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