Out the door at 7:30 am for the mini-bus through the Sacred Valley.

The first stop is Ccaccaccollo, a traditional Andean community where the tour operation (G Adventures) does support and outreach. Many of the men work as porters for G Adventures and porters on mountain treks. The women run a weaving co-op. We had brief demonstrations of spinning, weaving, and dying, including a talk on what materials are useful for dying. The items we can buy from the co-op are guaranteed to be the real thing because we can see them being made.

Continue reading →

As mentioned previously, a lot of the Machu Picchu tour is setup to actually get there.

I landed in Lima at 7:00 am, putting me at the hotel around 8:30 or 9:00. Remarkably the hotel had a room ready. Check in/out times tend to be quite early compared to other places I’ve been. I fell asleep quickly to be awoken for the tour initial meeting at 6:00 pm, so I didn’t see anything of Lima.

Departure on the 2nd day was at 9:30 am for a flight to Cusco. For this flight we were unaccompanied by anyone from G Adventures, and immediately we started having problems. The van for the hotel transfer was at least 20 minutes late, and then it turns out that one woman on the tour was booked on a earlier flight that she could not have possibly met even if the van was on time. The airline was able to rebook her on the same flight as the rest of us.

We got a brief walk around Cusco guided by our tour leader. I saw the exteriors of some notable sights like the cathedral (interior tours came later after our return to Cusco).

On one of the main streets I found this map of the city done in tile. Continue reading →