Luckily for me the bus was delayed and we left Cusco a little late - I had joined the Imodium club - a very rare event - but thankfully it took effect before we left!
We headed out of Cuzco to visit some
women who were preserving traditional ways of preparing wool, dying it and weaving clothes,scarves, rugs etc - the whole process was explained by the President of the Community enterprise in excellent English - they supply many of the outlets in Cusco and beyond so needless to say there were more buying opportunities - John bought a lovely green jumper - he selected it himself! and I bought a lovely scarf - black and brown in baby alpaca - very soft and warm.
Next we visited an amazing series of Inca built agricultural terraces, each with their own microclimate and fed by a spring. Incas were early geneticists - in their era there were 5000 types of potato today there are only 2600.
We stopped at a restaurant, by a river, for a buffet lunch- excellent - best yet.
Next we went to one of Bobby's old haunts as a teenager - a corn beer emporium - he and the lady owner showed us how they brewed the traditional drink; before which we tried their 'pub game' a traditional frog game - trying to throw coins into the mouth of a brass frog or into one of the surrounding holes with successful coins earning points......lowest point scorer to buy the drinks. Inside the small parlour we saw two types of beer, original and strawberry with cinnamon - I definitely preferred the strawberry but it's probably an aquired taste. New beer is brewed daily it takes about 24 hours and is drunk within 24 hours! It is only mildly alcoholic at 3 % proof. Apparently no men have prostrate problems which they put down to the zinc content in the corn sediment which is always drunk at the end of a drinking session.
After lunch, we continued down the Sacred valley to Ollantaytambo, where we visited the immense Inca site built around the original pre Inca Bolivian temples and food storage construction. The unique village streets still follow the pre-conquest grid plan.
It was amazing to see and listen to the world of the Incas but the PM wind off the mountains made it a very cool experience......after 90mins I was freezing so we stopped at a cafe for two hot cappuccinos and a ham and cheese roll for John and a rather thick banana and honey pancake for me which I couldn't finish. Amanda and Jo were with us - they opted for pizzas which I think was a better choice.
Back at the hotel in Ollantaytambo we had a briefing at 7pm for all the different trips Inca trail, Moonstone trek and the non walkers who were going to Machu Pichu alone - all done final packing, lovely showers and bed.