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Published: September 24th 2018
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Today we head to ‘base camp’ for the Inca and Quarry Trails - Ollantaytambo in the Sacred Valley. We leave Cusco in the rush hour traffic but once we are out of the city the road crosses wide, open, arid plains. We see villages, sheep, alpacas (or are they llamas, I still cannot tell the difference), pigs, and cattle as well as plenty of locals going about their day to day chores. Some have quite primitive tools while in other areas we see heavy construction equipment lined up.
We stop at Chincherios, a sizeable village by a lake that supplies a lot of the water to Cusco. The locals greet us and we have a great time. They take us by the hands and we dance around the grassy square in front of the church. Then they introduce themselves. Some speak Spanish, others speak only Quechua. They are all in local costume which seems to be everyday wear. One of the men is dressed in woman’s clothing - when they travel to villages far away the women do not travel (they stay home and do all the work) so one of the men will dress as a woman to represent
them.
They dress us up and then it is off to the fields to do some real work. They operate very much as a community with reciprocity (I work for you, you work for me) being fundamental. We cut some grass for the cows with a sickle and then afterward a hard 5 minutes work we head home for lunch - soup followed by chicken, broccoli, sweet potatoes and a taste of guinea pig. I had a small piece of thigh, a bit like chicken crossed with lamb. Quite tasty!
After lunch a demo of natural dyeing, spinning and weaving which of course is right up my alley and Linda and I recall the brews Mum used to cook up. Then the market opens and it is really hard to work out what to buy. There are about 10 ladies there with their goodies -hats, gloves, shawls, dolls, you name it. I buy a couple of bitstream and then they take us by the hand and we dance back to the bus again.
We descend into the Sacred Valley and start to be overwhelmed by the towering steep mountains - especially knowing we will start walking up
some of them tomorrow. Ollantaytambo is quite cold but a busy place with lots of trekkers wandering around. It reminds me of Kathmandu - the place, not the store. We explore and one of the other couple points us up a side street to a little alley where there is a market and a house full of guinea pigs around a cooking fire. On the wall there is a shelf with flowers and a coupe of human skulls. There are also things that looked like dried llama foetuses-all part of the mix of the old and ‘new’ religions.
Dinner is at another traditional restaurant and we are serenaded by a man playing the flute and guitar.
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