After returning from the Sacred Valley we planned on spending only a couple of more days back at SSCY. However, upon arriving there we discovered that there were lots of volunteers there (8 including us) and plans for Christmas were being made. Despite our original decision to be in either Puno or Arequipa for Christmas because we were ready to move on, after having spent about 2 months in the Cusco area, we eventually chose to stay at SSCY for the holiday. What a great decision we made!
The first week back at SSCY we did a lot of building of a wall for newly acquired goats as well as a green house for some tomatoes. Working with Christian and Marisol, the leaders of the project, as well as so many other volunteers was a nice change from the weeks before we had left for the Sacred Valley. We also got along well with the other volunteers and it was wonderful to finally make some friends!
Our second week at SSCY was similar to the first in the beginning of the week. However, Friday was a very different day as it was the children´s last day before their vacation. The children arrived early at the finca and then we all took a bus to a local hostel, where the children received gifts, hot cocoa (the Peruvian version is great!), and Paneton, which is a typical Christmas bread/cake. After a chaotic few hours at the hostel we all returned to the finca and had a Christmas party. Marta, the Peruvian lady who cooks lunch for everyone at the finca, made wonderful holiday food, including some meat-like gluten (similar to seitan, but not quite the same). The children also got more hot cocoa and Paneton...they were pretty wired. Although Friday was rather exhausting, it was great to have the holiday party with the children.
On Saturday the volunteers decided to go to an Indian all you can eat buffet in Cusco for lunch, which was fantastic. After lunch, Kyle and I wandered around the main plaza, which was absolutely packed with people and vendors. People were selling all sorts of gift type items, chocolate, Paneton, candles, religious items, and much more. We didn´t spend too long there, but it was really interesting to see. After all of the volunteers returned to the finca we headed back to Cusco for dinner at Christian and Marisol´s place. We had a lovely Christmas Eve dinner and drank lots of glüwine (an Austrian hot wine drink with spices and orange juice....two volunteers were Austrian, as well as Christian). It was really nice to be in a warm house and be able to hang out with Christian and Marisol in a non-work setting. We stayed at their place until the early morning and then got to bargain with a taxi to take us back to the finca, which took awhile!
On Christmas morning (actually, more like afternoon) all of the volunteers made brunch together and had more hot cocoa. After that we lazed around and watched a movie until we decided it was time to make dinner. Essentially, we just cooked and ate on Christmas, it was great. :)
On Tuesday Kyle and I, as well as another volunteer, Steph, headed off the Puno. We spent a day in Puno wandering around and walking along Lake Titikaka. The next day, Steph headed off the Bolivia and Kyle and I took a tour of Lake Titikaka. On our tour we first went to two of the Uros Islands, which are floating reed islands. Apparently, they were originally built centuries ago so that the Uros people would stop being invaded. The islands were really amazing and absolutely everything, including their houses and boats, were built from reeds. A local man gave us a demonstration on how they build the islands, which take about 1 year to build. After visiting these islands we took about a 2 hour boat ride to Taquile Island, which is a large island inhabiting about 2000 people. The island was very beautiful, but we didn´t enjoy visiting this one as much because everything seemed much more touristy than on the Uros Islands. When we first got there some locals demonstrated dancing for us, and then we walked to the main square. At the main square all of the little girls were trying to sell us bracelets, going so far as to tie one on Kyle´s wrist and declare that it´s 1 sol. Also, I was taking a picture of Kyle and a local boy jumped in the picture and then was saying to Kyle in Spanish "tip". We gave him some change and he seemed thoroughly displeased that we didn´t give him enough. Despite our frustrations with the blatant desire to take our money, the island was very pretty and was nice to walk through.
In a few hours we will be taking a bus to Arequipa, where we will spend a couple of days exploring the city. About 3 hours from Arequipa is Colca Canyon, which we´ve heard is pretty amazing, so we plan to spend about 5 days trekking in the canyon. Once we´re done with our trek we will return to Arequipa for a day or two and then likely go on to Chile. We may spend a bit in the Atacama Desert, depending how much we like it, and they probably begin WWOOFing at a place near the coast. Yesterday we also contacted a number of other WWOOF sites in Chile, so hopefully we´ll get some other cool volunteer opportunities lined up.
Peace and love,
Megan y Kyle
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Monday, December 12, 2011
Our time at SSCY, trekking through the Sacred Valley, and Machu Picchu
Well it has been a while since we´ve been able to get cheap, reliable internet so there´s quite a bit to catch up on.
Our time volunteering at Sembrando Semillas Con Yoga ended up being a wonderful and very memorable experience for sure. At a certain point, both of us were actually quite fed up with the place as nearly a week went by without us hearing anything from the people who run the organization. We had basically inherieted the place and had to figure out what to do with 30 kids with no attention spans everyday. As it turned out, the organizers had in incredible string of bad car luck: one day they got in an accident, another day the electrical failed, their gas got syphoned, the car was broken into, ït was really quite incredible. So when we hadn´t seen them for a week and had no idea why, we were quite annoyed, but once their car was in working order and they made their way back out to the finca, they explained what happened and we felt a lot better about the place.
The best part for sure was our last couple of days there. SSCY had recently acquired some land in the Sacred Valley which we could use to grow food and move the project toward full sustainability. The land was a gift from a kind man who had owned it for years but done nothing with it. So on Friday afternoon we piled our camping gear and ourselves into a green 1970s VW bus and set out for the Sacred Valley. Now this was our first time seeing the valley and it was incredible. The plot of land that SSCY inheirited was a little piece of paradise. For five hours we worked the land, breaking up the soil, getting it ready for planting. The weather was beautiful, there were fruit trees all around, hundreds of parrots flew about, paradise.
All of this got us really excited for our adventures in the Sacred Valley. The trek we decided on doing began in the town of Lares, some miles north of the valley, and ended with a decent into the city of Urubamba in the valley itself. We took five days to do the trek, which the Peruvians said would take two or three. We don´t think they accounted for us gringos being unacclimated with the altitude. The high point on our trip was a mountain pass about 16,000 feet above sea level. A most beautiful place to eat lunch, but the hiking is slow with 40 pounds on your back. What surprised us on this trip was how different Peru could look from what you might expect. There were times when we could have been in Ireland. Stone cottages surrounded by rock walls, goats and sheep roaming around, and everything was so green.
The journey didn´t take us so much into the wilderness as it did into remote Quechua communities. On our first night, before we had travelled too far into the backcountry, we came across a woman who spoke no Spanish. We were looking for a place to camp and asked her in Spanish where we might do so. She seemed rather strange so our first thought was that she might be crazy. We had no idea what Quechua sounded like either so when she spoke to us, we still figured she was crazy. Kyle, inspired by a scene in La Valle, was convinced that language was unnecessary for communication and regressed into hand signals. This did not work and probably made the lady think Kyle was crazy.
The next day we made it farther in and ended up camping in the town of Cuncani. Here almost nobody spoke any Spanish, only two men that we met. None of the women in these communities, it seems, speak any Spanish but some of the men do. Again we needed a place to camp for the night so in lieu of a Quechua phrase book (we have since purchased one) Kyle gave the hand signals another go and... Success! Flat piece of ground acquired, all language is superfluous. Admittedly we have since begun to try and learn some Quechua. While we were quite aware that Quechua is alive and well as a language (with 10 million speakers it is the most widely spoken indigenous language in the Americas), we had NO idea how close by we were to people who spoke nothing else. Speaking Quechua at home sure, but not being able to speak Spanish? We think we were less than 30 miles from Cuzco. In Peru, it seems, you do not have to travel very far to get out there.
Now last, but certainly not least, we must tell you about Machu Picchu. In order to get to Machu Picchu Village (Aguas Calientes) you can either take a super expensive train from Ollantaytambo or save some money by going around the backside via a somewhat complicated string of combis and buses. Of course if you´re really cheap (like us) you can just walk there on a foot path next to the train tracks for 17 miles. So that´s what we did. Now when you hear descriptions about Machu Picchu, you hear that it is right on the edge of the jungle. It is actually about 8 miles in and though that may not be very deep into the jungle for Peruvian standards, when you are walking there with heavy packs, its a lot. The jungle doesn´t start until about halfway there so the walk took us all day and we didn´t even make it into Aguas Calientes. Luckily, we met a generous man named Miguel and his brother who let us camp on their land and took us into Aguas Calientes the next day. Miguel showed us a good hospedaje to stay at and even bargained the price down for us from 80 soles a night to 50.
The next day we spent about 8 hours at Machu Picchu, marvelling at the construction and its beautiful location. Honestly, we were both expecting to be a bit dissapionted. With all we had seen and done so far we expected Machu Picchu to be a tourist trap pile of rocks. That ended up being a massive miscalculation as Machu Picchu was absolutely incredible. It is hard to put into words what it was like to be there and walk down roads that the Incan civilization had built. It will most definitely be a high point in our South American adventure. If you ever get the chance to go there, take it (but probably take the bus, like we did on the way back).
Hasta luego,
Kyle y Megan
Our time volunteering at Sembrando Semillas Con Yoga ended up being a wonderful and very memorable experience for sure. At a certain point, both of us were actually quite fed up with the place as nearly a week went by without us hearing anything from the people who run the organization. We had basically inherieted the place and had to figure out what to do with 30 kids with no attention spans everyday. As it turned out, the organizers had in incredible string of bad car luck: one day they got in an accident, another day the electrical failed, their gas got syphoned, the car was broken into, ït was really quite incredible. So when we hadn´t seen them for a week and had no idea why, we were quite annoyed, but once their car was in working order and they made their way back out to the finca, they explained what happened and we felt a lot better about the place.
The best part for sure was our last couple of days there. SSCY had recently acquired some land in the Sacred Valley which we could use to grow food and move the project toward full sustainability. The land was a gift from a kind man who had owned it for years but done nothing with it. So on Friday afternoon we piled our camping gear and ourselves into a green 1970s VW bus and set out for the Sacred Valley. Now this was our first time seeing the valley and it was incredible. The plot of land that SSCY inheirited was a little piece of paradise. For five hours we worked the land, breaking up the soil, getting it ready for planting. The weather was beautiful, there were fruit trees all around, hundreds of parrots flew about, paradise.
All of this got us really excited for our adventures in the Sacred Valley. The trek we decided on doing began in the town of Lares, some miles north of the valley, and ended with a decent into the city of Urubamba in the valley itself. We took five days to do the trek, which the Peruvians said would take two or three. We don´t think they accounted for us gringos being unacclimated with the altitude. The high point on our trip was a mountain pass about 16,000 feet above sea level. A most beautiful place to eat lunch, but the hiking is slow with 40 pounds on your back. What surprised us on this trip was how different Peru could look from what you might expect. There were times when we could have been in Ireland. Stone cottages surrounded by rock walls, goats and sheep roaming around, and everything was so green.
The journey didn´t take us so much into the wilderness as it did into remote Quechua communities. On our first night, before we had travelled too far into the backcountry, we came across a woman who spoke no Spanish. We were looking for a place to camp and asked her in Spanish where we might do so. She seemed rather strange so our first thought was that she might be crazy. We had no idea what Quechua sounded like either so when she spoke to us, we still figured she was crazy. Kyle, inspired by a scene in La Valle, was convinced that language was unnecessary for communication and regressed into hand signals. This did not work and probably made the lady think Kyle was crazy.
The next day we made it farther in and ended up camping in the town of Cuncani. Here almost nobody spoke any Spanish, only two men that we met. None of the women in these communities, it seems, speak any Spanish but some of the men do. Again we needed a place to camp for the night so in lieu of a Quechua phrase book (we have since purchased one) Kyle gave the hand signals another go and... Success! Flat piece of ground acquired, all language is superfluous. Admittedly we have since begun to try and learn some Quechua. While we were quite aware that Quechua is alive and well as a language (with 10 million speakers it is the most widely spoken indigenous language in the Americas), we had NO idea how close by we were to people who spoke nothing else. Speaking Quechua at home sure, but not being able to speak Spanish? We think we were less than 30 miles from Cuzco. In Peru, it seems, you do not have to travel very far to get out there.
Now last, but certainly not least, we must tell you about Machu Picchu. In order to get to Machu Picchu Village (Aguas Calientes) you can either take a super expensive train from Ollantaytambo or save some money by going around the backside via a somewhat complicated string of combis and buses. Of course if you´re really cheap (like us) you can just walk there on a foot path next to the train tracks for 17 miles. So that´s what we did. Now when you hear descriptions about Machu Picchu, you hear that it is right on the edge of the jungle. It is actually about 8 miles in and though that may not be very deep into the jungle for Peruvian standards, when you are walking there with heavy packs, its a lot. The jungle doesn´t start until about halfway there so the walk took us all day and we didn´t even make it into Aguas Calientes. Luckily, we met a generous man named Miguel and his brother who let us camp on their land and took us into Aguas Calientes the next day. Miguel showed us a good hospedaje to stay at and even bargained the price down for us from 80 soles a night to 50.
The next day we spent about 8 hours at Machu Picchu, marvelling at the construction and its beautiful location. Honestly, we were both expecting to be a bit dissapionted. With all we had seen and done so far we expected Machu Picchu to be a tourist trap pile of rocks. That ended up being a massive miscalculation as Machu Picchu was absolutely incredible. It is hard to put into words what it was like to be there and walk down roads that the Incan civilization had built. It will most definitely be a high point in our South American adventure. If you ever get the chance to go there, take it (but probably take the bus, like we did on the way back).
Hasta luego,
Kyle y Megan
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