Mom's Trip to Peru and Machu Picchu

It takes quite awhile to travel half a world away! We left for Peru around 3pm on Tuesday from the Las Vegas airport and didn't get there until 10am on Wednesday. On arrival we were tired from lack of sleep; its never easy to sleep on a plane next to a stranger. At the airport we were tricked by a person we thought was our arranged taxi driver (he even showed us my name on his cell phone leading us to believe he was sent by the taxi company), but he was really only there to collect our baggage, walk it to the taxi, and collect a tip for it. Silly us! 

Once we found our taxi driver, we  were on our way, weaving through the city at what felt like a break-neck speed, passing cars in lanes of oncoming traffic and honking all the way. Our taxi driver stopped at a viewpoint over Cuzco and we got out to look.

 While we were stopped we also saw a Peruvian woman with an alpaca, a baby llama, and a newborn lamb, which I snuggled.

 Our taxi driver, Igor, drove us to Pisac, about an hour from Cusco, where we stopped to look around the Pisac ruins.

 We took the trail along the mountainside and dropped back down into town where our taxi driver picked us back up.

 We hadn't had a thing to eat yet since arriving, so we stopped at the market and window shopped, and then bought a tiny empanada instead of the cute little Cuoy (Guinea Pig) they were cooking and selling.

 After that we hopped back into the car and sped toward Moray. There was so much to see and it was all going by the window so fast! Moss on the telephone lines, kids everywhere, women hauling bundles of grass, food, and children, and men working, always working.

 We were pretty tired when we got to Moray and they were closing in 14 minutes so we just walked down a little way and took a look.

The scale of Moray was much larger than I'd thought from seeing pictures. It was once an agricultural testing area. The top layer was consistant with temperatures in the High Andes and the lowest level was consistant with sea level temperatures. They grew crops at each level to see what grew best and where.

 After Moray it was Ollaytaytambo we were headed for next, and thankfully our last destination. Along the way we saw the glass hotel pods bolted to the mountainside that Tia so much wanted to stay in. Once I saw the people at the bottom getting ready to  'climb up' to their hotel rooms, I was pretty glad we hadn't gone that route!

 All along the valleys next to the river were fields with new crops growing. Mostly corn but I also saw strawberry and artichoke. It was springtime in the Southern Hemisphere so there were also blossoms in the fruit trees.

After we finally found our hotel in Ollaytaytambo, we checked in, dropped our bags, and hungrily headed for the commercial area to find some food. We were pretty bummed to find that the power was out and most restaurants weren't serving food. We found one that was willing to warm up soup on the stove for us so we had some of that. Then we walked around town in the dark. The stores were all lit by candles as no one wanted to lose any business by closing early. I was able to find a nice lady who was willing to warm me up some milk in her skillet for some hot chocolate.

We were tired and dirty from travel but the water was cold so none of us showered. We all fell asleep around 6:00pm. I woke up at 4:00am to find the power back on and the water warm so I showered and then fell back asleep.  The next morning we woke up and it was overcast and the clouds were hanging onto the mountains. It was quite pretty and so we decided to go onto the upper deck for a view of the town.

 The Pinkuyulla ruins were visible from the top floor. Since we had about 45 minutes until breakfast still, we decided to go hike up to the first set of ruins.

 No one seemed to be up yet so we had the streets to ourselves. Even the dogs were still all passed out.

 The gates were open for the ruins hike so we marched right up the stairs.

It didn't take us long at all to reach the first set, maybe 5 minutes, and we weren't very high. The view was pretty neat; we could see straight across to the Ollaytaytambo ruins.

We were all pretty hungry from our meager meals the day before so we made sure we were back to the hotel right on time for breakfast. Scrambled eggs, fruit with quinoa and amaranth, anise tea, and juice were what we chose; we skipped the dry bread, pink bologna and salty cheese.

After breakfast we walked back down to the main square and caught our Awamaki tour bus to the Quechuan town of Patacancha for our weaving tour. There were only two other people in our tour group and our guide, Melvin, was a really nice Dutch guy. We drove out of of town into the mountains for about a half hour and then stopped at a little church to learn some history about the area.

This church is a gathering place for the community on one night every February called (I think) Festival of Compadres, where they come to 'make friends' and exchange favors. Typically the favor is that a family in an outlying village will send their child to live with a trustworthy family in the bigger towns so that their child can attend school during the week, and then then child will come home on the weekends. In exchange, the child's family agrees to help build a new house for the host family when the child is older.

In fact, Melvin explained to us, that most house building is done as exchange work. Everyone helps their neighbor build houses when they need with the knowledge that when they are ready to build a house, the neighbors will come and help them. What a cool system!

We were able to climb up into the belltower of the church, a tiny little stone staircase. This is a view looking out onto the graveyard behind the church. Pictures don't show the terracing well enough but Melvin also explained to us the garden terrace building system. He said that every person was expected to give one month of service per year to building terraces . They would have 500 people at a time JUST working on building terraces. And the other months of the year they were free to farm and work as normal. It was a community effort to build the terraces but everyone reaped the benefits from it!

We arrived in Patacancha and learned a few words before we met our weaving teachers.

Can't remember the name of the tea but it was a local plant and helped digestive issues.