16,000 feet, hot springs, and expensive ruins

Surrounding the Sacred Valley are mountains. Mountains on every side. Really high mountains. We ventured out from Calca to reach the top of some of those mountains. We found a brave taxi driver to take us up the ever winding dirt roads. It is pretty beautiful. On the way up we had to cross periodic waterfalls.

We had encounters with belligerent wildlife including llamas, alpacas, horses (probably some donkeys too), and sheep and goats.

There are actually quite a few people who live up in these high mountains. Just raising alpacas and selling the wool. We gave some bread, fruit, and toys to the kids we saw on the way up. Latin American kids on average are way cuter than our American kids. That bewildered look of wonderment helps.

We finally got to the top of the pass. It measures in at about 16,000 feet. I think it is the highest (in altitude) that I have ever been.

There are some towns just below this altitude and we continued onto to one that has a little hot springs resort just outside of it. The hot springs were pretty nice. They had multiple pools of varying heat and really it was the best time I have ever had sitting in super muddy hot water even if there were some old, naked Peruvians hanging out.

Later on we returned to the Sacred Valley and headed for Cuzco to visit some of the ruins just outside the city. We flew there in a taxi because they would be closing soon. They are called Sacsayhuaman and apparently are really huge being able to house all of the occupants of Cuzco at some point and time.

Like I said we were running late. The ruins were going to close in less than an hour, but they still wanted to charge us full price. I'm talking about 40 sols here (a little more than $10). By this point we had paid for so many ruins (and were getting ripped off because of our detectable United Stateness) so this is what we said to Sacsayhuaman.

Instead we wondered around outside the ruins and took it all in. Chris and I even found the Incas favorite rock which they featured prominently in one of their many walls. Why is it their favorite? It has something to do with it's shape to everyone's favorite state that Chris and I are from.

Ok so all I have left are the bigs ones; Machu Pichu, the Jungle, and all the food we ate. These will take me a little while to post, but they are coming.