Ruining it in the Sacred Valley

Hello hello! Im going to try to bring this blog up to date a bit before I forget whats been occuring.

We arrived in Cusco about 10 days ago, and had planned to spend a night and get out as we´d heard it was teaming with tourists and we´d been enjoying it in the almost tourist-free places we´d been so far...but Cusco is actually lovely- a beautiful colonial city build on a sacred inca city which was originally planned out and built in the shape of a puma- not that you can see it now, as the majority of the inca temples were pulled down to build cathedrals- although not all as you will see in some pictures of the Sacsayhuaman ruins above the city (the pumas head), which now stand alongside a gigantic christ that looks down on the city.


the bithday boys and a pan piper called george.

So we spent a couple of days in cusco, ate LOTS of food as there are veggie options galore there, then headed off to do a few days volunteering in a hare krishna yoga retreat in the scared valley. the term volunteering shouldnt be taken too seriously, as most of the time there was only me and steve there chilling out and the guy who ran it wasnt very demanding with the workload he gave us to say the least. So that was lush.

(retreating)

From there we headed to a nearby town in the valley called Pisac- climbed a massive girt hill to visit some inca ruins- cant remember the name but muy spectacular indeed.

(checking out the lack of pointing)

Then we went back to cusco thinking we´d get some more camping stuff together and go do a machu picchu trek. but after umming and ahhing about it, we decided we really couldnt face the touristyness of it, and have decided to boycott the expensive trailaround we expect it to be.

So came out to another town in the sacred valley yesterday and did a hike to Moray- an amazing inca site nearby which was used many many moons ago as a microclimate in which to tame wild species of veg into horticulturable ones. cant think right now what the proper name for this is, but look at the pics and you might get the gist. got a bit lost getting there so hooked up with a sheep/cow/donkey herder named Juaquin and did some herding.

Moray

Planning on a couple more ruiney things in the valley, which gets greener the further we travel up it, and then up into the jungle for a few days to get eaten by insects. Will report back on how that goes. Encountered a hellish big spider today- I guess theres more of that to come.

Must try to break this diary style narrative.