Ollantaytambo Ruins cont.
The next set of photos is of the lower level of the Ollanta ruins. You walk down a lengthy set of stairs. Before we descended, 
I had to stop to have my picture taken under the trapezoid doorways. We were about midway to bottom and hadn’t yet tackled the stairs. If you squint you can see Mike standing behind me gazing at the very top of the site. After climbing down the stairs we are in the agricultural fields and get a close up view of the aqueducts. We 
spent some time exploring the aqueducts, but were pretty tired, since we skipped our naps.
We explored the fortress for at least three, maybe four hours, which is quite impressive considering we’d been up since 3:00 am. Even Mike, the early riser, agreed that was pretty early and I know Laurel and I belong to the late sleepers club so for us it was kind of torturous.
We finally decided to pack it in and head back to El Albergue for dinner and some well deserved sleep. I remember dinner being good, but not what it was. When we trekked back to our unheated rooms we were cold, (did I mention it was winter in Peru?) but we had warm, snuggly alpaca blankets to sleep under.
Day 4: George Bush almost gets us killed by an angry, drunken mob or Moray, Salinas and the Pisac Market.
We woke up eager to catch the local bus for our trip to the Pisac Market. The guidebooks all said that the market is only open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Laurel and I spent a lot of time arranging our trip around market day so we were quite distressed to discover there was a country-wide strike protesting Peru’s ratification of a free trade agreement with the US. (We didn’t know all this at the time, we just knew there was a transportation strike and the buses weren’t running.) The Sacred Valley was one of the key locations for el paro, as it is considered the bread basket of Peru. Although the buses were out of commission the cabs were more then willing to drive us around, at least as far as Urubamba, half-way between Ollantaytambo and Pisac. Our driver suggested we visit Moray and Salinas, which were safely located on the Ollantaytambo side of the highway.
Maras (on the left) is a small town on the way to Moray. Look! There’s snow on those mountains, just in case you didn’t believe me when I said it was winter…
Moray
Moray is an experimental crop center. The terraces were used to create micro-climates. Some areas were roped off for conservation. If you click on the large version 
of the terraces (left photo) you can see the construction areas and what we guessed were the stairs for moving up and down the terraces. On the right, Steph was at the bottom of one of the circles. I am taking a picture of her, taking a picture of Mike and Laurel, who were seated just outside of the terraces.
Because of the strike not many people were out sight-seeing. But the Moray gift shop is open for business. Nothing on the scale of the Pisac Market,
(or what we imagine the Pisac Market will be) but Laurel, Steph and I managed to find things to buy. Steph even took a picture of the women who made my first Peruvian textile. (You will have to fight my cat Charlie to see it, he thinks it’s his.) While Moray didn’t have the best selection of souvenirs, it had the best prices.
Salinas
Despite using the colloquialism, working in the salt mines, I never considered that there might actually be mines that produce salt. But that is just what Salinas is. We stopped at the gift shop and bought salt and salted corn made with Salinas salt. 
It should be obvious already that we will stop at every gift shop, market or tourist mall in Peru. I mean really, we bought souvenir salt! Somewhere along the way I chucked mine, 
so no photos of Peruvian Salt packaged to go. It is freaky though isn’t it? The mine is still active and during bad seasons, farmers from the Sacred Valley, work in the mine. Like Moray there were almost no other tourists and all seemed peaceful in the valley.
[Some of us actually saved our packaged Peruvian salt and have even taken a photo to prove it. --Laurel]
Urubamba
It was not we arrived in Urubamba for lunch that we can see evidence of the strike. Cars and buses are stalled along the outskirts of town and there was a protest gathering in the town square.
Our driver knows all the short cuts and hidden alleys so he got us pretty close to town and we walked to the restaurant. Everyone had a different version of river trout with giant purple potatoes. Our driver was surprised to discover that we were all older than he was and none of us were married to Mike. (Food photos by Steph.)
After lunch we take a ride in the pedi-cab for a quick trip to a pharmacy. Between my cold and my period, I spent a lot of time shopping in pharmacies. Had I known how much time I would have to spend in them, I would have taken photos, I think I went to one in almost every town we visited. Ollanta, Urubamba, Aguas Calientes and Lima.
Our driver was a man on a mission. We had talked so much about the Pisac Market that our driver decided he would get us there strike or no strike. By afternoon the protest in
Urubamba had broken up and the roads out of town were open. Alas, although the people have disbursed there were still rocks strewn across the highway preventing anyone from driving from one end of the Sacred Valley to the other. But no fear, our ever so resourceful driver knows a back alley that will take us all the way from Urubamba to Pisac. I am being kind calling it an alley. It was a dirt and rock road, which ran between farms and was 
barely wide enough for our Toyota, let alone wide enough to share with a tractor or the local free range cattle. Yet, we made it to Pisac with just minutes to spare before the market closed. It was already pretty dark, but we managed to take pictures and buy a few things.
updated 12/01/2007
