Peru: Sacred Valley Tour

Sunday, June 21, 2014: Sacred Valley Tour

After waking up and enjoying breakfast at the hotel, we were picked up bright and early for our Sacred Valley Tour. We booked the Sacred Valley Tour the night before for 40 Soles per person (~$14USD) which included a lunch buffet.

No thanks to my mistake of trusting that my daily contacts would work, I had serious issues with my contacts during this whole trip! I wore my glasses for a good portion of trip and ended up purchasing my usual contacts at a local vision store and paid a fortune for 2 boxes ($145USD for 2 boxes of contacts! UGH). Thank god Andrew forced me to take care of the contact situation and persuaded me to suck it up and pay up because I seriously don't think I would have been able to do the Inca Trail wearing my glasses which have an old prescription! Andrew is always the more sensible one between the two of us :) That's why I love him (okay, you can gag now). 

Our tour was a pooled group of about 20+ people, and luckily the bus was pretty nice and comfortable.

The first break stop was a non-bustling market where there were lots of shops for typical souvenirs (these shops were all over Cusco)

Our first official site stop was at Pisac

 Pisac

Pisac - the holes are tombs where they used to bury people

What great people to travel with :)

 Second stop: Ollantaytambo - it was so crowded!

Ollantaytambo

Ollantaytambo - can you spot the face of the God of Gods?

How about now?

The weather was perfect everyday.

 Loved the valleys and terrain

Our last stop was in Chinchero - we got here past sunset and it was really cold by night time. We sat through a presentation of how alpaca wool is made. This was a great marketing scheme as most people ended up buying the same typical souvenirs from these ladies after the presentation. They claim that everything is handmade but it is strange that we saw the same designs and items throughout Cusco and Peru at all the local shops...

Chinchero - not much to see here as it was really dark by time we got there

We got back to Cusco from the tour and took another walk through San Pedro market. We wanted to get more fresh sugar cane juice but the stand was not there today. After walking around for a bit and picking up some groceries (mainly just water and last minute supplies we needed), we decided to have Chifa for dinner. Chifa is Peruvian Chinese food and I had heard great things about it. Being Chinese, I definitely wanted to try it to see how it compares to Chinese food. Perhaps we didn't go to a good place to have Chifa but we were not impressed. It definitely reminded me more of take-out style Chinese food, and it lacked the "wok flavor". 

Chifa - Peruvian Chinese food. Left is a sweet and sour type dish and the right is a stir fry. 

After dinner, we walked back to our hotel to go to prepare our bags as our hike begins tomorrow! I definitely tried to enjoy my last evening where I had access to shower, bed, and toilet!