Chapter 4:

Day 11) Pizac Market and OllantaytamboTour

Today was another organized tour of the local area. We had the same tour guide (Raphael) from when we took the city tour a few days ago. This time we went to the Sacred Valley, so named in honor of its agricultural lushness. The main stop in the valley is the famous Pizac Market. It's a humongous market covering several city blocks. You could easily get lost wandering amongst the many stalls. They sell all types of fruits, vegetables, meats, and every imaginable tourist trinket. It was in a meat market there that we were first introduced to a local delicacy named "Cuy". So what's Cuy you ask? Guinea Pig! They had live ones, and they had stuffed baked ones. The baked ones looked kinda gross. They looked like someone had put a blowtorch to them burning off the fur and scorching the skin. We had about an hour to shop the many stalls buying Alpaca yarn, sweaters, Andean music CD's, and a watercolor painting. We would have liked to spend more time there. There were areas of the market that we never got see.

Roasted Cuy, aka: Guinea Pig. A local delicasy	The market was huge with aisle upon aisle of stalls selling every imagineable souvenir.

After the market the bus tour took us to lunch in another lovely restaurant that served a buffet of local foods. No Cuy though :-) !

After lunch, Raphael took us to a Chicharia where they make Chicha, which is corn beer, the local favorite beverage. He explained the process of how they raise the corn, dry it, ferment it, process it and filter it. Then we all got to try a sample. It had an interesting taste, kinda like corn flavored beer. I think I liked it!

After we had our thirsts satisfied, we continued down the valley to Ollantaytambo, a very large ruin. Unfortunately, after having seen Machu Picchu, I wasn't really interested in seeing any more ruins.

The last tour stop was the village of Chinchero, where Raphael and some local weavers demonstrated how they dyed their yarns and weaved their blankets. Afterwards, we had about 15 minutes to browse thru all the blankets, sweaters, and other woven goods they had on display. Again we would have like to have had more time to browse but the bus was getting ready to leave for our return to Cuzco.