Posts Tagged ‘market’

We had a little time before our tour to the jungle, so we decided to check out the Sacred Valley and some more Inca ruins.  This valley is about 45 minutes from Cusco and has a bunch of little towns near to some cool archeological sites.  We settled on going to the town of Pisac since it is on the closer end of the valley and is known for its market.

We thought we’d catch the bus over, but after a lot of confusion and uncertainty about where we were going decided to get a taxi instead.  Finding a cab was easy (and not as expensive as you might think!) and we had an uneventful journey over the mountains to get to the valley.  As soon as we got our first view of the valley I knew we had made the right decision.  I also could tell why it is called the Sacred Valley.  Very steep mountains rise up on both sides and the whole scene is lush, green, and spectacular!

We spent the our afternoon at Pisac’s famous market (another wedding quilt fabric post coming soon!) and had some tasty coffee and dinner.  The next morning we were up bright and early to take a look around the ruins.  We grabbed a cab and headed up the mountain.  Turns out that these ruins are HUGE.  We had no idea how big they were going to be.  After walking for 2 hours we still had not seen everything.  The terracing systems were especially impressive and were absolutely enormous.  There were also fortified areas, running fountains, a tunnel through the rock and spectacular views.  It was right at the top of the hill and some of the paths were winding along the very edge of the cliff.  I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.  You can see why we were glad we had the chance to see this!

Impressive Inca Walls

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This weekend we headed out to this place: The San Jose Flea Market to sell some of our stuff in preparation for the trip.  It was an awesome experience and a great way to pass on some of the things we needed to get rid of but didn’t want to take the time to post online or make a fuss about selling.

We chose to go to the Flea Market on one of their free selling days – the website said to just show up, so that’s what we did.  Since we wanted to get a good spot we were up at 3:45 a.m. and waiting in line at the market at 5:15 a.m!  This strategy worked out well and after getting lost only once we got our spot.

Early morning

Once we were set up it was pretty relaxing to watch the people go by and do a little haggling over prices for our stuff.  There was lots of cheap food available and the Mexican hot chocolate was a lifesaver in the cold early morning.  This is a very easy alternative to a yard sale and I’d highly recommend checking it out.  We hung out until about 5 p.m. and managed to get rid of a lot of our stuff.  Kitchen items, yarn, picture frames and shoes were top sellers with books being the hardest to pass on.

Justin relaxing at the Flea Market