Blogs from Sacred Valley, Cusco, Peru, South America - page 18

Hola amigos, ...rano 8:30 po *klasickych ranajkach* pre nas prisiel autobus (az pred hotel..hm) a vyrazame na celodennu tour do posvatneho udolia Inkov. Posvatne udolie je asi 15 km severne od Cuzca a preteka cez neho rieka Rio Urubamba. Prva zastavka je dedinka Pisac - vstupna brana do posvatneho udolia...Po polhodinke stravenej na miestnom trzisti stupame do starobyleho inckeho mesta ktore lezi asi 600 m nad dedinou. Asi tak okolo 12:00 konecne odchadzame a ideme na obed do dediny Urubamba odkial pokracujeme do dalsieho inckeho mesta s nazvom Ollantaytambo. Mesto je plne nejakych musiek ktore su hrozne otravne... Stupame nad mesto na zrucaniny a asi 2 hodiny tam pobehujeme. Potom pokracujeme do dedinky Chinchero kde sa ma konat miestna fiesta so slavnostnym odovzdanim 2 traktorov dedine od buducej pani prezidentovej. Davame si s Misom 2 miestne ... read more

I woke very early today... while wandering why I had set my alarm for 5am, I remembered that today, we had planned to seek out the hot water springs of 'Lares'. Our first move was to take a bus to Urubama, and then on to the town of 'Calca' (halfway between Urubama and Pisaq). Heading to Calca bus terminal, we found a potato truck, who's driver said he was going to Lares, and would let us come along for 5 soles. Lares is about a two to three hour drive along a mountain dirt track... it really was a special road, like the kind of twisting mountain path you see in movies (but without the safety barriers)... really spectacular views! Lares itself is really small village... arriving there really felt like being in the middle of ... read more

On Monday, Anna came along to see the school. The day went pretty well, and I got through more than planned with most of the classes. On Tuesday Angelica, the Peruvian English teacher was on a course in Cuzco, so I had to take the classes alone. This proved to be quite a challenge as my first time teaching solo, but things went ok. In the evening, I tried to help Melissa out with her maths homework. They´d set some pretty difficult work, it was very reminiscent of the' surds and indices's' stuff we did at the start of our A level course, and she´s only thirteen! I can´t imagine kids of that age in the Uk being expected to do that level of maths... on the other hand, she didn´t seem to understand it. On ... read more

Myself and Anna decided it would be a nice idea to take Hullio (a lad from Cuzco who lives with Lola) and Mellisa (one of the kids from the School, who sometimes works for Lola), to some of the sights in the local area. We decided to head for the Inca Terraces at 'Moray' and then to the Salinas close to Urubama. Originally, the plan was to walk across country from the first to the second... but it was quite late before we got going, and since none of us had a clue where to go (maps seem to be a scarce commodity out here), we decided to bus and taxi it with a small amount of walking. The Terrace's at Moray are pretty impressive... Many concentric circles in a similar arrangement to an amphitheatre. Each ... read more

The long expected marching day had come... the principle had had the students practising their marching for nearly a week now. Everyone gathered in the school early in the morning. I stood in front of the pupils with the rest of the teachers, which suddenly became rather awkward when they began to sing their national anthem and I didn't know the words! The principle then gave a long speech, of a very nationalist nature from what I could understand. The plaza of Ollantaytambo was completely packed with people, students, teachers, local government, locals, tourists. There were speeches, poems and various recitals of the anthem all morning. The marching began at about 12 noon. I hadn't realised just how many schools there were in this area (knowing of just mine and one other)... but around about 10 ... read more