On route, we make a brief stop for a bird’s eye view of Cusco. Then it’s onwards to the Ccaccaccollo Community and Planeterra-Sponsored Women's Weaving Co-op.
The Ccaccaccollo Community was developed by G Adventure and the Planeterra Foundation in 2005 with donations from G Adventures travellers. The women of the community use traditional techniques to create garments and souveniors made of alpaca and llama. Each item that is made and sold here has the name of the woman who made it and if she happens to be around, you can even take a photo with the person who actually made your garment.
We start by feeding a few alpacas and then settle in for a presentation, which is mostly translated by our G Adventures guide, Leo. First, before any of the wool can be used, it has to be cleaned. This is done by grating the root of a plant (which name eludes me) in a bowl of hot water. Almost like magic, the water turns cloudy and suds. I am personally still a little doubtful until she drops in a small amount of alpaca wool and it comes out clean. Leo says that the locals also use the root as a shampoo and soap and it is the main reason why they do not have any grey hairs – and looking around, he could just be right. Where can I buy a bottle of that?!
Then it is on to colouring the wool. They use naturally occurring pigments (from plants and insects) to create various colours. From one main plant (the name of which I have forgotten), a basic dark red can be created. Mixing it with other plant extracts creates lighter shades of red, pink and even orange. She then quickly demos the actual dying of some wool into a bright red. For the colour to be permanent, it needs to “cook” for an hour. After the wool is coloured, it can then be dried and woven. After the demonstrations, we take a look around the shop and pick up some souveniors before jumping back onto the bus to head to our next stop – the Pisac Ruins.
The Pisac Ruins is our first real taste of an Incan Village. It sits on a hilltop and when we arrive, the road leading up to it is crawling with tour buses parked on both sides, so much so that we get off the bus and walk part of the way to the ruins. Leo takes us through the site, pointing out several interesting aspects – firstly of course the terraced agricultural steps, which are significantly larger than we expected. From images, one would image them as rice terraces seen throughout Asia. However, each of the Incan terraces are significantly taller at approximately 2 – 2.5m high. Back in the day, of course, there was no way to refrigerate food and the seasons over the years could change or natural disasters such as floods and droughts could hit at any moment. So most of the foods such as grains and potatoes were dehydrated and stored in special warehouses. The warehouses were large buildings build in a spot which would receive minimal direct sun and a lot of breeze. This means of dehydration and storage allowed food to be kept for 7 years. Leo also pointed out a pocketed cliff, which once contained hundreds of Inca tombs. The tombs have since been looted but the Incans were usually buried in the foetal position, together with some of their belongings to help them find their way when they were reincarnated into the next life.
Look closely at the picture of the right to see the holes in the side of the mountain that were used a burial grounds.
After some time to explore on our own, it was finally time to fill the team’s empty bellies with some local cuisine. Our lunch stop is the Parwa Community Restaurant in the Sacred Valley. The restaurant was kick started by G Adventures, along with the Planeterra Foundation and the Multilateral Investment Fund. The resident-run restaurant contributes to sustainable tourism in Huchuy Qosqo, a small village of 65 families in the Sacred Valley. According to G Adventures, Parwa has become a successful farm-to-table program that boosts the local economy and several spin-off microenterprises.
After lunch, it is time for siesta as our driver takes us to our hotel in Ollantaytambo – the Inka Paradise. There is only time to drop off our bags and for a quick toilet break before we are taken on a guided tour of the Ollantaytambo Ruins.
The ruins are only a short walk from the city centre and still features the famous agricultural terraces, a Temple Hill, and storehouses. One of the most amazing things is how far away the warehouses are from the agricultural terraces, but obviously it was very important to have the grains and others crop stored in a spot which was dry and breezy. Climbing up the steps of the ruins to the temple was challenging as the air thinned with Ollantaytambo sitting at 2,792 m or 9,160 ft above sea level, just a little lower than Cusco which sat at 3,399 m or 11,151 ft.
Warehouses for storing grains and the like were located quite far from the agricultural terraces. In these photos, we are standing on the terraces with the warehouses pictured on the mountain face directly opposite us.
Finishing up our visit to the ruins, it was time for dinner at a local restaurant before we will need to rise bright and early to start day 1 of our 4 day Inca Trail trek.
your 1st paragraph is repeated
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