Fly to Cuzco - Explore Chinchero and the Sacred Valley.

An early time schedule: wake-up call at 6 AM (we were up at 5), check-in baggage outside the hotel room door by 6:45, and on the bus back to the Lima International Airport at 7:30… to catch the flight to Cusco scheduled for 10:08. It was a Sunday, so the frenetic pace of cars and buses jockeying for position through the narrow streets of Lima was not happening.

The flight from Lima to Cusco was about an hour. From the Cusco Airport, we went through security and met Freddy in the airport lobby. He had made arrangements to retrieve our check-in baggage and load them onto another bus to begin our day's itinerary (with a box lunch)… at 11,000 feet elevation. I have continued to be amazed with the bus drivers adeptly driving the narrow twisting roads of Peru. Anyway…

Our first stop was in the mostly Inca-descendant town of Chinchero. Over the next hour and half, we witnessed an authentic Inca shaman performing a ritual to the Inca gods for all things to make our lives better. The pictures I took show the enactment better. We also witnessed an amazing demonstration by local women, dressed in traditional Inca clothes, weaving colored yarns from llama fur using implements and techniques used by the Incas 500 years ago. When the demonstrations were over, our tour group browzed and bought things on display like scarves, hats, coin purses, and other hand-made items.

Then it was back on the bus, through twisting Andean mountain roads, to reach our destination of Urubamba… but not before an impromptu stop along the way to watch a man and two boys using an implement pulled by two oxen to level a field that would be used to grow potatoes. Freddy was friends with one of them and had saved all the unused food from our box lunches to give to them. The friends then offered our tour group the opportunity to try the apparatus in the field. Again, the pictures tell the story.

We then arrived in Urubamba to check into our hotel, get organized with luggage and so on, and gather as a group at a long table for a prepared dinner. We had live entertainment from a gentleman who was quite proficient on a variety of bamboo flutes.

A very interesting day among the magnificent peaks of the Andes Mountains.