We No Speak Americano ( Yolanda Be Cool )

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  Sacred Valley, Peru
Sunday, September 19, 2010

The worst thing about traveling is the traveling, It took 22 hours door to door from our San Fransisco hotel to our new home. Our epic journey involved a bumpy 10 hour flight, a 4 hour wait in Lima airport (thank god for pizza and wifi), a regional flight to Cusco and a long taxi ride to the sacred valley where the driver chatted feverishly to me and I replied 'Si' whenever it felt right to do so. Whoever said "its not about the destination its about the journey" was quite spectacularly wrong.

Our first stop in Peru was Huran, a little village in the sacred valley which oozes tradition and is both literally and figuratively off the beaten path. The women of Huran dress in traditional Peruvian garb, 2 thick black plaits, study hats and multi-coloured slings holding a variety of goods or their offspring. The local shop is a shack, street dogs roam the worn-road through the village along with the occasional flock of chicken.

The guest house we stayed in, 'the green house', can only be described as a little slice of paradise, nestled into the Andes there is nothing around except mountains, farm land and the most beautiful garden stacked with vivid coloured flowers, humming birds and butterflies. The owners Bryan and Gabriell and their 3 gorgeous dogs were ridiculously welcoming, we ate the most scrumptious 3 course meals cooked by Gabriell each night and found hot water bottles tucked into our sheets when we went tobed. The green house is 'flash packing' at it's finest.

We used local buses to travel to near by villages, and before I go on, its worth getting the whole transportation stories out the way. Bizarrely enough you can travel half way around the world pursuing nature's wonders and some of your lasting memories are of public transport. The buses are unfeasibly busy, the amount of people you can get on a Peruvian bus or combi is incomprehensible, bodies are crushed up against each other and practically hanging out the door. The other issue is knowing where to get off and despite our Spanish lessons we found this rather challenging, the most successful yet somewhat annoying solution was to say to the driver 'aqui?' (here?) after every stop. On the one occasion we did get off in the wrong place (after momentary flapping) we found some helpful road workers who not only gave us directions but also took it in turn to shake us by the hand as they had not met anyone British before.

Both of the towns we visited Pisac and Urabamba were gloriously Peruvian. In Pisac we wandered around some Inca ruins and Ian ate a huge roast llama sandwich in the town square. In Urutambo we walked round a food market full of rancid smelling meet all still complete with heads and hoofs, and amongst all the brightly coloured vegetables watched women and children shell peas. We had a coffee in a little restaurant which to my delight contained 3 1-week old kittens and their mother. I unfortunately mixed my tenses, my attempt to say "I like kittens" translated into "I would like a kitten" - and I had to persuade the owner than 10 soles is a good price, but really there isn't enough room in my backpack.

Anyhow, onwards and upwards ( quite literally - we are going up to Cusco which stands at 3,200m)

Hope you are all behaving yourselves?

Sx

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The Green House Garden	Pisac Ruins	Pisac Ruins, Ian & Sarah	Pisac Town
The Lama Cafe Wall	Urabamba	Urabamba Food Market	El Cata
Humming Bird at the Green House	My new favourite place to sleep (Ian)

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