Sacred Valley slow travel: what happens when you stop rushing

Most people see the Sacred Valley from a minibus window

The standard Sacred Valley day trip — leaving Cusco at eight, Pisac market by nine-thirty, Maras and Moray by midday, Ollantaytambo fortress by three, back to Cusco by seven — is a perfectly reasonable way to tick the major sites. I know because I did it on my first visit, and I thought I had seen the Sacred Valley.

On my third trip to the Cusco region, I did something different. I based myself in Ollantaytambo for a week and used it as a starting point for exploration rather than a box to check. What I found, by slowing down, was that the Sacred Valley is not a collection of sites connected by roads. It is a living landscape, and you only understand it by being in it long enough for the days to have a rhythm.

Why Ollantaytambo works as a base

Ollantaytambo is, on the standard itinerary, a two-hour stop. The fortress terraces above the town are dramatic — steeper and more vertically impressive than anything at Machu Picchu — and the living Inca town grid below them is the only continuously inhabited Inca town in Peru, meaning people actually live in houses built on Inca foundations and channelled through Inca-engineered water channels in the streets.

As a base, it has several practical advantages. The altitude (2,800 metres) is significantly more comfortable than Cusco’s 3,400 metres, which means better sleep, easier walking, and no headaches by day two. There are good small hotels and rental apartments on the streets surrounding the main square. The train to Aguas Calientes (for Machu Picchu) departs from here, which means you can do the Machu Picchu day without the very early departure from Cusco. And it is quiet at night in a way that Cusco, with its clubs and its crowds, simply is not.

The Ollantaytambo fortress at 7 a.m.

The main reason to stay in Ollantaytambo overnight is the fortress at seven in the morning, before the day-trip coaches arrive from Cusco. I walked up on three consecutive mornings in near-complete silence — birds, the sound of the river below, the wind across the terraces — and had the upper levels to myself each time.

The terraces rise in six major tiers above the town, and at the top are the remains of the Temple of the Sun, its massive monolithic doorways and wall panels visible from the valley floor. The quality of the stonework here is different from the Cusco sites: larger blocks, more precisely fitted, more ambitious in scale. The archaeologists believe the site was unfinished when the Spanish arrived in the 1530s — which makes it both more poignant and more strange.

By nine-thirty, the first buses were arriving and the entrance queue had formed. I was already eating breakfast in the square.

Pisac on a Sunday

Pisac without a tour group is a different experience. I arrived on a Sunday morning — the main market day — on the local Cusco bus, which costs about 3–4 PEN and takes an hour from the terminal at Pavitos Street. The market in the lower part of the village is, for the first hour, a genuine local affair: bread, potatoes, fresh herbs, second-hand tools, livestock changing hands at the edge of the car park.

The tourist textile market opens later and occupies the main plaza, and by ten it is busy. But arrive at seven-thirty and walk straight past the market stalls to the Inca ruins above the town, and you will find terracing that covers an entire mountain ridge — agricultural terraces, residential sectors, ceremonial plazas, a solar observatory — spread over three kilometres with views down the full length of the valley.

I spent three hours up there and descended to find the market in full swing. Bought a small bag of dried Andean chillies for 3 PEN. Had caldo de gallina (hen broth with chilli and potato) at a counter in the market for 7 PEN. Caught the bus back to Ollantaytambo in the early afternoon.

Maras on a bicycle

The Maras salt pans are one of those sites that photographs cannot quite convey: terraced pools of evaporating saline water running down a hillside, each family’s plot in a slightly different shade of white or pink depending on the mineral content of that particular spring-fed channel. There are perhaps three thousand individual pools, and the whole system has been producing salt in this way since before the Inca.

I hired a bicycle in Ollantaytambo for 25 PEN for the day and rode the thirty kilometres to Maras via the backroads through Chinchero — a route that climbs to about 3,600 metres before descending to the salt pans. The cycling is not easy at altitude but it is beautiful: open altiplano, views of Nevado Chicon to the north, almost no traffic.

Arrive at Maras mid-morning, before the day-trip coaches from Cusco, and you can walk the perimeter path above the pans at your own pace. Entry costs around 10 PEN. A kilometre or two further is Moray — the circular terracing — which is included in the same ticket.

The thing about slow travel at altitude

There is an argument for slow travel everywhere, but altitude makes it especially compelling. The standard tourist schedule — arrive Cusco, rush to Machu Picchu, rush to Rainbow Mountain, leave — does not give the body time to adapt. Everything is harder than it needs to be: walking, carrying, sleeping.

A week in the Sacred Valley at 2,800 metres does two things. It gives your body the acclimatisation it actually needs before you attempt anything strenuous. And it gives you time to see the landscape as landscape rather than as a series of sites connected by a minibus route.

I spent one morning just sitting above the Urubamba River watching the water. I found a café in Ollantaytambo where the owner made chicha de jora from the maize she grew herself and served it cold in a clay cup for 3 PEN. I walked a trail above Pisac that I had found on a hand-drawn map posted in my hotel and seen no other person on.

The Sacred Valley vs Cusco as base guide covers the practical arguments. My argument is simpler: slow down, and the valley will show you what it actually is.

Practical notes

The local bus between Ollantaytambo and Cusco runs regularly (around 3–4 PEN, one hour). The train to Aguas Calientes from Ollantaytambo station takes ninety minutes and connects with the bus to Machu Picchu. Accommodation in Ollantaytambo ranges from around 50 PEN for a basic room to 250 PEN for a good mid-range hotel. February, when I visited, is technically rainy season — I had afternoon rain most days, but mornings were clear, and the valley was green in a way that it is not in dry season.

The Sacred Valley full-day tour is the right option if you have one day. If you have a week, stay here.