Ollantaytambo

Ollantaytambo (Ollantay), Sacred Valley, Peru: amazingly cool ruins, breathtaking views, and a great prelude to Machu Picchu. Ollanty was a very small, dusty town filled with a hundred restaurants and shops serving and selling the exact same thing as one another. One could spend days deciding were to eat breakfast if one were the indecisive type. Thankfully we are not so indecisive, we had decided where to eat breakfast by dinner time. We stayed in the first hostel we looked at--the cheapest one of course--of the one's we researched online. It was super cheap with no frills at all, but had beds and hot water. Hot water, yeah, if you know how to use it. the water is heated by coils in the shower head, and like silly Americans, we turned the water on full blast and frowned when we found they were all out of hot water. Whoops!! Half way through the coldest--I'm talking 31 degrees cold--shower ever, the maintenance guy yelled in to us that he could fix it (granted that conversation took about five minutes through the door while I stood there naked trying to speak Quechua-Spanish). Pickle and I finally crammed into the little toilet room next to the shower and the guy came in, turned down the water pressure, and eureka, we had the best hottest lowest-pressure drizzle shower ever. Silly Americans!!