We arrived into Cuzco airport around 11am on Wednesday. Was a quick flight from Lima only 1.30hours. We travelled for about 1.30 hours down via road into the Sacred Valley. Here we are staying for two nights. We have a another beautiful hotel. The hotel used to be a convent. The whole huge place was built around 16-17th century and much is still original. The grounds are beautiful and the mountain ranges around us are awesome.

After having a nice lunch and a beer each I had a little snooze. The altitude here is less than in Cusco which is about 3400 metres. Here in the valley it is about 3000 mtrs. So took it easy the first day.

Day 2 here sees us up and out not too early yeah....we leave around 9am for a trip to the Pisac markets. Very nice, lots of crafts and plenty of photo op's with kids and market women. Of course you give them some money for the picture but it's worth it and helps them out.

After the markets we head back to our hotel and have a nice buffet lunch then out again to Ollantaytambo, the oldest continuously occupied settlement of Inca decendants in the Americas. This place is awesome, can I use that word to much?? No, not in this case. We had an extensive tour of this archaeological site. Ollantaytambo sits in the urubamba Valley or the Sacred Valley of the Incas. It's pretty laid back here and the weather is pleasant. Tshirts only actually. We climbed up to the top and then across and back down the huge terraced mountain. From the top you can see all the ancient ruins, the gentle mountain slopes and scattered farming towns surrounding the valley. The valley was favoured by the Incas due to it's perfect climate and and excellent place for an empire fortress to be.

It was great going up and seeing the whole area. The workout was good too, and needed after the lunch we had. Back to the hotel for bag preparations for out big trip out tomorrow .... of to Macchu Picchu. Update again in a few days time after we get back into Cusco.. xxx

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