Ephemerratic - Independent travel blog with stories, travel guides, photos, travel art, and local food
Drawing of the produce women at the Sunday Pisac Market, Peru
There’s perhaps no more famous market in South America than Pisac’s Sunday Market. The touristy tchotchkes, fake alpaca scarves, and mass-produced blankets were not all that interesting. But, the part of the market where women sold produce they’d hauled down from the surrounding hills was colorful and exciting.
The Pisac market, $30, marker on paper, 8 in. x 6 in., 2012
Ever in motion on bargained time
At the crossroads to Maras, it’s just us versus one understandably smug taxi driver named David. With no competition or civilization in sight, we abandon all hope of negotiating a lower fare. Instead, we do what we wish we could do in life—bargain for more time.
Walking a road through the Sacred Valley
Salty promises at the Salineras of Maras, Peru
In the late afternoon at the end of a very wet rainy season, the tiered pocitos at the Salineras of Maras, Peru are empty of workers. The frequent cloud bursts have kept the evaporation in check that would otherwise coat the hills white.
As we crunch our way along the crystal-covered, narrow footpaths, we imagine people bending to collect the pink-tinged salt crystals that form in the shallow pools, in use since Incan times.
Even though Peru’s Sacred Valley is far, far inland, a wind smelling rich with rain whips across the salt pools and picks up the briny smell of the sea.
Lone green salt pond at Salineras. That's probably not a pond whose salt you want.
Cairns for Moray’s Incan engineers
I’ve always liked concentric circles. I don’t really know why. Perhaps it’s a preference I developed during my formative years, spent surrounded by the lingering psychedelic style of the late 1970s. Maybe it’s more about how the shape simultaneously shows both a narrowing and expanding of focus. Or, it’s due to my fondness for Skee-ball.
The Incans too favored concentric circles, though not just for their aesthetic applications. They scooped into the ground at Moray, Peru, covering and stabilizing the sides of the holes with curved walled terraces. During Peru’s rainy season, the Inca’s practical engineering becomes a dramatic scene in green.
Terraced Incan ruins of Moray
Chasing Incan kings through small town streets
If the internet is to be believed, Ollantaytambo, Peru is home to a mere 2,000 people. Each day, at least that many tourists hit the cobblestone streets to visit the town’s impressive Incan temple ruins, to set off by trail or train to Machu Picchu, or in search of a volunteer or business opportunity. It seemed like there were as many expat entrepreneurs and retiree voluntourists as Peru-born townfolk in Ollantaytambo.
A woman carries branches through the cobblestone streets
Incan temple ruins – Ollantaytambo, Peru photo essay
“Mama!” the guard says. We follow his pointing finger to see a plump yellow bird sunning herself on a rock wall. Smiling and nodding, we look back to the guard, whose main job seems to be to keep tourists from falling off the side of Cerro Bandolista, the Incan temple hill in Ollantaytambo, Peru.
Steep stairs at the ruins of Ollantaytambo
We were getting along so well. Until you said THAT.
Yolandi looks across the table at my cazuela in confusion. “Whoever heard of soup without bread?” she asks rhetorically.
I consider my bowl of herb-flecked broth, extra yellow from spicy splashes of aji amarillo sauce. Submerged in its substantial depths are a half chicken still on the bone, whole green beans, and thick wands of carrot. If carbs are what’s needed, in the soup there’s also quinoa, a wheel of bulbous Peruvian corn cob, a wedge of green-skinned and orange-fleshed zapallo macre, and two entire potatoes.
This soup needs bread like an alpaca needs a sweater vest.
Her comment is the first sign that something is off about the South African couple Todd and I have buddied up with in Ollantaytambo, Peru. It just gets more awkward and carelessly racist from there.
Vote for bread campaign sign in Ollantaytambo
A riot of tiny color – Ollantaytambo, Peru photo essay
It would have been easy to cobble together a salad from the edibles that we brush by while exploring the Incan ruins of Ollantaytambo in Peru’s Sacred Valley.
Lush from the late seasonal rains, there are pea-sized Peruvian bush tomatoes, more seed than flesh; cactus fruit, what little the birds have left unpecked; agave, its spindly, tall masts flowering in a last hurrah; and wild greens and herbs, stinking up the place oh so nicely.
Looking up at cactus fruit
Hat tricycle shop – Art from Ollantaytambo, Peru
As we watched the sun disappear in quiet Ollantaytambo, Peru, one persistent hat vendor left their cart out in hopes of a sale. In the off season, no one came to buy. But when they do, this vendor is ready.
$30, marker on paper, 8 in x 6 in, 2012
Peruvian meals of plenty at Hotel Sol y Luna and Wayra
During our stay at Hotel Sol y Luna in Peru’s Sacred Valley, we head over to its sister facility, Wayra, for dinner.
We’re warmed outside and in by the fireplace adjacent to our table and our bottle of cabernet sauvignon from Peruvian winery, Viña Ocucaje.
Decanting wine at Wayra
