CB-Come With Me: Sunday in the Sacred Valey.

Sunday in the Sacred Valley

It is Sunday and fitting that we will be visiting some of the holiest places of the Incas today. We will head into the Sacred Valley that leads from Cusco to Machu Pichu..

As we head into the valley we ascend further toward the peaks of the Andes. I find it interesting that this is farming territory, the sides of the mountains green to the top and terraced with fields of quinoa, fava beans, potatoes, maize and other such crops. The small villages are very crude, adobe or stucco shacks with red tile, or sometimes thatched roofs.

Elvira, our guide comes from this area. She says the people may be poor but never starving or never miserable, there is always plenty of food. When she was a child quinoa was a staple for the poor people, she was embarrassed to have it in her lunch. Then in the 1970s NASA came to the Andes looking for a better food for the astronauts that would provide them with the nutrition they needed. They discovered quinoa and its properties. Now quinoa is widely known and has become expensive. They can now only afford to eat it once or twice a week.

We stop at a rest stop to take photos of the valley. There is snow on the mountain top and it sits in the clouds. The Urubamba River runs through the valley (Urubamba Valley) and the mountain, with its glacier, sits above.

Onward to the small town of PIsac with its colorful Sunday market. Row upon row of colorful stalls. Much of the merchandise sold here is handmade by the locals. Beautiful sweaters, scarfs, hats, mittens knitted with the alpaca wools. Hand carved wooden products, beautiful watercolors of Andean scenes and llamas, little llamas made with the wool from the alpacas.

The local woman have their children with them as they work in their stalls at the market.

In discovered this lady who sells nature dyes and pigments for watercolours. She showed me the colors and it was quite surprising that the color of the powder is nothing like the colour it makes once it is wet. I can not wait to try it.

On the other side is the fresh market where local farmers offer their produce. This is a local market and the farmers barter and trade. Weathered and wizwened elderly women with their blanketrs spread on the ground and their foods displayed for sale.

Here and there and old woman or a young child with a baby goat or lamb offer to pose for a photo for a few coins. THis is how they make their living. Tourism accounts for 70% of the jobs in Peru.

We are here for Sunday mass. Peru is predominantly Catholic, mass is at 11:00. Prior to mass the elders or leaders of the communities in the area line up outside the church in theior traditional costumes. The young boys also form a line. They each have a conch shell and blow the conch to welcome or call people to church. THis is done also for tourists whio lone up to take photos. They pass around a basket for contributions. It is a colorful ceremony.

Pisac, as most of the mountain towns, has an ancient ruins sitting above. This was the original town and is a very steep and quite long hike down to the town. It is said that when the Spaniards came it was very difficult for them to go up to the towns to collect their taxes so they made the people abandon their villages and rebuild them at a lower site. It isalso said that the mountain or highland people have a larger heart and lungs and more red blood cells to enable them to live at these extreme altitudes.

We head uop to the archeological siten of Pisaq where we hike in among the ruins, above the terraced mountain sides. We wander among the stone nwalls and crumbling buildings. These buildings are centuries old, abandoned in the 17th century.