Day 2 in the Sacred Valley was a busy and fun one! We met Percy once again in the morning and headed toward Tipon. Unfortunately we found out there was some work being done on the road to the site, so we could only visit during lunch. Percy flipped a few things around in the schedule and we headed instead to see ceramic tile-making. On the way we made a pit stop in the "capital of bread" and bought the cheapest, freshest bread we've ever had. We took it with us to a small town where the majority of residents make ceramic roof tiles, or what we call "Spanish tile" in the U.S. We donated the bread to the family in exchange for watching them work.
In the U.S., a Spanish tile roof is expensive and fancy. In the Sacred Valley, it's standard on almost all buildings. And cheap: 1,000 tiles = $140 USD!
The families are very poor and work all day to make the bricks by hand.
Next we headed to Rumicolca - what the Inka Express guide had called an Inca "gate'. Percy pointed out the stairs on both sides. Why would a barrier have stairs allowing entry? There is also an aqueduct running along the top which leads to the nearby town of Piquillacta. Both are around 1,000 years old.
Piquillacta is a huge city - about 5 kilometers in length. Current Sacred Valley residents use the same technique to make buildings as they used before - mud bricks (adobe) covered in plaster. At this site archaeologists found a set of 40 small turquoise figurines. Nothing else of value or intrigue has been found there.
A traveler a long time ago made a note in his journal about a "white city" in the Sacred Valley. Archaeologists weren't able to connect his note to an actual site until recent excavations in Piquillacta revealed a white plaster on the walls.
It was closing in on the lunch hour, so we quickly headed to Tipon to use the whole hour they were allowing us to see the site. This was one of our favorite sites in the Sacred Valley.
This site has an intricate system to move water from a natural spring to multiple terraces at different levels. The builders used the a pattern of stones in the terraces to leave gaps to allow water to filter through.
Archaeologists believe the Quechuas (native Sacred Valley people) used Tipon to experiment with different crops at different altitudes.
Percy did a fantastic job explaining what archaeologists had found and believed as well as giving the opinion he's formed while growing up in Cusco and giving many tours.
The day before we had asked Percy to take us to great local restaurants during our lunch breaks with him. This day he took us to have true Cusquenan chicharrones. They are lightly fried pork and are super delicious! The restaurant had no tourists except for us. They served the chicharrones with Peruvian "popcorn", which is really kernels that have been fried but not popped.
We headed back to Cusco where we packed our duffel bags for the Inca Trail and took them to a nearby laundry lady. We asked her to weigh them (they charge by weight so have hand scales). We were way over the 2.5 kilo limit. But we had next-to-nothing in them. We ended up packing extremely light and worrying our guides would weigh them and force us to carry more than we wanted to. (More on that in the next post.)
We walked around town and finally tried some of the ice cream we saw everyone else eating. Quick reminder: It's the start of winter in Peru. It's in the 30-degree range at night. But it gets up to 80 during the day. A tried the chicha morada flavor (that purple corn drink) along with caramel quinoa and I stuck with mint chip.
After our snack, we checked out the Museo de Arte Popular. It was a very strange museum full of figurines and sculptures. This one was one of our favorites - it shows a cesarean section.
We hung out for a while in the Plaza de Armas, then tried some chifa for dinner. Chifa = Peruvian Chinese food. It's not nearly as salty as the American version and the soy sauce definitely tastes different.
This lady on the right is dressed in typical Andean clothes. Many of the women wear a traditional dress along with a hat and carry their belongings wrapped up in a blanket on their back. They also carry their small children this way.
Coming Up: The Inca Trail!
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