Friday our tour guide, Sheila, and our driver, Andreas, came to pick us up for a full day of adventure. Andreas has driven us almost the entire time we have been here in Peru and doesn't speak a lick of English. But he smiles a lot. We head out of the Sacred Valley to the Moras Salt Mines where the ancent Incas built a huge grid of rectangular plots in the ground to collect salt from a mountain stream; we taste it...Really salty (70-80% they say). These muddy salt pools are still in use today and supply the salt for the valley. The locals step on the salt to drain the water out and then put it in piles for the donkeys to take to the top of the valley. Primitive but effective. Interestingly this salt is not iodinized and the locals have problems with thyroid goiters. Hmmm.
Next we head to our highest elevation of the trip (12000 feet) to a small village called Urusbamba outside of Chincera. The weather has turned very cold today and the temperature must be in the 30s. The temps are quoted in Celsius here and all measurements are in the metric system, so I never really know what is going on. We have multiple layers of clothes on and when the wind blows it's piercing.
In this remote village, the Inca descendents who still speak Quechua are waiting on us to give us (and I mean just us as there is not another tourist for miles) a weaving demonstration. They take us into the fields to find leaves and plants and make the boys each chew some flowers which are medicinal and sweet. It mostly tastes like grass. The ladies have prepared a demonstration where they take wool straight from the sheep, wash it with root soap, dye it with various dyes collected from plants, and then stretch it into yarn, and weave it. I am exhausted watching them. They are constantly moving, working all the time. Don and I attempt to thin the wool, but are completely pathetic. This was a unique experience that only our family got to enjoy. Very neat.
Next we head to Cusco for the night. Cusco is at 11000 feet, but we are now acclimatized and should not get altitude sickness. We take our clothes to the laundry...as we are on our last pairs of undies. We head out to see a distinctly Peruvian show called Kusikay which is really spectacular. Lots of acrobatics and humor, with all the actors wearing masks. The boys laugh out loud and think this is great. Our guide, Luis, accompanies us to and from the show. He does put us in a taxi on the way there that I seriously thought was going to get us killed.
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