Homestay in Raqchi

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Fresh off the back of El Misti we arrived in the tiny village of Raqchi for an unexpected homestay.

Pauline and I were greeted by our Peruvian family and whisked of through some tiny back streets by Emily the 7 year old little girl of the family. Obviously more at home with running down dark alleys dodging puddles that would consume a small elephant and equally large piles of fresh llama s%&t, Emily disappeared round corner after corner with us 2 bumbling along quite some distance behind her. Eventually after nearly klling myself almost falling down some extremely dark stone steps we arrived at their house.

We were shown to our room and then Emily dissapeared out into the darkness. Our room was very nice, and while i´m not sure that it hadn´t been specially created for the gringo´s stay it was very welcoming and very different to anywhere we had stayed so far! Out of our front door we could see smoke rising from the kitchen and so wondered over to introduce ourselves. The kitchen was tiny and comprised of a oven / stove made from hard dried mud and straw and some wooden shelving that was holding a selection of ceramic pots and pans. Maria, the grandmother, was cooking up some pots of.... stuff, while Berta, the mother, was chopping the meat of some kind off a very dead animal. We guessed that this would be dinner and our pigeon spanish confirmed our suspicions.

Running around on the floor and squeaking with an acute awarenes that it must be dinner time were a collection of around 15 guinea pigs ranging from the small and boney to the fat and juicy! On special occasions these little blighters are literally plucked from the floor, battered with a pot and slapped on the stove for a good old fashioned chow down! Fortunately for us, this was not such a special occasion!

Dinner was served and it was very nice - a maze and vegetable soup followed by Lomo Saltado (stir fried beef) and a traditional peruvian cup of nescafe to follow. After dinner Emily came into chat with us and we ended up playing the universal game of no words - naughts and crosses! She is a very sweet girl and we ended up chatting for ages trying to teach her some English in return for some lessons in Quechwa (native Inca language), but were finally interupted by Maria (the grandmother) as Emily had to be up at 6 for school in the morning!

Breakfast was served at 7.30 and then we went for a tour of the Inca ruins in the village. The ruins were very impressive and when we arived back at the village the market was in full swing. We were also given a pottery display showing how the locals made all their ceramics to sell in the markets - not as easy as it looks as some of our group found out when they had a go at making some pots.

After the market we went back for lunch with our family before saying goodbye to them. We were then off to Cusco to begin the Inca trail with our new guide Smithy. Both England and Peru were playing football later and so we were all keen to get out and watch our games. Unfortunately England crashed out of the Euro championships and about 1 1/2 hours later Peru were out of the next world cup, a fun afternoon for everyone involved!

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