A Day In The Sacred Valley

As I stood in the baggage claim area looking around at my fellow group travelers, I couldn’t help but think  “What have I gotten myself into? I’m not a group tour person. Why did I think this was a good idea?”. We had just landed after leaving Miami at 2am, stopping shortly in Lima (ended up sitting on the runway for an hour, before finally taking off for Cusco). I barely got any sleep on our Miami flight, because one family kept switching seats, hitting me as they were doing so. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I was in Peru, and the next day I would be standing at Machu Picchu. I needed to give this group a chance . . . and I’m so glad I did!

After our luggage was collected we filed onto our tour bus and started our two hour bus ride to our hotel, Inkallpa Valley Sagrado Hotel, located in Urubamba, Sacred Valley. It was nice having someone else driving, so we could relax after a long travel day and night. I switched between napping and taking pictures. The scenery was so incredibly beautiful! Before descending into the Sacred Valley we stopped at a little outpost to take pictures and buy any souvenirs that we wanted.

I was in love with our surroundings. Below us was an extremely windy road that led to Urubamaba and above us was Inca ruins and snow capped Andes Mountains. I spent our time at the outpost taking in our beautiful surrounding and taking pictures. I quickly viewed the souvenirs and spent the rest of the time watching and taking pictures of the cutest little boy. I quickly learned that Batman is very popular in Peru. They have batman symbols on their cars, public transportation and clothing.

Batman Boy

We continued our drive with our next destination our hotel for the evening. Once we arrived we quickly checked in and filed back on the bus. Due to our delay on the runway we were a little behind scheduled, and didn’t get to spend a lot of time at the hotel. We had chosen to visit the Pisac Market instead of hanging out at the hotel. On our way to the market we stopped at roadside stand. For anyone who wanted to try Guinea Pig, this was their chance. I was not one of these people. It didn’t look appetizing and the smell was starting to get to my stomach. I was told by those that did try it that there wasn’t a lot of meat, and it was extremely chewy!

After spending about an hour at the market we started the drive back to our hotel. At this point I was starting to feel the effects of our travels and quickly fell asleep. We arrived back at the hotel after dark (it gets dark very early) and had a short period of time before leaving for dinner. At this point I just wanted to sleep, but it was welcome dinner with our group, so we hung around drinking Pisco Sour, until it was time to leave. We joined everyone on the bus and headed to our dinner and show.

The food that we had for dinner was interesting. I had ordered lemonade to drink and it was a very cloudy looking lemonade (but tasted good). I had ordered creamy corn soup for my appetizer and was a little surprised when it came out green and slightly lumpy. It tasted ok, but I didn’t like the texture of it. My chicken dinner and roasted vegetables were absolutely delicious! Our final course was a buffet of dessert, coffee and tea . . . a great ending to our dinner. We were all exhausted by the time we arrived back at the hotel. It was a long travel day with an early morning start (4:30am) the next day for Machu Picchu!

What foods have you tried on your travels that you were pleasantly surprised by?

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