Framedlight

We caught the bus up to Ollantaytambo in the Inca Sacred Valley of the Urubamba River. The Sacred Valley runs from Cusco up to Machu Picchu. The journey lasts about 2 1/2hours passing through the rather ugly town of Urubamba, named after the river. The town itself is grim but it sits under mountains and the Veronica Glacier, so we could see a snow capped peak. Urubamba was apparently, in the 70's, the home of a bohemian set and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards spent time here when Jagger was filming for Werner Herzog in Fitzcarraldo (he never did appear in it as he went on a tour with the Rolling Stones and was not able to keep to the filming schedule). Mairi had stomach problems and so when we reached Ollantaytambo we took things fairly easily. The bus stopped by the railway station where the line runs up to Agua Calientes and Machu Picchu. We walked down towards the town and the Inca site following a mountain stream The site is incredibly impressive with Inca terracing ascendi...

Day 2 in Peru - the Sacred Valley We got up and caught the bus to Pisac. First we went round craft market where ladies  were weaving. We then caught taxi to Pisac to visit some of the Inca ruins. The site is a collection of different sets of ruins which you walk down through, eventually arriving back in Pisac , The first site is called Qanchisracay and was thought to be  the Inca fortress. Then you walk up to another called Hanan Pisac. This was very busy as a number of tourist buses had arrived. We then walked down to the lower one, Intihuatana the sun temple which contains a sacred sculpted rock, the hitching point of the sun. The tourists had not got this far, which is strange as this is the most important part of the site. A stream ran through the site and there was a small basin for bathing before performing the rites. Mairi at Hanan Pusac We then walked down to Pisac past a small Inca site. The side of the mountain was terraced and a waterfall ca...

Flight over the Andes from Lima to Cusco Well I arrived in Peru on Wednesday after travelling for nearly 24 hours. Mairi met me at the airport and we got a bus down to the hostel. In spite of altitude we had a good walk round Cusco, stopping at the market for lunch and then visiting several churches Here is the lady who cooked our lunch. We ate on trestles in front of her counter.  Child near our hostel After lunch we wandered over to the Merced Church, which is a combination of church and ex-monastery. It had a most beautiful courtyard with flowers (dicentra I think) and arum lilies and shady corridors. Here I saw my first hummingbird, but it was far too quick to photograph. Courtyard at the Merced  Went to bed at 7.30 and slept through till 6.00am!