Urubamba

No, it´s not a new term I came up with one night when I was staring in a bathroom mirror after a few too many...it´s a small town in the Sacred Valley in between Cusco and Machu Pichu. We just arrived here after a day of touring the Sacred Valley that included hiking some ruins and mixing it up with some of the Incas. Although the ruins are what we are supposed to be here to see, I think the most fascinating part of the trip so far has been the Incan people. We visited this one village high up in the mountains that is part of a Planeterra (sp?) program, which essentially means that the Peruvian govt has outsourced the task of elevating the socioeconomic level of this community to our trip providers, who guilted us into emptying our wallets when we stopped there. Anyway, it was fascinating to see the women who worked on hte products we bought. They were very old, weathered by years of hard work and weather, to the point where there sandals seemed to have fused to their cracked feet and the faces had wrinkled so deeply that they looked like pumpkins that had completely rotted through, teeth and all. Tough to look at, but thankfully there were plenty of freshfaced children around to lift the mood - they loved to make a scene for the cameras. Anyway, I wish we could download some pictures to show you, but we´ve yet to get to a fully functional internet cafe. Anyway, time to hike back 30 mins up the hill through the farming district to our jungle lodging (it really looks like our quarters are straight out of Swiss Family Robinson). Talk to you after Machu Pichu (Friday or Saturday I believe).

- Conor and Lindsay