Blogs from Sacred Valley, Cusco, Peru, South America - page 12

Well the past week has been fairly busy. My class made another trek up to Saqsaywaman on Saturday. We had our teacher along this time which made things more interesting. After lunch at the ruins we played a game of soccer with some local peasant children then hit the trail on our horses. Probably the slowest, laziest horses I have ever seen, but we had an awesome time. We were able to go much higher on the mountain and get a better view of the city and the Saqsaywaman ruins (refer to pic). On Tuesday we headed to the Sacred Valley (45 mins from Cuzco) to check out the Pisac ruins in the morning and the Virgen del Carmen Festival in the afternoon. The Pisac ruins are by far the coolest I have seen thus ... read more

A lie-in until 8am! Our guide for the day was Revellino who first off took us to a women's collective, along a high remote road a few miles along the Sacred Valley. There we met women busy knitting and weaving, using Alpaca wool from the animals they kept. We watched demonstartions of knitting and weaving, colouring the wool with dyes from the nearby plants and of course the finished articles which we were invited to buy! Next a visit to Pisac ruins high in the mountains, which were steep but an amazing sight. Unfortunately we bumped into a Forest fan who was on a 6 month tour of South America but meeting up with his parents in Peru. After a good hour walking the extensive ruins we left for the fine market down in the valley ... read more

Diaz apologises for Maoist slogan - FROM BBC NEWS WEBSITE 26 JUNE 2007 Actress Cameron Diaz has apologised for carrying a bag in Peru which featured a political slogan likely to be considered offensive by local people. The Shrek star visited the historical Machu Picchu site with a green bag which had a red star and the words "serve the people" printed in Chinese. It evoked memories of a Peruvian war against Maoist rebels in the 1980s and '90s, when up to 69,000 people died. Diaz admitted she did not realise the slogan's "potentially hurtful nature". "I sincerely apologise to anyone I may have inadvertently offended," she said in a statement released to the Associated Press. "The bag was a purchase I made as a tourist in China." She went on: "I'm sorry for any people's ... read more

We took a tour to the Sacred Valley today. Our bus tour picked us up at our hotel and we continued gathering two Brits, a pack of Japanese, and assorted other nationalities. Our tour guide Ignacio was okay. He wasn't bad, he wasn't good. He sure did get a lot of kickbacks. He wasn't anything special. In a way I wished we had gone on our own but taking combis and buses to all these towns would have been quite difficult to do in a single day. The first stop was the Pisac market. Although I thought I didn't like markets, this one was fun. It was fairly hassle-free, compared to India. I was able to get the alpaca mittens and hat I wanted, plus a gift or two. And I picked up some jewelry at ... read more

this will probably be the last blog until i get back to the USA. I went to the upper amazon basin for a few days and just returned to lima this morning to take a bus deeper into the amazon, to pullcalpa so i will cross over the Andes twice in a 24 hour period. As I said in my last blog I will be back in the Chicago area on the 22nd of May. While in the La Merced area I went with a "guide" by moto taxi, auto, minibus and truck to an indian village. after a one hour bumpy ride on top of coffee sacks in the back of a truck I decided not to take a 14 hour truck ride and then another two day truck ride to get to Pulculpa. ... read more