Local cuisine plays an important role, with dishes such as roasted guinea pig, fresh trout from Andean rivers, and pachamanca, a feast cooked in a hot stone oven underground.

DAY 6: THE SACRED VALLEY INCLUDING MARAS SALT PONDS ... which is missed by many but has a great display of Inca architecture, ruins and megalithic art carved into rocks. Chinchero is home to ...

On the morning of July 24, 1911, an enterprising lecturer-explorer from Yale University set off in a cold drizzle to investigate rumors of ancient Inca ruins ... center of a sacred landscape.