30.03.2008 Pisaq (more ruins)

The breakfast was served until 10am, so we had to get up at a reasonable time... It had rained during the night, but the morning looked good so we decided to go see some more ruins in a near by city called Pisaq... The original plan was to take a collectivo, but on the way to the bus stop a taxi proposed to take us there with a good price, so we went for the comfort! It took the taxi 50min to get to the ruins and there we hired a guide and toured around the site for about 1h30. The Pisaq ruins are the second largest complex after MP. It was not as holy site as MP, but still quite impressive.

At the end of the tour our taxi was waiting for us to take us back to the village (8km) where we went for lunch and visited the market. Once at lunch it really started raining and hailing and of course we were in shorts and without rainjackets... While waiting for the rain to stop we just had to go to the near by cafe for a cake and tea... The market was very interesting, one half was handcrafts, filled with alpaca sweaters, jewellery, musical instruments, pottery, hats, gloves, and socks... and the other half was agricultural products, some that we didn´t recognise, all kinds of vegetables, different coloured corn, several varieties of potatoes (in Peru there are about 800 varieties), fruits, spices, coca leaves... and of course it was filled with Peruvians! In their traditional colourful dresses and little hats... In the late afternoon we took a too full collectivo back to Cusco.