Sacred Valley Bicycle Tour

The day dawned bright and beautiful, including no wind which was a great way to start a bike tour.  After a quick breakfast at the hotel, our guide, Jose, showed up with a van, a driver and three nice mountain bikes loaded on top.  I didn't know it at the time, but this was to be the first time Linda had ridden a mountain bike.  We had about a 25 mile drive through some mountains to get to where we actually embarked on the ride.  I was really glad we did that part in the van.  A lot of it was through town and extremely steep.  There was a moment that almost ended the tour before it started.  At one of the ubiquitous speed bumps a local policeman motioned us to the curb.

He was very pleasant, but seemed to be concerned about the safety aspects of three mountain bikes that were securely racked on the top of our van.  He and our driver, Raphael, discussed the pros and cons of the situation for a few minutes. Then a van with six mountain bikes racked on top went around us.  Very shortly thereafter, he wished us on our way.

So, we spent the next half hour or so getting information from Jose and admiring the beautiful contryside through the windows of the van.

We were a little concerned because we were saying to ourselves, "There are no bike lanes on these roads."  As it turned out, we had little to worry about because where we ended up riding, there were mostly no roads.  We turned off the main road into a dusty little villages and unloaded the bikes.  When I saw the bike that I was assigned, I really thought they had gone to a lot of trouble, since mine was the only one of this brand in the group.

 

After a few adjustments to the seat height for Linda and me, as well as a brief lesson on shifting the unfamiliar shifters, we started off down a dusty road that obviously didn't normally see much traffic.  Our ride continued on that type of surface, mixed with gravel, grass, and couple of miles of pavement.

We thought that a ride through the valley would be pretty flat and, for the most part that was true.  But the valley definitely undulated and then the ride finished with some hair-raising descents.  At one point early on, Linda took a break in the following van to catch her breath and supervise Jose and me.

 These next couple of shots give you an idea of the beauty surrounding us during the ride and introduce you to Jose, who turned out to be not only a good and patient guide, but also a really nice guy.

Our first destination was Moray, a beautifully restored Inca ruins.  This fantastic place had been built as a horticultural testing facility.  Since the crops the Incas grew were very susceptible to altitude and the changes that go with it, they tested seeds on the various rings to determine the likelihood for success.  You can see the steps built into the walls for access.  There are also vertical grooves in each of the walls to carry irrigation from a mountain spring.

 

Jose did a great job of telling us all about the history of Moray and the two additional smaller sites adjacent to it that are also scheduled for restoration.  After all of that information, he asked us if we had any questions and I said yes.  When is lunch?

They had prepared a picnic lunch for us in the middle of a field surrounded by the giant agave plants that are used to separate the fields.  By the way, they also made great comfort stations on this trip where real ones are few and far between.  Jose had set up our picnic next to a little ranch with an idyllic setting.

  Lunch was really good.  Fortunately for a vegetarian like me, wonderful fruit and vegetables are abundant. 

 

  

After lunch we packed up and got back into the van for a short ride to our next mount up on the bikes.  The good news is that this last section of the ride was nearly all downhill.  The not so good news is that there were sections that really tested our pucker factor.

The next major destination was a small village which I cannot remember the name of.  It had no real distinction from lots of other small villages other than it was at the end of a descent on a dirt road that seemed like it was ten miles long, although I am sure it was only one.  The last quarter mile was also well populated with children who had just gotten out of school and undoubtedly had no idea how threatened their young lives were as I tried to keep from running over one of them.

After passing carefully through the village trying to make sure we didn't get hit by something or hit somebody at each of the blind corners, we came out onto a section of paved road.  I apologize for not having any photos of this section.  I was too busy riding the brakes to reach for my camera.  It was the kind of downhill that I would have killed for on my road bike a couple of years ago. But, swinging through those curves on those great big knobs on my tires was unnerving ... I'm not used to mountain bikes either.

I thought  we could relax a bit when we pulled off of the paved road onto another gravel section.  It turned out I was really wrong.  We were starting another downhill about the same grade as we had just completed, only this one was longer, on gravel and with a lot of dust kicked up by oncoming traffic.  The challenge for the first mile or so was just to stay upright and on the upwind side of drivers coming the other way so that you wouldn't be blinded by dust.

We reached a little shack where they were collecting a fee to enter the area, which Jose had already told us was an ancient salt mine.  Jose said he would take care of it and we were to go ahead just making sure to stay to the right side so we wouldn't meet outbound traffic head-on.  You need to realize that this entire length of gravel road is really only what I would consider one lane.

Linda and I proceeded at what I felt was a reasonable pace for a few hundred yards when Jose (literally) came flying off of the hill to our left where he had short cut to catch us.  Shortly thereafter, we rounded a curve and saw the salt mine ... not the hole in the ground that I had expected.  We stopped and Jose said, "See those cars down there? That's where we're going.  Go ahead."  Those cars looked awfully small!

Well, those are the salt mines down there, the white things, so in order to see them we had to make the descent.  I went first, then Linda, then Jose to keep track of the bodies.  Some places it wasn't bad because there was a 4-6 ft. berm.  Other places, there was only about 12 inches between us and a long, long way down.  Of course, it wouldn't really have been an issue if we hadn't had to stay far right to account for the cars coming up the mountain.  Any way, as you can tell by the fact I'm writing this ... we made it.

These "mines" were really fascinating.  They even precede the Incas to earlier indigenous people.  There is a saline volcanic spring coming out of the side of the mountain at this point and running down the valley.  Natives hundreds of years ago saw the advantages of that and began constructing pits for the water to collect in  and then, through evaporation, produce salt that they could harvest. Over the years, more and more individuals built their own pits with the overflow water of one being channeled to the next.  It is, to this day, an actively worked source of salt harvested on a regular basis by individuals.


This was the last site for today.  And, after all of that downhill and noting that the wind had stirred up to around 20 mph, I was delighted to see Jose load the bikes on the racks for the ride back instead of saddling up.


Jose did such a great job that we arranged for him to pick us up in a car and lead the continuing exploration that we had planned to do on our own the next day.  Stay tuned for lots of interesting output from that day.