18/12/18 At the hotel we had breakfast and Paul our guide took us on a hour walking tour of the city then we napped for 3h in the afternoon. He told us about the 13 inca rulers (chiefs), we saw a few inca walls, famous for their remarkable sharp architecture when they cut the stones to assemble them to build walls like a puzzle.
We went out again for a bit of shopping (the handycrafts and textile items are beautiful) and later we met John and Margaret, an Irish couple living in Melbourne who will travel with us for a few days.
For dinner I had a spaghetti bolognese which was delicious. After a week of Peruvian food I felt like something European. We had to pack a small bag for the next 2 days and left some luggage at the hotel.
19/12/18 We explored the Sacred Valley by bus and stopped many times on the way to watch the landscape and visit a lama farm. We had a special stop where we tried guinea pig, a local specialty, cooked on the street and sold on sticks. The merchants wave the sticks at the tourists on the road to attract them to their restaurants. They fill the guinea pig with a mixture made of herbs. It actually does not taste too bad, it is a bit between chicken and rabbit, but you have to get over the idea that it is a cute little thing, also because even though they serve it cut in pieces, the head is still on your plate in one piece (and sadly looking at you). Only some of us tried and the driver, who saw from the bus that we didn’t finish the plate, came out and ate the leftovers.
We arrived at Ollantaytambo, a little town close to Machu Picchu where we stopped for the night.
