After breakfast with our families in Lucre and Huacarpay we headed through the Andean mountains for three stops on our way winding towards Machu Picchu:
Chinchero: Although the remains of an ancient Incan temple and terraces are here, the main draw for us was a textile workshop where the local Quechua women demonstrate centuries-old natural techniques for cleaning, dyeing and weaving alpaca wool and other fibers.
Moray: A series of depressions with concentric circular terraces dot the landscape here. What’s this all about?
Salineras: The Incas had more than 1,000 small ponds for harvesting salt here, and they are still in use.
At the end of the day we settled into our hostel in Ollantaytambo, the second most important city of the Incan empire, after Cusco. Apparently, our reputation preceded us. After supper, in the town square, we spied a volleyball game in progress. Maria asked if those on the court wanted to play Las Poderosas Hojas de Acer, and they readily agreed.
The blog postings will take a short break again as Maria and Doug begin service visits outside of Lima. The posts will resume later with the rest of the trip to Machu Picchu before starting blog entries from the service visits.
3 tea drinkers enjoy breakfast with their host family.Amaru hopped on the bus to entertain us with more music.Girls begin at age 5 learning how to make textiles.A local tuber, ground in water, provides a natural soap for cleaning wool before dyeing.The sources of natural dyes.The red dye from the cochineal beetle is altered with lemon juice.Weaving on a traditional Andean loom.The lady promised a prize to the guy(s) who correctly guessed the second dye color. When Mark and Tyler won, she announced the prize was …… 1,000 kisses from her. This was Tyler’s reaction.Everyone had a good laugh.Prize winner #1, and …… prize winner #2.They also had a wide selection of textiles for sale.Another soccer star making a bold, exotic fashion statement.This was a good place to find authentic alpaca textiles.Tanner, a lifeguard, settled for an alpaca poncho when he found they were out of alpaca Speedos.Jordyn made many friends with a dozen guinea pigs at the home.Lunch started with Andean potato soap or corn soup.Terraces at the Incan temple in Chinchero.Isaac demonstrates the authentic Latin method for proposing marriage, at Incan ruins, in Quechua. Well, maybe not in Quechua.Did someone say free Casino cookies?Gabby and Katie were the only two students who walked all the way to the valley floor below and back …… meriting a well-deserved “alto cinco.”The enigmatic circular terraces of Moray.Students had an hour to explore Moray and propose how the depressions were formed and what the purpose of the terraces was.The mountains in the distance rise to 18,000 feet.They concluded these circles were for an ampitheater. Were they right?Cover photo for new album from Von Cuy Family Singers: “The Sound of Huayno.”I didn’t have the heart to tell them, until after the photo shoot, that the plant with yellow flowers is Andean poison ivy. [Not really.]In the background, yet more circular terraces the students found.Answers: The depressions were formed by sinkholes. The Incas built the terraces for a crop laboratory because the temperatures vary significantly from the highest to the lowest terraces.Indigenous groups built the first salt flats here more than 600 years ago, even before the Incas.The channel in the middle, from a high salinity hot spring, feeds all the salt flats … all 5,740 of them.Apparently not a pacifist, Mark is shooting back.Our volleyball match in the main square of Ollantaytambo.The guys did make room for the women to join (but the fotographer had gone to bed).
