Sacred Valley Girls

Day 2 is the day we learned how to salt mine, clean, spin, and weave alpaca fur, and what the local Cusco beer tastes like. 

We started the day off in Moray, Peru which is famous for their impressively perfect circular Incan terraces.  Cusco and the surrounding cities are covered in these visually appealing yet agriculturally functional terrains. Impressively resourceful for the time, the Incans carved these steps out of their hillsides in order to encourage sunshine and the flow of rain and river water onto their various platforms of crops. It is also said the circular structures were double used as an amphitheater during the off season.  

 This is also where we learned Willie was a great fit for our personalities as we were discussing how to go past the "no trespassing sign", looked up, and he was already on the other side. "Pero no pasar?" I asked. He throws his hands up in surrender and replies, "what?! I am an American tourist! I don't understand!" The sign was also in English...

He also doesn't mind taking one million photos for us upon request. Yes, this will work out nicely. 

Next, we moved onto the Salineras of Maras. In ancient times, the locals discovered they were living on a "gold mine" which just happened to be a salt mine. In modern day, they have created a grid of over 300 salt pools, owned and operated by the local town people, who earn the rights to all profits produced from the sale of the salt. We watched a local woman scrape and shovel salt, like she was preparing to build a sand castle, while her two older sons haphazardly helped. The third and youngest boy, probably 2 or 3 years old was doing what any 2-3 year old does around sand castles and stomped all over her progress. He was very impressed with his destruction. 

We channeled our inner gymnasts and tip toed carefully on the skinny stones in between the salt pools to get from where the picture above is taken, and down to the valley seen in the distance. Willie assured us no one has fallen in. I'm fairly confident that is a lie.

We reached the other side, began to breathe again, and began our mini hike into said valley, The Sacred Valley. It is located in between massive green mountains and has a stunning green river that flows through the middle of it. We shared the trail with some horses, interesting plants including agave and relatives of the pineapple, and the sounds of a very pompous rooster in the foreground. 

No filters needed- it is shockingly that green and clear! We enjoyed the views and reached our destination point on the other side of a sketchy bridge I'm pretty sure we had no business walking on. Of course Willie got a kick of jumping on it while we cautiously practiced our tiptoeing skills again. But it seemed to hold up for today. But first... Let me take a selfie.