Our first stop in the Sacred Valley is the small town of Pisac. The main attraction  is the Market around the big tree in Plaza de Armas, which is full of beautiful colorful items. Anything you might need to remind you of Peru is here!

When getting off the small bus we immediately appreciate the view of the Inka citadel on top of the mountain around the village. It looks steep…but we don’t think about that yet! First we need to find a place to spend the night and so we do. A girl says she has a room with a great view and she will bring us there to check out the place. We walk to the rooms through a couple of short cuts between fields and all sorts of animals, but the view is indeed great. After a small tour around the main square we find out that in order to visit the ruins, we need to buy the so called boleto turistico: A multi-ticket to all 16 sites in 10 days for 130 soles, or 4 select sites in 2 days for 70 soles. The sites offer no single tickets. This pressures tourists into also visiting (or at least paying for) the less prominent sites. What to do? We opt for the 4-site ticket, and thus 2-days in a hurry to reach all 4 sites. The first smart thing to do would have been to take a taxi up to the Pisac ruins and walk down, but instead we start walking up a horribly steep and hard path up the mountain which the guide book describes as “undeniably grueling path”, but we just didn’t care! The ruins are fantastic, terracing of different sizes, old Inka towns and temples look just majestic from up there.

It takes the whole day (and several days worth of energy), so we end up way behind our 2-day schedule, with 3 remaining sites for tomorrow. But we’ll manage somehow even if we miscalculate once in a while.