Sacred time, Sacred Valley

Music, colour, history, ruins and the warmth of the wonderful people. Welcome to Cuzco and the Sacred Valley of the Incas! Spending time chatting with Maximus on top of the mountain overlooking Cuzco was a highlight!

We arrived in Cusco at 4:30am, unable to check into our hostel until 9:30am… What did we do? Walked the streets and awaited sunrise 🙂 Feeling slightly on the lost and hungry side, we stumbled across a Novotel hotel and saw a mammoth buffet breakfast on offer. We decided to treat ourselves and made ourselves comfortable for a good few hours!

Now Cuzco is the most charming city with cobble stone streets, narrow alley ways, beautiful green plazas and colonial style Cathedrals. We spent plenty of time walking the streets, having tea or a happy hour drink on the balconies of the little restaurants and bars overlooking the plaza

But what I was most eager to do was head to the small town of Urubumba, where in 2009 I spent a month teaching English and living with a host family. We arrived in Urubumba and walked through the busy market place where they sell everything from live chickens to lambs, 100’s of different types of potatoes and corn, hard wares, clothes and everything else you can imagine.

We then headed to some other markets, where we stopped for a fresh banana and mango fruit juice.

Feeling fuelled and a bit anxious to approach the house of my host family, we walked down the street and immediately recognised the house and knocked on the front door.. Only to be greeted by the warmest hug and shrieks of joy of my host mother. It really was a very special moment! We sat down, had a drink and some fruit and chatted away. It was so lovely seeing her and laughing about how she taught me to hand wash my clothes and whip the clothes dry before hanging them on the line! Oh the memories!

Arriving back in Cuzco we visited what was my favourite cafe, Jacks, and it still delivered the most amazing salad and warm delicious bread. Sarah, I thought of you every bite through 🙂

Cuzco has some great bars.. And happy hours

we watched this guy play and he was amazingggg!

Another special spot in the Sacred Valley is Ollantaytambo. We walked up the ruins here

And enjoyed the beautiful view of the town.

Sun got a bit much for this lad 😉

Now the highlight of visiting this region is going to Machu Piccu. I never went with this time as I had been before and it’s a bit of a splurge to do twice… So lucky Josh had a day free to himself 🙂

Can you spot the face in the mountain below???? Once you see it, you can’t escape it.

Such a fun stay, but its over now and next stop 1 week volunteering at a conservation lodge in the Amazon JUNGLE! And guess who will be celebrating his 1/4 of century birthday…

Check out our Travel Page for more of our adventures!