After 14 days of hiking in the Cusco area we were finally done with hiking trips. They were all wonderful, but a rest day was the best. We caught up on laundry and other boring things that pile up. The only food we ate were our favorites, too. Lunch was sandwiches and juice from our favorite place down the road. Dinner was the beef cheeks, pasta, and scallops from OSDA. A recovery day doesn’t get much better than that.

Our second tour of the Sacred Valley had a 8:10am pick up time, a difference from all our other tours that were always before 4:30am. We liked it already! The day started with a quick stop at a textile facility where we got to feed alpacas. One of them was pretty shy, but others were excited to eat the grass from our hands. Afterwards we had the typical alpaca wool demonstration we’ve seen before with the raw wool, weaving, washing, and dying with natural colors. The woman also showed how to tell the difference between real wool and synthetic. I watched while sipping my tea and listening to the nearby guinea pigs who were squealing non stop. That time we did actually purchase some souvenirs as the place had some great alpaca products.

The next stop was Moray, a series of Inca terraces in circles. Overall we loved our guide, but that stop was painful. He had us all climb the steep steps to sit on the dirt at the bottom of one of the circular terraces. After which he proceeded to say the same thing in different words for about 1.5 hours that had nothing to do with Moray. My butt was definitely numb by the end of that, wow. At least we got to see all 4 ruins during our visit, which some groups did not. The only other funny part is that he did not take us to the iconic viewpoint that all tours use to advertise the site. We learned about how the terraces there were used for experimenting with growing different crops at different altitudes since each terrace had a different microclimate. After completing Moray we had officially completed 13/16 items from the tourism pass. Not too bad!

A short drive away from Moray was the town of Maras, our next stop. There we pulled up to a ‘Salt Shop’ for a demonstration of the various salts produced from the nearby salt mine we would visit later on. Each layer of salt collected had different tastes and purposes. We all got to try different salts on various dried snacks and some salted chocolate. I bought some sweet potato chips, chica morada (purple corn drink), and chocolate. Nick got the dark chocolate with salt and I got the one with quinoa in it too. The chocolate isn’t tempered so the texture was more like fudge which I didn’t like but Nick did. It was very soft.

Maras Salt Mine was incredibly beautiful and was a great way to end our tour. There are over 5000 pools where water is directed from the local salt spring to sit and evaporate. We were there during the end of the season. The families that own and operate the salt mine only work during dry season as wet season completely floods the pools (preventing the evaporation). The pools are only filled with 3cm of water at a time and are refilled 10 times before the salt is harvested. 3 types of salt get collected from each pool. I wondered what time of year people are allowed to walk near the pools as the photos used to promote the tour suggested we’d be walking along them for a closer look. When we were there tourists were only allowed behind the fence of the viewpoint. The view was still nice though.

Our tour continued back to Cusco, but we got off at the Salt Mines and waited in the waiting room for our accommodation for the night to come and pick us up from there. That accommodation, the Skylodge, was both an activity and a stay. It was our treat for finishing all the hiking. We don’t usually stay in places that aren’t hostels or cheap hotels, but when we do it’s a super fun change of pace. We got picked up and taken the short drive to the base of a tall cliff in the Sacred Valley. There we got a safety briefing, met the others who would be staying there as well, and put on our harnesses. From the parking lot we could look up and see where our climb would end, spoiler alert it looked closer than it was.

This accommodation is unique since it’s glass pods that are hanging from the side of a cliff and to get there we had to climb up using a vía ferrata. It was about 1 hour of climbing using metal rungs, rock, and 1 bridge. Our harnesses were always clipped into a metal safety line beside us. Every once in a while we had to switch our carabiners over to the next safety line, so if we did fall it would at maximum only be 3-5 meters at a time. During the climb there were sections where we only had to walk along the cliff, sections where we were leaning backwards, and sections so steep we could not see the end of it. My least favorite part was the ‘bridge’. The bridge was a metal bridge used to cross a long section instead of climbing. The guide held the rope tight so we could hold that for balance to go across. The entire thing wobbled and I scurried across as quickly as possible while asking myself why I signed us up for this. Nick had a blast.

The views from the climb were really spectacular overlooking the valley with the river, mountains, and some small buildings scattered throughout the farmlands. The sun was just beginning to set when we made it to the main glass pod. The large pod was used for communal eating and had glass windows facing the valley. There were 3 sleeping pods that each can fit up to 4 people at a time. Nick and I had our own pod and then there was a group of 6 friends who split up amongst the remaining 2 pods. The group of friends were all 50+ years old there to celebrate one of their birthdays. Some of them seemed happy to share the experience with us and others seemed annoyed. I don’t blame them, though, because of us getting a pod booking meant they couldn’t get all 3. Nobody can get a booking faster than me, though, so that was a lost cause.

Dinner was much better than I expected, it was pretty impressive for a little kitchen on the top of a cliff. We got passion fruit juice, local red wine, pumpkin soup, salad, chicken with vegetables, and mango for dessert. The 1.5 glasses of wine were necessary bravery juice for what was to come: the climb to our sleeping pod in the dark. Due to being the youngest we were assigned the most difficult pod to get to, the farthest away one. The climb to the pod was harder than any other section we did prior and was incredibly spooky. There were sections where the cliff jutted out so far we could not see the metal rungs where our feet would go. Lots of upper body strength was required to get around some corners, too.

Once we made it to our pod the process was much simpler. We opened the pod door which was on the roof and used a ladder to get inside. It was nice getting to take off our helmets and harnesses in there. Our pod was more spacious than I would’ve thought. We had one large queen bed at one end. There were two single beds on each side of the pod leading to the queen bed which we used for our bags. A small tea station sat by the ladder as well as some storage nets for more belongings.

The opposite end of the pod from the bed was the bathroom. We had a dry toilet, a sink, and a large water container for hand washing and drinking. The toilet faced the other two pods so we had our curtains closed most of the time. Nick had a little tube he could pee into and I had to pee into a little bowl than pour that down the same tube. It was pretty funny. Poop had to be in a garbage bag that lined the inside of the toilet. If we did poop we had to tie up the bag and then send it down a shoot where the bags would be collected. It was a good system, and definitely unique!

The pod was chilly the next morning, but a great place to wake up. We were lucky to have clear blue skies the day before and in the morning. Nick and I opened up our curtains and enjoyed our views of the valley before getting our harnesses back on to head over to breakfast. I’ll admit, doing our climb back to the kitchen pod without any wine was much scarier. Since it wasn’t dark anymore I could also more clearly see how scary the route was. That was the only time on our adventure that I almost cried after getting stuck on one part. Nick talked me through it, though. Nick was always happy doing our climb back and forth, though, unsurprisingly.

Breakfast was at 7:00am and they served us orange juice, coffee, tea, eggs, ham, cheese, bread, fruit salad, and yogurt. It was all delicious and worth the terrifying climb over. Post stuffing in as much food as we could, it was time to go back to our pods for some relaxing time. Nick got to relax eventually, but first he had to take some photos of his wife, for the blog of course. We had maybe around 1 hour of snuggling on our bed taking in the view before having to do the last round of being harnessed.

Harnessed and helmeted we made our ascent from our pod to the highest pod, our meeting point for the descent. Once the whole group was there it was time to start the short hike to the first of six zip lines. The hike was flat and easy, but because we were still on a cliff we had to remain clipped into the metal safety line at all times. The first zip line was the longest, I believe they said 200 meters long. It was also very fast. We considered that to be Nick’s first real zip line. Technically he did one in a park in China, but the speed was controlled so it was more like a slow chair lift across a valley rather than a zip line.

The zip lines criss crossed their way all the way down the cliff side to the parking lot where we had started the day before. The second one was a tandem zip line as it was long and had a short uphill section at the end, requiring more weight in order to make it to the end. That one got some pretty big squeals from me at the start as the start had a pretty big drop. The butterflies didn’t end there as it was also a speedy one. Nick was in front and I sat behind with my legs wrapped around his waist. Unfortunately, I did not think to get someone behind us to capture that. It was something I had never done before and who knows if we will again or not.

Early in our time in Cusco I had talked optimistically about all the things we could add on our last full day in town. Nick knew I would come to the realization that having the day free would be better and suggested we hold off on booking anything and just see how we feel. He was right. It was a nice day, though, filled with eating and unsuccessful sweater shopping. Lunch was at our favorite sandwich shop followed by passion fruit soft serve ice cream and a lemon pie from the bakery. We also did a quick browse in San Pedro Market, a large market filled with foods and trinkets.

Between eating I caught up on some blogs and Nick caught up on his podcasts. I found a sweater shop I liked a lot, but decided that I would pick something out after looking around more. In the end we did not have time to go back so I was a bit sad at my decision making there. The shop was the only one we had found that sold hand made alpaca sweaters. For dinner we ate sushi at Chikara Sushi. They only served trout in various forms since it is the only fresh fish in the area. Everything was delicious (minus the one piece that had wasabi on it already). It was a great last meal in Cusco before we headed over to catch our night bus to Arequipa at 9:30pm.