After packing our day packs & duffle bags for the porters to carry for the next 5 days, we left Cusco & headed towards the Andes. We drove past the 'Sexy Woman' Inca temple and then past the statue which is Cusco's miniature version of Christ the Redeemer. We very quickly realized that our local guide for the day was super enthusiastic about his job & had a wealth of information, however he tried to impart this all to us without stopping for breath.Our next stop was at a village which G Adventures supports through Planeterra. We were shown how the women spin guanaco, alpaca, llama & sheep's wool & use this to knit & weave. The money we spend goes to help the village buy farming equipment & build infrastructure. Corinne bought a scarf & a pot holder. The next challenge will be to fit it in our bags. We then traveled to an Inca archealogical site at Pisac. The terracing on the hillsides was amazing & again our guide gave us a wealth of information. The next stop on the tourist route was a market in Pisac. However everyone was marketed out & a coffee / beer was much more appealing. Our lunch stop at Urumbamba was a fantastic buffet style meal & we all overindulged. Our last destination for the day was Ollantaytambo where we are staying for the night before starting the Inca Trail tomorrow. We climbed up some of the terraces to get some practice for tomorrow & apart from the huge meal sitting in our stomachs, we all coped very well. Again our guide gave us a potted history of the area & the Incas. It is incredible how the Incas managed to get the huge blocks of stone to the top of the hill & although recent archealogical techniques have improved knowledge about the Incas, there is still a lot of speculation about them & disputes about theories. We will be out of contact for the next 3 or 4 days so while we are hiking.
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