This past weekend I went on a 3 day trip to my first truly Andean rural village. I left Cusco taking a bus 2 hours to the city of Ollantaytambo (the last city I would see on the trip). There I met a friend who took me another hour and a half by car (about an hour past the middle of nowhere). Here, we left our car and began the 2 hour trek to the village of Challocoacha. The village has about 25 families living within its borders, is at an altitude of nearly 15,000 feet, has no internet, no electricity, and has had running water for only the past year thanks to the help of a volunteer organization. It's a place where sheep, llamas, and alpacas roam freely is in a long flat valley reminding me of old Oregon Trail movies, and has snow capped peaks visible in the distance.
All of this beauty made up for the frigidly cold water, my alpaca hide bed, and the food.
My bed
At first I enjoyed the local cuisine, if you can call it that, potatoes. The problem was that's just about all I ate for 3 days straight. Perú is home to about 4000 potato varieties of which I feel I am familiar with about 2500 after this past weekend. Being at 15,000 feet, just about the only thing that grows in the area is the potato and sadly is one of the few things the malnourished villagers eat. I really felt like I was in a Forest Gump movie eating not shrimp, but fried potatoes, boiled potatoes, potato soup, potato salad...the list goes on.
I went to this village with a friend of mine who has a volunteer organization here in Peru. The main purpose of the visit was to improve the quality and publicize the weaved textiles of the village in hopes the villagers will be able to sell more of their products as this village will soon become a part of the Inca trail hike to Machu Picchu. We brought along with us a weaving teacher while I was working taking pictures and on the publicity end of the project.
Weaving a hand bag
Striking a pose
In addition to this, I also had the opportunity to teach English to the children of the village, something I didn't know I was going to do until about 20 minutes before I was alone in a classroom with about 15 Quechua and Spanish speaking 6-12 year olds. That being said, I think my first lesson went pretty well and I was well received by the kids. If any of you reading this ever get the chance to visit I think you should receive a warm "Wecom to Challcoacha" from the kids in the village.
Teaching
The trip was a very interesting chance to see firsthand how people lived thousands of years ago. I must say, however, that I do enjoy some of the comforts we enjoy today in the states such as light, and heat. There are more enjoyable things than sleeping on an alpaca hide in 2 pairs of pants, a sweatshirt, jacket, with fury alpaca socks in a sleeping bag!
Until next time, keep livin' the dream!
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