Moo's Mid Life Crisis: Peru - Sacred Valley to Ollantaytambo

The starting point for the Inca Trail is not far from the village of Ollantaytambo. I think the village's major income source is now tourists going there, but the village itself is host to some impressive looking Incan ruins as well.

To get there we drove up the 'Sacred Valley', containing a river that the Inca treated as, well, sacred. When the river provides water for the crops and animals, you can understand why they might.

As part of the tour, we visited a couple of local, traditional crafting villages that the tour company we were with supports through the Planeterra foundation. By funding facilities for the village, and bringing a steady stream of tourists to see how everything is done and perhaps purchase some of the traditionally crafted goods, they help to maintain traditional ways of doing things. That's the heartfelt spiel we got from them anyway.

The road to the weaving village was being rebuilt, so all the ladies had come along past the roadworks and set up to show us their craft and wares beside the road. We saw how they use the cochineal mixed with different plant extracts to produce a whole variety of colours. I found it quite impressive that one base material can be quite that versatile.

Dried cochineal insects

ground cochineal

Variety of colours that can be produced

Doing the touristy thing we had to browse the woven wears available, and deciding I would actually quite like to have something I got this lovely blue alpaca blanket, being modeled by the lady who made it! It's kind of nice to have met the lady who made it.

I also fell in love with this hat and had to get it for Alexis, modeled here by the irrepressible Rod, our guide. He looked awfully cute in it.

Being me, I also made special friends with some of the locals. This gorgeous cutie had been dressed up to show off the traditional ware to the tourists, but no-one was actually paying any attention to her, so I did what mad Uncle Moo does and made friends. She seemed quite taken with me,

Speaking of new friends, the ladies had brought a number of llamas and alpacas with them, I guess partly just to carry the goods, and partly to let the tourists get up close and personal with them.

This is as close as Sylwia was willing to get.

I decided to play it cool...

...before showing my interest...

..then I made the first move...

...and it was love at first kiss...

The local ladies thought this was hilarious. I'm not sure if they were just waiting for my new girlfriend to bite or spit at me, of if it's just that most tourists don't get that close, but I do enjoy causing some mirth. And let me tell you, that yampaca had the softest nose I have ever felt.

Best photo award has to go to this one that Sylwia snapped, with a confused looking llama in the background photobombing

PS - I also got myself an alpaca hat, and it stood me in good stead on the Inca trail. I've not needed it so much since (Chile, New Zealand and Fiji in the summer haven't really had the temperatures to require it!)

Next up was a place where they did pottery. We got a demonstration of how they traditionally make the mud bricks for buildings. I was surprised how simple it looked, but I guess that finding the right mud etc. is the difficult bit!

stamp some straw into the mud

Squish the mud into a wooden frame and level it off

leave to dry!

I was quite impressed with how they made clay beads. There's some sort of extrusion mechanism where they squeeze the clay down a small hole and in makes a long tube of clay.

this tube is then rolled into a thing like an egg cutter

and then you can snap off individual beads, or groups of them.

a prettily painted occarina

The bowl I bought, and the lady who painted it.

On to Ollantaytambo and it was quite a nice village. Old cobbled streets with built in water courses! Those Inca were smart buggers.

Above the village on one side was a large Inca complex with terraces. As we were off to Machu Picchu soon it was recommended we not bother visiting this site (it cost to get in), but we did go up the other side of the village to the Inca storehouses to try out hill climbing at altitude.