July 6 – Lima to Cuzco

Another travel day.  Up early, luggage outside, shower, dress, breakfast, on to the bus, check in at airport, wait.  They do make sure that you aren’t going to miss a flight.  It is pretty nice having someone else handle all the check in and luggage details.  The flight to Cuzco was pretty short, less than an hour and considering that the landing was at over 11,000 feet, the pilot did an excellent job.  Guess what?!  Peru is going to have a national strike and our scheduled day for Machu Pucchu is that day.  So our entire Cuzco schedule is juggled.  Today, instead of a restful morning a the hotel and then a short city tour, we are going directly from the airport to the tour of the Sacred Valley.  The Sacred Valley was so named by the Incas since there is a river providing excellent water for irrigation and fertile level land.  The drive provided an interesting view of the city of Cuzco, the poor neighborhoods that surround it and beginnings of the outlying agricultural areas.  We stopped for  lunch at a lovely hacienda, right on the river and then continued to Ollantaytambo (try to say the fast five times).  This was an Inca city, with terraced hillside fields,   grain storage houses, and  of course, temples for prayer and sacrifice.  Most of the sacrifice was of animals like llama, but there is some evidence that when things got really bad, like a severe drought, the occasional human might be offered to the gods.  It is amazing that after 500 years, much of the irrigation systems that were carved out of the rock to provide water to the terraces are still there and fully functional.  After that, we returned to  Cuzco, checked into our hotel, had a very nice dinner at the hotel restaurant.  The menu featured both traditional and local Andean cuisine.  Having had some grilled alpaca at lunch, I felt it necessary to try the salad with fried guinea pig.   I can’t say that it had any special flavor, since it was prepared a lot like a chicken nugget, it sort of tasted that way.  That was quite a day at 11,000 feet and Machu Picchu is tomorrow.