Chinchero

From Iain: Today we went on a day trip to Chinchero, which is a small village on the road between Urubamba and Cusco.  The landscape here looks very different to that of the Sacred Valley - very high (Chinchero sits at 3,762m or 12,340 ft) with grassland, trees, bushes, and agricultural fields of red, brown, yellow, and green and endless vistas to still higher snow-covered mountains.

Chinchero

The main places of interest in the town are a large Sunday market (with much the same items as the Pisac market) and a historical area with some Incan terraces and ruins atop which sits an ugly, decaying colonial church.  When we arrived many of the town's inhabitants were attending a Catholic service inside the church, so we couldn't go inside. Given the history of the Inca and the Catholic Church it was a little discomfiting to see all the local people dressed in their traditional Andean clothing coming out of the church at the end of the service.