Sacred Valley of the Incas

A lovely llama
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Took a tour to the Sacred Valley of the Incas as its the best way to take it all in without having to chance my defective spanish on local buses & end up God knows where.

First stop the little town of Pisac with a lovely village market with very persistent stall holders right down to the 6 & 7 yr olds selling tiny dolls & puppets.

My first impulse was to ask them  ¨why are´nt you at school ¨ but my spanish doesn´t extend that far without resorting to the phrasebook, besides I figured this was their school - the school of life - an apprenticeship to take over their parents stall !!

Part of the Inca fortress at ollaytantambo
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We then took in the Inca cemetery which consited of holes in the rockface of a mountainside where the bones of 5 or 6 families were stored - The nobles had more upmarket brick structures.

The town of Ollayantaytambo was the site of a brilliant Inca fortress with amazing terraced levels & an amazing no horrifying number of steps to the top- didn´t actually count them but I heard someone say 120 !!  The Inca civilization was the precursor to the socialist movement as no one could own land but use it til they died & then it passed back to the Admin who then ¨lent ¨ it to someone else.

A section of the long Sacred Valley which ends in Machu Picchu
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We finished the day at the town of Chenchera which means rainbow.  Here we saw a lavishly decorated church with numerous gilt statues & altars and, of all things, mirrors surrounding the statues which were placed there to reflect the candles and thus light up the interior of the church.  We then saw over a little Â¨factory¨which is a bit of a misnomer as theres not a machine in sight. Our guide translated while the women of the co-op explained & demonstrated how they spun the llama & alpaca wool, then used selected plants which they had in dishes on show to dye the wool different colours , a demo of dipping some wool into the boiling pots of dye and finally showing how they wove it into various items on their handlooms.  How could you try and beat down their prices after that - I ask you  !!  My camera battery ran out about here but am hoping some other people can email me some pics.