La Maravilla que es El Valle Sagrado

The Di-di (my mom) and brother David arrived in Cusco last Friday, and we have had  extraordinary adventures together.  I am afraid that if I try to squeeze everything we have seen and done into one blog post that it will be interminably long.  So I will try to write chronologically until my fingers start to bleed, and then I will take a break to recuperate for the next entry.

We picked Mom and David up at the airport in a van with a driver and headed straight for the town of Urubamba in the Sacred Valley.  Urubamba is at around 9000 feet above sea level and is therefore an easier place to acclimatize to  than Cusco (11,500 feet).  The drive was relatively uneventful until the last twenty minutes when we negotiated what felt like a hundred hairpin switchbacks, descending 2000 feet to the Urubamba river.

Our "hotel" was actually an enclave of gorgeous, free standing homes.  We had our own adobe villa and with it came the lovely and talented Bertha, our own cook!  Upon arrival we were served a delicious meal while sitting in one of the exterior courtyards near the kitchen. 

The gardens on the grounds were stunning.  Living in Cusco we don't see a lot growing out of the ground and there is a palpable paucity of flowers.  But here in Urubamba the flowers were exploding with vibrant petals of every hue and you could hear the honey bees hunting for nectar from fifty feet away.

The Urubamba river leads from the bottom of the Valley housing Cusco through a series of towns on its way to the Amazon.  The most noteworthy settlement that the Urubamba river passes by is Machu Picchu, but there exist the  extraordinary ruins of Pisac, Huchuy Cosqo, and Ollantaytambo on the way there.  The river valley is host to amazingly fertile land and is still one of the most prolific sources of produce in the region.  But I digress...

THERE WAS A SWING SET IN THE COURTYARD!!!!  We were all warmed to the core to see Sophia's and Isabel's unbridled joy while running across a lawn(!) towards the swings.  I think they played there happily for an hour and a half, until it was too dark to continue. 

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This place felt so much more familiar to us all.  Birds chirping, water close by, grass under foot -- it reminded us of what we love the most about living in Maine.

After an amazing dinner we decided to go the next day to one of the Incas' most unique ruins, the agricultural terraces known as Moray.  The three sets of concentric, descending circles are thought to have been a center of crop hybridization and experimentation.  Each terrace in the complex was its own micro-climate with differing degrees of humidity, solar exposure, water saturation, and temperature -- the perfect laboratory for the development of robust crops, a necessity of life when farming at such high altitudes.   Once again, the way these ancient engineers worked with the land was as logical as it was inspiring.  Walking down to the bottom circle was exciting on the tiny steps protruding from the walls and descending diagonally down into the abyss. 

 We went back to the town of Urubamba and ate lunch at a fancy Hotel that shall remain nameless in exchange for permission to swim in  their pool.  The girls had a blast while el Quehon Daddy watched from the sidelines.  It was a very full day and we took it easy in the evening, sitting in the "mini-moray" fire pit after another nice dinner.  Our first full day in the Sacred Valley was disorienting in the best possible way: lush, visually stunning, warm, and teeming with life.