4-21

Woke up again to clear blue skies. Packed all our luggage and met Julio out front with the Toyota Hilux pickup truck - that was Kim's ride for the day (she wasn't up for any off road riding.) Met Angelo with my Suzuki DR 400 at the gas station. Started the trip around 10, off to Chinchero (3760 meters altitude). Saw an Incan farming center where market to trade goods and agriculture still happens every Sunday. The next leg of this trip is where Angelo and I broke off the paved road through some stunning landscape in Scared Valley to Moray (3570 meters). Archeological site with circular farming terraces. Apparently an experimental farming center in Inca times. Headed into Urubamba for lunch, ate and chatted a little with Angelo and Juan Carlos, Kim's driver. She said he did a great job on the narrow roads, and keeping up with the bikes, and even pointed out several great spots for pictures.

Then off to Ollantaytambo (2850 meters = starting to get some oxygen back!) which has Incan ruins of an entire town, built in between two mountains. This place had houses, streets, waterways, farming, a hospital, a 'Temple of the Sun', acoustics across the mountains for choir, schools, an astrological center, a prison, and windows in different number groupings to represent days, gods, ect. There's a face of the king in the mountain, and our guide also explained how the Incas used different points of the mountain to tell what month it was, based on where the sun rose over it. Here, like other Inca ruins, on June 21st, their winter solstice, the sun hits in a particular sacred spot. Behind the hospital, water still runs through the same 500 year old channels, we saw the sites where male and female babies were washed off when they were born.

Hit a little light rain on the way back towards Urubabma, and finally got to our hotel, Aranwa Health and Wellness Spa. Helped load both bikes onto the pickup and said goodbye to our guides. The hotel is amazing... Ate dinner and called it a night.