After enjoying breakfast at your hotel, we leave towards the Sacred Valley. Our first stop is Caccacollo, a local community where mainly women work. They will show you their weaving skills. You will have some free time to wander around the cozy local market and enjoy the artisanal local goods.

Next, we stop in Pisaq. Pisaq is an important tourist destination. The Inca ruins located near Pisac used to be an important Inca religious center. After Pisac, we continue our journey along the river to Ollantaytambo, where during lunch we enjoy a delicious “Pachamanca”, an ancient Quechua cooking technique in which food is prepared in leaves under a heated ground.

Pacha means earth and manca means oven in Quechua, the language of the Inca Empire that is still widely spoken in the Sacred Valley and the Andes of Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.

The first step here involves making the stones arranged around a wood fire to heat them up. When they are extremely hot, the stones are placed in a pit dug into the earth. The ingredients are arranged on the stones in the order of the cooking time required. The whole heap is covered with spices and finally an organic cloth. Finally, the whole pile is covered with earth, carefully checking that there are no holes through which steam can escape.

After lunch we visit Ollantaytambo. Here you can find the remains of a huge Inca fort where a famous battle took place between the Incas and the Spanish invaders. This battle was still won by the Incas, you’ll see some of the most impressive functioning series of aqueducts and fountains out of all the Incan ruins in Peru. Transfer to the hotel in Urubamba. Here we have time to relax. We stay in the Sacred Valley.