Cuzco, Pisac and Pampallaqta

We were reminded Cuzco was properly high (3399m) when we walked into our hotel and saw several oxygen bottles and a mask "just in case". Fortunately none of our group was debilitated by the altitude, but we all suffered in one way or another. Cuzco was more touristy than elsewhere that we'd been, but still full of colour from the local people.

We spent just one night in Cuzco before moving on to the Sacred Valley area. Our first stop was at the Incan citadel at Pisac, our first chance to learn about the building skills of the Inca.

We continued up a steep windy road to the village of Pampallaqta, 450m higher than Cuzco. We were greeted by a line of villagers who sprinkled flower petals on us as we emerged from the bus. There is a field station here for potato research and some men of the village gave us a demonstration of the many varieties of potatoes, and showed how they planted them.

After the potatoes, the women took us through the complete process of cleaning, spinning, dying and weaving alpaca wool, and we bought a couple of pieces before we left.

Click here if you'd like to see a short video of the traditional musician in Cuzco (opens a new window).

1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19 Pisac	20 Pisac
21	22	23	24	25 Pisac
26 Pisac	27	28	29	30
31	32	33	34	35 Planting the potatoes
36	37	38 The potatoes fields, high up the hills	39 Spinning	40 Cleaning the wool
41	42 Weaving	43	44 Dying the wool	45
46	47	48 Sources of natural dye	49	50
51 Potatoes cooked for us	52 One of the pieces we bought - and the very happy vendor	53 Alpaca	54 Alpaca