After a rest day in Cusco and some research we were ready to begin our adventure through the Sacred Valley. Half of the mystery was figuring out what exactly the Sacred Valley was. We knew we could just book a single day tour through an agency and see some sights, but we didn’t know if it was the general area or one specific place. Eventually we figured out there were a number of ruins and sights to explore in the Valley, so we decided to take our own transportation and explore at our own pace.

We figured out where to catch the local transportation from Cusco to our first destination of Chinchero which was a small town that had a big church built on Inca Ruins. The church itself was nice, but we had more fun sitting in the courtyard eating our bread and avocado breakfast. We then asked around for the best was to get to our next destination of Moray where there was another set of ruins. We went out to the highway and hailed down the next ‘colectivo’ or local bus and squished in. Moray had a very interesting set of ruins that had terracing in concentric circles that they presumed the Incas used as a type of experimental location for farming to determine the best conditions for various products.

Next we headed to the Salt Pans via taxi, with a taxi driver who we learned had an agenda of his own after making a couple stops in town to run some errands before finally dropping us off! The salt Pans were interesting. The reminded of me of the salt flats, except that they were actually flat because they were on terraces on a mountain range (pictures would be helpful here again). We were told that from here there is a clear footpath that could be followed to get to the next town to catch a bus to our final destination of Ollantaytambo. The path wasn’t completely obvious, but we confirmed our direction with people we passed every once in a while and eventually came out to a main road. We started heading in the direction we were told to find the bus station, but then realized that the vehicles passing on the other side of the road were likely going in the direction of our final destination. We hopped over to the other side of the road and sure enough that’s where we wanted to go, so we saved ourselves another 30 min of walking and squished into another collectivo.

Finally we made it to Ollantaytambo by around 1:30pm with lots of time to spare. There was a large set of ruins there as well so we checked them out after finding a hostel and dropping off our bags. We finished the day with dinner at a cute cafe before heading to bed.