyone is veery busy.. people are running, cars are driving twice as fast as usual. what a sight!

so by 10 we finally had everybody on board and we started the tour:
1 - we stopped at some little little village´s market.. that was not too interesting and luckily we stopped only for 20 minutes
2 - Pisac.. there we climbed up to the ruins.. stopped there for an hour or so.. my poor knees remembered the evil stairs immediately :)
3 - Calca .. this was only a lunch stop.. it was buffet and the food was good as always
4 - Ollantaytambo.. some more ruins which were great
5 - Chinchero where we saw how the old Inca´s gathered/washed/dyed wool and there was also an old church.. this town is 3800m above the sea level :) so it was freezing there.. i´m cold again.

all the old inca establishments are divided into rural, agricultural, spiritual and higher class areas. the more important the area the better the stones are polished :). also another interesting fact is that the old inca culture is actually called Quechuan.. only the higher class and the royalties and kings were referred to as Incas. now all the old establishments have separate temples in them for sun and water and sometimes also the mother earth (PacchuMama). each establishment has also the sacrificing rock and holy waters. the walls and windows of the temples were all built according to the sun and winter/summer solistices. so when the sun rises on the solistice date then the light shines through all those correctly aligned windows or creates a certain mark on this certain stone :) very cool i must say.. like Indiana Jones :)

inca establishments have the huge lavatories or huge steps (check the pictures).. those were used for growing different plants... as you see there are lots of lavatories and they cover quite a big area vertically.. well this was in order to test at which altitude which plant grows better.. the establishments have all been built at various altitudes as well so they served as kind of laboratories. some establishments served also as astrology research areas.

on today's trip i also met some new people. it is amazing... most of the people i´ve met here (and there are quite many of them by now) are traveling for more than 5 months. there are very few who i have met who travel for less than a month. mostly travelers have taken a year off - who has resigned from their job for the trip, who has been laid off, who is self employed, who just graduated college and wants to see the world before getting stuck at work, who has gathered holidays up over the years and so on and so on. quite amazing i must say.. so interesting to hear what they have already done and what are their plans still. like this one couple is moving on to Antarctica! one girl has been traveling alone for 4 months by now.. soon she will fly off to Australia then to Indonesia, Asia and will return to UK via Russia - she is taking a year to travel and is meeting up with her mom in Australia to celebrate her mom´s 50th birthday.

and now i must say that backpacking is so addictive(ing?) .. i just wake up in the morning.. wiggle my thumbs.. and think "what will this day bring"... "what shall i do today".. so incredible! i would not have a problem doing this for a full year and travel the world :-P and to see all those places and meet all the people.. wonderful.

so tomorrow morning i´m taking the train to Puno (no wiggling thumbs tomorrow :)) ... won´t be posting before Saturday then. and i´m glad i´m going by train as i heard that there are some strikes going on and buses are not going regularly and many roads are blocked. hopefully nobody is blocking the railroads :) although i was planning on taking the bus from Puno on to Arequipa/Ica/Lima.. but lets see... maybe things have improved by then.. if worse comes to worse then i can just take a plane and change my plans a bit and skip some places i originally wanted to visit. we´ll see :)