Our Female guides, Marizol, Luzmarina, and Lourdes started the expedition from Cusco in our van and drove to Calca. Calca is a small village in the Sacred Valley of the Incas at 2800m. Here they met our porters who had driven about 1.5 hours from their village.
At 8.00 am they drove to Pisac Inca site. Pisaq is a very large site located in one of the ranges in the sacred valley on top of the mountain. This site has a large number of terraces and several houses located in different locations which were used as guard houses, houses for farmers, religious people and astronomers. Pisaq’s name comes from Pisaca, a bird that lives in this area.
Our guides sat down with our female porters and explained all the history: how they built it up, how they brought water in, what they farmed, how they buried their loved ones, etc. They took their time to review and answer all their questions including how women were treated at the Inca time compared to today
They visited the farming area, guard houses and spent about 1.5 hours walking around and enjoying.
Next stop was Pisac market where they enjoyed some choclo con queso, corn with cheese, a traditional food in the Sacred Valley.
They continued on to Urubamba where our inca trail chef cooked a picnic lunch for them. And then finally headed to Ollantaytambo, located at 2700meters. Ollanta means a name of the inca king and tambo means a house or place where people stayed. Ollantaytambo inca site is an impressive inka village built with massive square stones that may weigh about 10 tons each. These were brought from at least 8 km away – amazing. It’s really hard to understand history and explain how these stones were taken so far. Our guides explained to our porters this history and the current hypothesis about how these stones were moved and what was the rule of women here.
Finally after a long day of touring and exploring, we headed to a Pollo a La Brasa restaurant for dinner. This kind of cooking is not traditional in villages even though it is famous in Peru, so it was quite the treat for everyone. We then headed to the train for our 7PM departure to Aguas Calientes for a nice night to sleep.