Last night we arrived at the hotel Rio Sagrado in the Sacred Valley. According to my (never wrong) iPhone, we are at 9,497’. On the trip here from Cusco Airport, we went as high as 12,500’, but didn’t really feel it as we were just sitting in the backseat of a car with our guide Marisol and driver Jorge. We finally arrived at the hotel at 9:30pm.

The hotel is beautiful. There was a mixup when we arrived, and we were placed in the wrong room – a much smaller room than we had reserved. We didn’t realize this, and spent the night there. It was really crowded, and we were constantly bumping into each other trying to get ready for bed. It wasn’t until the next morning when we stopped at reception to officially register (we were too tired the night before) that I saw the wrong room catagory on the registration slip. After much discussion, we were offered the correct, larger room. We couldn’t see it, as someone was still in the room, but if we packed our stuff, they would transfer us to the new room before we returned from the day’s touring.

When we went down to the restaurant for breakfast, we saw young alpacas wandering around the property. More on them later. There was also a musician playing on a harp outside the restaurant. I’ve had El Condor Pasa (1) as an earworm for days now.

So we left on our day. There were three stops planned, plus a “picnic lunch”.

The first stop was the town of Chinchero, an old Andean village inhabited mainly by indigenous people of Quechua descent. The buildings are mostly constructed using adobe, and many of the people seem to be dressed in traditional clothing: colorful wraps and blankets, hats, etc.

The town is very hilly, and we were not anywhere near acclimated to the altitude (2), so walking around was a slow and arduous process. But we persevered, and make a circuit before returning to our car.

Next was a stop to look at the Maras salt pools. There are thousands of these, each set owned by a citizen of the town – no outsiders are allowed. Each pool can generate about 8 lbs. of salt per month, with the top layer being a prized pink salt.

The last touring stop was Moray, where there are some ancient circular agricultural terraces built by pre-Spanish conquest people to experiment with crops. Each level of the terraces had a slightly different micro-climate. These peoples were quite scientific in their approach to the world, trying out different solutions in a controlled way to improve the productivity of their agriculture.

There were several of these circular terraces, but only one remains is good condition

Finally, we stopped for a picnic. I expected a cooler with food and drinks from the trunk of the car, but what we got was something different.

We drove down a couple of dirt roads, and then turned off into a field. I could see the mountains in the distance. And then a tent. And then what you see above. They had arranged a 4-star meal in the middle of nowhere, complete with hors d’oeuvres, wine, mixed drinks, and a four course meal. And you couldn’t beat the view.

But the fun of the day wasn’t over yet. After lunch we returned to our hotel to deal with the room screw up that had happened the night before. As promised, our stuff had been moved to the much larger, beautiful room you see in the pictures above, conveniently close to the restaurant (3). After checking out the room and getting repeated apologies from the hotel manager, we went outside to see what was billed as an alpaca feeding.

The hotel boards a herd of young alpaca, all under a year old. While they seem to be munching on grass when we saw them in the morning, they get very excited when the staff comes out with boxes of baby bottles for them to feed on. Everyone who wanted got a chance to participate, and Sally really enjoyed it.

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(1) El Condor Pasa was an instrumental written by the Peruvian Daniel Alomia Robles. Paul Simon later added lyrics and covered it with Simon & Garfunkel.

(3) Every tourist we met is taking acetazolamide to combat altitude sickness. It does nothing to get more oxygen into your lungs.

(3) The hotel is built on a hillside, so you have a choice of being close to the restaurant near the bottom, or close to reception near the top. Most people called for a golf cart to shuttle them up and down the hill.