By admin While most people travel to the Sacred Valley (Valle Sagrado in Spanish) to visit Machu Picchu, the area offers an overwhelming amount of natural beauty, hiking trails, and impressive Inca sites aside from its most famous attraction. While we planned our trip around visiting Machu Picchu, we also made time to explore more of the Sacred Valley. We were blown away by the spectacular scenery and remote landscapes – aside from Machu Picchu, we were mostly alone, or walking amongst a local or two.
If you’re curious about the valley’s history before I get into the details of our stay, here’s an over-simplified version: located just north of the Inca capital city of Cusco, and stretching along the Urubamba River, the valley was inhabited by several indigenous groups before the Incas took over in the early 15th century. Then the Spanish arrived and we all know how that ended. While the Inca civilization was completely decimated, there are still a small number of Incan descendants living in the region, and Quechua (indigenous language from the Peruvian Andes) is spoken by nearly eight million Peruvians. I suspect that number is in decline (just an educated guess).
Getting to the Sacred Valley
Currently, visitors to the Sacred Valley must fly into Cusco, the historical Inca capital city. While we planned to spend a few days in Cusco, we had decided to save this for the end of our trip. Fortunately, there were numerous flights from Lima to Cusco every day, and the flight took less than an hour-and-a-half. We opted to fly with LATAM after I met a couple Peruvians in Istanbul that advised against the low-cost carriers in Peru (unsafe, unreliable – good enough reasons for me).
Side note: Peru is currently in the process of attempting to build a new, hotly-contested international airport in Chinchero, much closer to Machu Picchu, enabling even more visitors to come to a site that is already over-touristed and facing destruction from too much human interaction. While the construction has been met with a lot of resistance and outrage from archaeologists and historians, the government remains supportive, clearly mindful of the potential for additional tourism dollars. TBD on how things will play out.
Back to our travels. The Lima airport was relatively calm on Sunday morning; while there was a long line to check bags, Lauren and Karen couldn’t check in at the kiosk for some unknown reason, and were shepherded to the short “Special Services” line. Being the good friends they are, they waved me over, and we all headed to security together. The international security and immigration line looked to be a lot longer, so we all made a note to give ourselves as much time as possible when flying out the following week (spoiler: I still didn’t give myself enough time to make my flight to Sao Paulo, and Lauren and Karen almost missed their flight home).
The flight itself was fine – no frills and packed to the brim, with moments of turbulence, but at least quick and efficient. Lauren and Karen were seated in front of me, surrounded by a large group of young teenagers that kept shouting “Turbulencia!” and rocking around in their seats with glee every time the plane hit a bumpy spot. Reassuring, no?
Flying into the Sacred Valley and landing in Cusco was quite impressive. Departing from sea-level in cloudy Lima, we suddenly emerged in the high Andes, surrounded by sun. The mountains seemed to be all around us, and I wondered how we’d land in such dramatic terrain, but all ended up fine (despite the “turbulencia”).
The Cusco airport wasn’t anything fancy, but it was quick to get off the plane and hit the bathroom (we realized we were now in no-toilet-paper-flushing land), then grab our bags and find our driver.
One last note on arriving in Cusco: the elevation is no joke. Located at above 11k feet, the city of Cusco is well above the level of 8k feet where altitude sickness can strike. Lauren and Karen were both taking Diamox (a preventative prescription medication to combat altitude sickness), but I had decided to test my capacity for altitude drug-free. I could feel that the air was thinner as soon as we landed, but I made sure I was drinking lots of water and hoped for the best.
Staying at Explora Valle Sagrado
After my incredible experiences staying at Explora Rapa Nui and its competitor, Tierra Patagonia, I was sold on Explora Valle Sagrado. While these are high-end properties that are priced as such, the value that they provide is hard to beat. For example, all of this was included with our nightly rate:
- One-of-a-kind excursions in a remote location with world-class guides
- High-quality, local food and drink
- Transfers to/from the airport
- Accommodations in a luxurious yet sustainably designed resort with magnificent views, seemingly far, far away from civilization
- Exceptional hospitality
While I am always wary about setting anyone’s expectations too high (especially my own), I was confident enough with Explora to promise Lauren and Karen an experience that would blow them away. We were already investing so much in this trip; why shouldn’t we go the extra mile to ensure a once-in-a-lifetime experience?
The drive from CUZ airport to Explora took a little over two hours, but it was a delightful meander over the mountains and into the valley. Upon arrival at Explora, everything was taken care of. They took our bags, led us to a table for lunch, and sat us with the Explorations Director to discuss our plan for the next few days.
Since we arrived too late on day one to join any of the offsite explorations, we went for a walk of the property and neighboring village of Urquillos with our guide Henry.
We enjoyed a low-key dinner back at Explora and put ourselves to bed. We had an early morning wake-up call for our big day at… (drumroll, please)… Machu Picchu!
I’ve posted about our day at Machu Picchu separately here. Go ahead and read about that if you want, but come back, because I’ve hardly scratched the surface of our time in the Sacred Valley.
Moray & the Maras Salt Flats
On our second full day in the Sacred Valley, we opted for the Moray/Maras Salt Flats excursion. While many tour companies offer trips to Moray and the nearby Maras salt flats from Cusco, the benefit of traveling with Explora was that we were able to hike in from a nearby community, avoiding the crowds of tourists in buses as best as possible.
The Moray/Maras Salt Flats exploration was an all day activity, and we ended up with our own personal guide (Victor) for the day.
Moray Terraces
While much is unknown about the terraces at Moray, it is conjectured that the deep circular terraces resembling Roman theaters were built for agricultural purposes. Because conditions vary so much at each level of the terraces (it is reported that temperatures can vary up to 27F) , the setting would have been an ideal location for the Incas to test crops in different microclimates (of which Peru has plenty).
One thing we were not able to do in Moray given our busy schedule: visit Mil, Virgilio Martinez’s relatively new restaurant in the area. Since I would visit Central (the restaurant that made Martinez famous) during my return to Lima, I wasn’t too disappointed at the time, but I now find myself wishing that we had asked Explora to plan our day around lunch at Mil. Oh well, maybe next time.
After viewing the terraces of Moray, we continued along on our hike until we reached our private lunch destination. It wasn’t Mil, but it would do.
We enjoyed a nice break, then continued along toward the Maras Salt Flats.
Maras Salt Ponds
The salt ponds of Maras date back to pre-Inca times. Salty water runs via a stream into the thousands of terraced ponds where it is then harvested into salt, which is now pushed heavily on visitors to the area.
I somehow do not have pictures documenting this event, but we also tried chicha in Maras. An alcoholic beverage made from fermented corn, chicha dates back to pre-colonial times in Peru. While I didn’t love the taste or texture (especially the texture – it was mealy), I felt like my trip wouldn’t have been complete without drinking some chicha.
After a long and beautiful day, we had a quiet night back at Explora and prepared for our last morning exploration in Chinchero.
Chinchero Village Visit and Hike
Since we were checking out of Explora the next day, we planned a final half day exploration that would enable us to see as much as possible in the Sacred Valley before finally getting dropped off at our accommodations in Cusco. Once again, we had a private tour set up with our guide Fredy.
We started with a drive to the community of Cúper Bajo, where we got to meet some local women and learn about the local textile industry.
Next, we started our hike. Although we didn’t cover as much distance as the previous day, we had a higher elevation climb. Given the extreme altitudes in Peru, we had a well-considered plan to gradually attack higher elevations.
In between our breaks for oxygen and water, Fredy told us about his experiences with ayahuasca (he had taken it once and gotten value out of the experience, but once was enough). While at school, he had actually written a paper on tourist opportunities with ayahuasca and saw it as an industry that Peru should capitalize on. We also asked him about our desire to visit Rainbow Mountain on our last day at Cusco, and wondered if he knew any hiking guides that may be able to join us? Low and behold, he did, and put us in contact with his friend Hebert, who had previously been a guide at Explora.
All in all, our visit to the Sacred Valley couldn’t have been better. While there are a number of outstanding accommodations in the region, Explora made everything easy for us, offering unique and personal experiences along every step of the way. Our stay had been fantastic, but we looked forward to a final few days in Cusco, the historical capital of the Incas.
