The Big Adventure

This trip focused around two main features.  One was the Panama Canal, the other Machu Picchu.  However, as we’ve spent these last few days here in Peru, we began to think that maybe Machu Picchu wasn’t going to be a focus after all.  We’ve so enjoyed being here that in some ways, we’d rather pushed MP out of our minds.  But, plans were set, tickets had been bought and complex luggage arrangements made, as you’ve just read.  So, at 7.30am this morning, Marco and Adriana arrived and we set off to Ollantaytambo, a main station for the Machu Picchu train.  Since a landslide a couple of years ago, the train no longer goes through to Cuzco, but terminates at Urubamba.

It was a beautiful morning as we drove up through the valley.  We’d not heard the same rain last night as we’ve heard since we’ve been here, so we were keeping everything crossed that it was going to stay fine.

In Ollantaytambo, two porters for the Inca Trail sat waiting for some passing business.  The Inca Trail per se is closed during February, but there are still long trails to follow and more local hikers enjoy coming at this quieter time of the year.

The station was pretty busy and it seemed like the 8.30am train was a popular choice.

More interesting things lining the pathway, more temptation to resist.

We were arriving at the same time as some of the town’s ladies, too.  They are allowed to sell on the station by paying a commission, Adriana told us.

So, whilst they went to sort it out, they left their packs on the platform.

Rather more colourful left luggage that the usual European style, don’t you think?

The platform itself was slightly chaotic.  People taking selfies, groups assembling for photos and people with six cameras on their arm, taking them for several members of the group.  The ladies selling the brightly coloured bags, the mosquito repellent and the plastic ponchos mingled in the crowd, doing quite a good trade with the youngsters in particular.

I loved the hats!

A shout and a whistle signalled for everyone to stand aside and the smart blue train arrived.

We had tickets for the PeruRail Vistadome and had seat allocations for coach A.

Inside, it was very smart – and full!  Those high windows enabled us to see the mountains around us and the seats were very comfortable and clean, too.

We sat at a table set with a cloth and cutlery and Adriana found herself sitting next to another guide, university friend and colleague so we were a jolly bunch of four.

Shortly after leaving Ollantaytambo, the two train crew came through with a trolley, handing out breakfast trays.

A plate with melon, a slice of prickly pear cactus fruit, some quinoa pancakes at this stage, with some elderberry sauce  and a slice of cheese and swiss chard pastry brought shortly after I took the photo.

And Arnie, the train manager and another university friend of Adriana’s came to shake hands and check all was well with us.  What attention we were receiving!

Having collected the breakfast things, the pair changed into souvenir mode and brought their trolley along once again, trying to sell us PeruRail caps, waistcoast, alpaca scarves, playing cards, T shirts…you name it.  We giggled with the young woman who was doing her best to tempt us to spend some money – in vain, I’m afraid.

Arriving at Agua Calientes station,  there was a warm welcome awaiting us.  Four members of staff from the hotel where we will stay were there to collect our hand baggage so that we could go straight on up to Machu Picchu and make the most of our time here.

So, our two carry on bags went off on a journey of their own too – the logistics challenge continues!

We made our way through another colourful market

to the bus stop for Machu Picchu.  Those small green buses take people up to the ruins on a regular schedule – as soon as the bus is full, they leave!

In no time at all, ours was filled and off we went.

I’ll share what happened next in the following post.

Logistics

It's the big one today. We are sitting waiting for Adriana and Marco to arrive, ready to drive up the valley to Ollantaytambo station, from where we'll catch the train to Agua Calientes, for Machu Picchu. Meanwhile, our suitcases are going on an adventure of their own. Two of our suitcase have been continuing the fun at the Hotel B in Lima. Now, the other two are going to return with Marco to Cusco today, whilst we manage with hand bags and hopefully, on Saturday, we'll have a big reunion when all will magically come together.

Of course they will. :-o

Another nice hat!

Well, he really wanted to show me how he carved into this enormous gourd, but I’m afraid I was more interested in his beautifully knitted hat!

We worked our way down this street, stopping and chatting, making one or two small purchase but mostly, just soaking up the atmosphere.

Before we knew it, we were in a wide open plaza in front of the church where a few women were setting out their goods for sale and others simply sat and chatted.  No-one “just” sat though, because everyone had in their hands a needle and thread, a small piece of braiding, crochet, spinning or knitting.

All around were little vignettes of life here in Chinchero.  These people were only going about their daily business in the same way as always, but to us it was incredibly picturesque.

Making our way over to the church, we passed several of the ladies with their blue tarpaulins and of course, we couldn’t resist looking at what they had to offer.  My hero pointed out a pink and green bag he thought I’d like.

I did…I do, and I’ll enjoy using it!

So many beautiful things out there in the natural light, where they looked simply stunning.

For once though, my eye was drawn away from the textiles.  Here was another “mamatia” as Adriana called them, a lady sitting spinning at the foot of what looked remarkably like an English war memorial (but I don’t think it was anything of the kind!)

Would she mind if I took her picture?  Not at all!

But then, out of the blue came someone else and sat down beside her.  There’s cheeky!

Hello – or rather, Hola, I said and pointed to my camera.  A nod and a pose followed.

She too was carrying a heavy pack and began to open it up, maybe to find her lunch.  Adriana asked her age and after a great deal of thought, she said 80.  But she was none too sure.

She grinned as we talked about her – how much did she understand?  We admired her shawl however, her fine hat and talked about the weight of her backpack.

The other lade continued with her work, not at all worried about being upstaged.

Our final stop was the church.  This one is a hybrid of Catholic and Quescha and inside there are signs of both.  Adriana told us it was where she loved to come on a Sunday with her family, when the only sitting room would be on the floor and that the local people would be dressed in their Sunday best to sing and pray with huge enthusiasm.

We were happy to stand and stare; at the beautifully decorated interior with not one square inch left unadorned, at the inca earthworks on all of the hills around us and yes, of course, at the two old ducks still sitting there.

But it was time to leave this peaceful place and make our way back to Urubamba.

We walked back to the car passing more of these weavers and lovng the huge baskets of flowers everywhere.

We ducked under a branch of Peru’s national flower, the name of which I’ve forgotten, sorry!

and stopped to buy some sweets from this gentleman in the street, who was busy with a bit of fingerbraiding.

Look who was waiting by our car!

We greeted her politely and asked how she was.  Not so bad, she said, but she was having trouble with her eyes and so found it difficult to see things

 

She didn’t know how old she was.

But needless to say her bundle was there beside her on the pavement,

We drove back through this large flat upland landscape where, believe it or not, an international airport is proposed.  All around us are traces of the incas, their terraced hillsides and agave  lined trails, still visible and in regular use.

It might bring prosperity to a few local farmers, may well make getting to Machu Picchu rather easier, but at what cost?

We drove on through potato fields and expansive countryside for a while before we recognised a couple of now familiar features in the landscape.

The horizontal line over on the far hillside, which is an inca waterway – one of those channels directing water from the top of the hill to a place of habitation.

And then the viewpoint over Urubamba, where we stopped to take a few pictures.

What a day!   And how pleased we are to bring home a piece of work created by those ladies, with the braided edge.  We’ll find somewhere to hang it at home and each time we see it, we’ll think of the women of Chinchero and their incredible textile skills.

We love this place, these people

We set off this morning to drive to the nearby town of Chinchero.  Adriana had told us that this town specialised in weaving and having seen my reaction to the lady braiding the other day, she said she thought it’d be right up my street.

How right she was!

Marco dropped us off in the middle of the town and Adriana bought our tickets.  The weaving workshops are run as a cooperative and are controlled from a central point.  As we waited for the business to be completed, a chap was coming down the path.  I won’t point out the central water channel again because you know all about that now, don’t you?

Quietly, Adriana explained that these people don’t shower every day, that their clothes are the same ones they wore yesterday, last week, maybe last month.  But if we looked into his face, we’d see his story.  Not only that, he’d be happy to have his photograph taken if we gave him 1 sol – about 20p – because that would buy his lunch.

He shook hands, asked where we were from and wished us happy days in Peru.  His feet were muddy, his hands similarly dirty and he had a heavy pack on his back.  But he was polite – charming, even, and he went on his way with a wave.

He was the first of several new friends we met this morning.

We turned up a side street and there in the courtyard of the first house sat a lady, weaving.  Dressed traditionally, she hardly looked up from her work and seeing me peering inside, Adriana suggested we go further up the street where there would be more to see.  We had only just begun!

In the next yard sat an old lady – 87, she claimed – weaving a narrow band in a similar way to the woman in the market yesterday.    She told us – via Adriana – that she had poor eyesight, but that she still enjoyed weaving and could manage.

She managed the pattern by picking up the warp threads by hand, before threading the weft through with her fingers.  This was slow work indeed.  The pattern is the puma claw design, she told me.

Her daughter – aged 50 – was plying some baby alpaca yarn opposite and she chatted with Adriana as I took photographs.  Delightful, friendly people.

We were getting braver now, poking our heads into any open door and hoping for something interesting.  This one proved particularly worthwhile, don’t you think?

The goods laid out on tables all around the courtyard were colourful and enticing…

There was another corner, where we were invited to come, sit, watch.

But I’d spotted one of those back packs carried by the women here, which she’d just tied up with goods for the market.  I tentatively went to pick it up.

I could hardly lift it.  It weighed easily as much as my suitcase, possibly more – ie 25kg.

She picked it up easily and swung it over her shoulder and off she went.

Meanwhile, a group of cruise passengers came into the workshop and we suddenly felt a little outnumbered!  With all of these people around, there was no way we could chat to the weavers, nor did we feel able to have a good look around.  We decided to leave them all to it and move on to the next workshop.

We were glad we did, for just a few doors down, this lady was working on something rather complex.  She was braiding the edging for a handwoven blanket, creating the pattern in her fingers and attaching it to the edge of the blanket as she went along.  She’d completed about three quarters of the edge and reckoned she’d need another two or three days to complete it.

Her work was beautiful and the skill with which she did all of these processes together was remarkable.

We stepped inside the yard of her workshop and were invited to sit in the “VIP seats”!

That was near the guinea pigs!

Alfonso gave us a demonstration of how the alpaca wool was processed here.  First, he grated some saqtana root into a bowl of hot water and washed the fleece in the soapy bubbles.  This root has been used for centuries for scouring the fleeces before spinning.

As he demonstrated each step, the two ladies working to his left hand side commented, corrected or made fun – who knows?  But there was a jolly atmosphere and for this short time, we were all part of the family!

He then explained the different natural dyes available to them.  Firstly, purple could be obtained from the purple corn husks and depending on the time it was left steeping, a range of shades could be achieved.

He had some yellow yarn dyed with these flowers – I’m not sure what they were.

There were other baskets of a whole rainbow of colours but the most used dyestuff here is cochineal which comes in dried form.  Here, Alfonso blended some in his hand and added a drop of lemon juice to half of it, to show that other colours could be obtained.

At this point, someone stepped forward and giggled as she explained, it also made natural lipstick – “good for 200 kisses”, she claimed!

Alfonso quickly got on with the dyeing sample!

The weaving going on around us was becoming too much of a distraction to keep watching him though, so we left him to clear up his pots and pans and went over to chat with the other ladies.

This woman was weaving a table runner or wall hanging, from alpaca yarn.  Using only naturally dyed threads, she was creating the design without reference to any pattern or chart.  After each couple of weaves, she’d use a sheep’s horn to beat down the weft, creating a tightly woven and very dense fabric.

Then, she pulled on the heddle and showed how she was weaving a reversible fabric.  Beautiful.

The woman opposite was weaving one of those narrow braids as we’d seen being sewn onto the edge of a piece of weaving earlier.

She was proud of her hair and was glad to have my attention.

They were all wearing hats such as those we saw yesterday and they all confirmed that yes, they do keep their money in their hat!

Of course, we couldn’t resist buying a couple of bits after such a super show although we left this heavily beaded man’s cap on the stand.

We accepted their invitation to use their loo and stepped over a few household objects as we went.

What a great place to visit!

 

When we left the workshop, the lady who’d been sitting on the step, making and attaching the braid was buying her lunch from a woman selling cooked potatoes, boiled eggs and mayonnaise.  She smiled as I asked if I may take her picture and said to Adriana that though she had only one hand, she was proud to be able to make a living just like everyone else.  I hadn’t even noticed her hand but loved the idea of having a fresh lunch brought round each day, served in a plastic bag for just 1 sol 50.

I think I’d better stop at this point and create a second post once again, or else you’ll be sitting here all day waiting for all those photographs to download.  I’ll be back with the gourd carver in the next post.

More colour this afternoon, too

Oh, I nearly forgot.  As we were leaving the thatched house in Ollantaytambo, I noticed the worn down stone by the door. 

It’s the family mortar, worn down by years and years of grinding sauces, corn, herbs and and whatever else needed work.  Such small personal details are magic, aren’t they?

Anyway, we were off once again and those who’d listened to Terry Breen’s talk about her connections in Urubamba will recognise the red plastic bag outside this house as a sign that there’s chicha available.

A nice street scene through the windscreen, showing the two most popular means of local transport here, too.

We drove through several villages and small towns on the way, including Calca  , but we were heading for the market town of Pisac where we were hoping to see some better quality things for sale than this morning in Ollantaytambo.

Well, the first stall was interesting but was still a little hokey for our liking.  Funny how, some things look authentic at first glance whilst others simply don’t fit the scene.  Those dolls at the back, for example.  Made in China perhaps.

Aha!  Now we’re talking.  Hand knitted hats dyed with natural dyes.  Clearly very different from the fluorescent things we’d seen earlier and close inspection revealed all the tell tale signs of a genuinely hand knit article.  Not quite the thing to wear in a Cotswold village perhaps, but we knew someone who might enjoy wearing one of them, that’s for sure.

A little further along were chess sets and ludo boards, featuring Andean animals, Incas and Conquistadors.  Nicely made, we thought.

It was funny how shopkeepers would listen for words and phrases and then pop out with the item we’d just mentioned.  I was chatting to Adriana about braids and quipu and a chap held one out for me to see.  An antique example, this was the real deal and the price reflected that, so we didn’t buy, but it was so interesting to see and handle one at close quarters (I didn’t like to photograph something we had no intention of buying, sorry)  Whilst he had a captive audience, he brought out a couple of antique bags which the chasqui would have carried, and then a slingshot and a lump of haematite.  Such treasures, so interesting to look at, to handle and to learn about but ultimately, best left in their home environment rather than being taken across the globe to put on a shelf!

As we stepped outside, though, my heart skipped a beat.

This woman was weaving a narrow braid with the warp tied to a door knob.  She’d separated the warp threads into bundles, working the pattern by lifting these small bundles in sequence, which had the same effect as tablet weaving.

Oh, and you did notice her elaborately embroidered skirt, didn’t you?

When I showed genuine interest in her work she put it down and showed me one or two other pieces, explaining via Adriana that it took her almost a week to work a length of braid.  She had one unfinished length which was very tempting to buy, especially since it still had the bundles in place.  But it was really too long to be of practical use, so I settled on another piece.  Bearing in mind the time it takes her to work such a piece, her price of 20 soles was very reasonable indeed and having done the deal, she smiled and was happy to pose for a photograph.

Especially when I spotted where she kept her needles!

So, I have a lovely piece of her work to use as a hat band and was delighted with my treasure.

As we walked back to the car, we noted the modern equivalent of the Inca water supply.

Our next – and final – stop was lunch.  a little late, but we didn’t mind at all.  We were going to another Hacienda and just knew the food was going to be good.  We are getting to grips with Peruvian cuisine now!

The hacienda was very special indeed and had wonderful collections of art.  Those interested might like to investigate the Cuzco School in order to prepare for a wider investigation later this week.  For now though, we were hungry!

I’m sorry, I forgot to take a photo until I’d already started our causa, which you recognised immediately from our cooking lesson, didn’t you?  Next came a corn soup, blended with herbs to give it a really authentic flavour, then a plate of grilled pork and mashed potato and finally a chirimoya (custard apple) meringue for me and a lucumas mousse for my hero.  Delicious, but oh my, were we stuffed!

So, no dinner for us tonight, but instead, a few hours reading, catching up here and waiting for the hot water bottle man!  He’s just been, so it’s goodnight from me and goodnight from him.

Tomorrow, it’s the market at Chinchero and a visit to the weavers there.  Coming with us?