Sacred Valley: Urumbamba

You can see Urumbamba on the map above, about halfway down the Sacred Valley.  On the other side of the river you will see Maras and Moray which are considerably higher in elevation as the valley ascends very steeply up both sides of the river.  The only Inca ruin of note around Urumbamba is Moray that, in and of itself, wouldn't be worth spending the night to see.  However, our horseback outing in Arequipa was so successful that the boys wanted to go again and we had found an outfit out of Urumbamba that seemed worth the time.  We weren't disappointed.  Photos of the horseback adventure are minimal since I found, at least for me, it's difficult to take photos while mounted on a horse. 

Talk about Big Sky Country!

I was initially disappointed since we were originally scheduled to ride up to some Inca ruins but when the horse operator realized the boys were 7 and 9 he decided a flat trip through an agricultural area would be better.  Since it was mainly for the boys I acquiesced.  Turned out to be the most improbably beautiful agricultural area I've ever seen.  The foreground reminded me of the rolling hills of western Pennsylvania but with a backdrop of 18,000+ foot, cloud-shrouded peaks.  And, if you haven't been on a horse lately, flat is far preferable to uphill and down.

The boys couldn't have been happier.  Not only did they get to control their own horses for most of the ride, they got to trot them quite a bit.
I grew up in an agriculture area and am always interested in local crops when traveling.  Never would I have imagined wheat and hops growing higher than 10,000 feet.  Turns out that the light  coupled with being in the tropics where it doesn't snow or freeze at that elevation create a great environment for farming.  The area is famous for potatoes and supposedly over 300 varieties are grown here.  It's also famous for hops that supply Peru's largest brewery and also wheat and quinoa, a big cash crop as its popularity in the US has grown.

Slideshow of Journey to Moray on Horse

Moray

Moray is a unique archaeological site in Peru.  The site is terraced in a natural depression with an extensive irrigation system.  The orientation with respect to wind and sun creates a temperature difference of 27 degrees between the top and bottom terraces.  The Inca empire ranged from the Andes to the Amazon basin and it is commonly thought that the Inca used this site to study the effects of different climatic conditions on crops and to study domestication, acclimatization and hybridization of wild vegetable species that were modified for human use.  Not bad science for 600 years ago.
Slideshow