After a good night sleep, we had breakfast prepared by the kind owner of the lodge, and then headed out. We took a local bus and arrived at the village of Chinchero. We specifically opted to take local transportation, instead of private tours which are most common for the tourists here. It’s cheaper, and you get familiar with the way locals live. We visited the church and the local Sunday market. Chinchero market is supposedly less touristy and more authentic than other markets (most notably the Pisaq market), and indeed there were fewer tourists there, and most were locals. We even saw a few people bartering!

Chinchero is at 3800 m altitude, so walking uphill was significantly more demanding than usual. You could feel that you need to take deeper breaths, even while standing. We had some coca tea (yup, that’s the same coca as in Narcos! Though at this dose it’s really nothing), which supposedly helps with the altitude. Locals love coca leaves here (no need to say, it’s illegal to bring back to the US, even in small amounts)!

Some observations about the locals in this area which are direct descendents of Incas: 1) They are generally very short! I haven’t seen a local person taller than myself, and I’m not tall by almost any other standard! 2) We tried haggling with the sellers over their beautiful textiles, but they were not very flexible, 3) They eat a lot of corn (and they have so many different types of corn!) and potatoes (same story), and that’s possibly why they have very bad teeth! 4) I tried taking some photos from the locals, but they either don’t allow, or demand money. So not so much portrait photography for me. :(

We then haggled a fare with a shared taxi to give us a ride to Moray, which is an archeological site. Apparently the Incas used this site to experiment with different types of plants and agriculture. It’s more beautiful when it’s green. 

We then got another shared taxi to get to Salineras de Maras. This is basically a collection of terraced salt ponds that the locals use to extract salt to this date. This is a fantastic place for photography! I enjoyed walking around and trying different angles and perspectives. I wish I had a tele lens though. 

We then walked along the salt ponds until we reached the main road where we rode a minivan to Urubamba. The whole trip cost us just shy of 50 sols, which is around $15. A tour would have cost us around $70, and we would not have been in control. 

Back in Urubamba, I got a 4G prepaid Sim card for 10 sols ($3), with 300 MB of internet. I can charge for another 15 sols to add up another 1 GB. Before the trip, I wanted to get the Project Fi to get international internet coverage, but this is much cheaper, and it was hassle-free. 

We had some good food at Paca Paca, and then returned to the lodge, where we again reminded the owner about the hot water issue, and they turned on their electric heater again, so thankfully we had a warm shower (last night the water was at best just tepid).

Tomorrow we’ll go to Ollantaytambo, where we visit the historic town and stay the night to catch an early train to Machu Picchu! Stay tuned!