December 11 - friends and volunteering

Drinking "Chicha Morada" - a drink
made from purple corn 

This was another great week in Cusco and halfway through the week we realized how much we really love it here and we decided to cancel two weeks of travel around Peru and stay here until Jan. 1st. This way we will have a chance to be here for the holidays. We will take a side trip next week to Puno and Lake Titicaca (next week's blog) and will still go to see the Nazca Lines on the first of the new year. Most of the pictures this week are of friends. We are so lucky that wherever we go we seem to find a circle of good friends to spend time with. Here again we have friends of all ages and from so many different parts of the world. Cusco is much more of an international city than San Miguel and also many are much younger than we are.

Our 20 year old friend Tess from Holland
(and Peru)

My new home away from home with
Yeni at the bead store. We are enjoying
teaching each other - in Spanish only!

Friends along the way during our
7 hour hike in the countryside

More friends - Chantal from France and
Cathy from Berkeley, CA. This is a very
transient community but somehow we have
met some great people to share time with

Fredy and his wife Monica. Fredy was our
guide on the Inca trail 6 years ago. We
had the chance to spend the whole day with
the family today.

Catching up again with Fredy and his family has been great. We loved our hike of the Inca Trail 6 years ago to Machu Piccu and that's why we did not do it again - we wanted to keep the memory of the first time alive because it was so special. We are still in touch through email and facebook with many of the folks from that trip and they are also so happy that we reunited with Fredy. Today we spent the whole day with him and his family and visited his mother as well - we traveled to several small villages and ruins that we had not seen. Really it would be possible to see ruins every day in different parts of the countryside,

The street up to San Blas where we walk
every day for our yoga classes. Rare
to see the street with no cars.

The valley of Cusco - surrounded by mountains

The Plaza de Armas - decorated for Navidad

Fredy's mother grinding dandelions -
making a special drink for Fredy for
his health

My new best friend and spanish teacher -
Fredy's youngest daughter

Proud store owner - this hat is typical
of a small town outside Cusco.

Another big adventure this week was joining some folks from the local Indian Restaurant in Cusco who provide food for children several days each week. Driving in a police truck the many volunteers headed to a local school on the outskirts of the Cusco - high up on the mountain overlooking the city. The kids were so grateful and sweet and so happy to say a few English words to us of thanks or hello as they ate their large plates of rice with stew. In Cusco, just like in SMA, there are many volunteers and many volunteer opportunities.

With a police escort we head to a
school on the outskirts of Cusco to
feed 250 kids.

high - fives!

They may not have much in the way of food
but they have a great view of Cusco!

Everyone is happy!

December 2011...important happenings

My new tattoo.

Antonio working on my tattoo

During the process

Well, the most exciting thing this week was getting a tattoo. I have talked about getting one for many years and last week we met a friend whose boyfriend is a tattoo artist...Antonio. I always said that if I did not get one by my 80th birthday that I would do it on that day but I got to thinking that I just turned 65 and why not do it now and enjoy 15 years of my tattoo rather than waiting. My biggest fear before was that it would hurt while doing it but I was told that the pain would not be too bad (in fact was virtually pain free) and so I went ahead and made an appointment. I worked on my design and together with Antonio, planned it. My spanish teacher was also encouraging as he has several tattoos and he reminded me that I could choose my music for the event and to enjoy it. I asked for Joan Baez and they played special songs for me, including "Susan takes you down to the banks by the river" - one of my favorites. Richard came with me as well as a new 20 year old friend named Tess from Holland. It was so easy and I have no problems. It is healing well and the purple in the flower will show better in a few days - right now it is a dark purple but will get lighter.

New earrings that I made. 

The rest of this week was uneventful after my tattoo. I have been working on jewelry - I brought some beads with me and a few stones. I finished these earrings and am working on some pendants for necklaces. I have made a new Peruvian friend in a local bead store and tomorrow I am going to show her how to make this type of jewelry (beading around a stone) and she is going to show me one of her techniques. For me it will also be a great Spanish lesson as she does not speak any English.

Today we went to Chinchero which is a town about one hour from here in the Sacred Valley that has a large Sunday Market. We bought a few artisan objects and went to a studio where a cooperative of women weave and we were shown the process of dyeing yarn and weaving. Here are many pictures of the market.

Used for dying yarns

Check out my necklace - made by this man

examples of some of the beautiful woven
 fabric made into bags.

Speaking Quecha to each other but
Spanish to us.

little dolls

Amigas

color everywhere

Now we are winding down our time in Cusco as we have just a bit over one more week here. It has been one of our favorite spots and we really feel like we know the town, the culture and the people. Luckily we have made a few Peruvian friends as well as other foreigners which always make the travel experience even better. We are looking forward to our last several weeks of traveling to other parts of Peru before returning to Mexico in early January.

November 27, 2011 Thanksgiving, my birthday and hiking again on Sunday

This has been another week filled with life. Because we have seen most of the "usual" ruins and museums, we now have time to enjoy other aspects of Cusco....mostly making new friends and having time to get to know them better. We have some pretty regular routines now...leave the house at 7:30 to walk to yoga every day at 8, back home by 10 to eat our oatmeal (prepared by Ricardo) and then off to school from 11-1. We are enjoying our teachers and hopefully progressing with our Spanish.

Susan and the ancient ruins!

Bread in the San Pedro Market

Fountain in Plaza de San Blas

Our school, Centro Tinku surprised us by having a birthday cake for me on Thursday. It was really nice to be celebrated this way. It was also Thanksgiving and we celebrated that by calling all our family and many friends and talking together on skype. We even had a three way conversation going.

Surprise Birthday cake at Centro Tinku

Happy Birthday 

Birthday dinner 

Impromptu celebration near Mercado de San Pedro

The birthday celebration continued with each of us having a massage in the afternoon followed by dinner that night. 

Another of our routines now is a long Sunday walk with friends. Jean-Jacques has been living here for many years and knows so many interesting trails outside the city. We start in the downtown and within 15 minutes are usually in the outskirts, hiking up high into the mountains for incredible views and many times coming across ancient ruins. We have done this with him for the last 3 Sundays and each time with a few new people so our friends in Cusco are growing.

Holding up the ancient wall

She found her niche!

Ruins that we came upon during our Sunday hike

Our new friends...Anna, Chantal, Jean-Jacques
Ricardo, me and Tess. (Telma is taking the picture)

We'll be staying put here for another few weeks before traveling to several other cities in Peru. We are really happy to be settled in this town and getting to know more each day about its culture and people.

A little side tidbit....we were loaned a DVD called "No Direction Home" which is a two disc story about Bob Dylan and the folk music era of the 60's. We are really enjoying it and shall watch the second disc tonight. It was loaned to me by my Spanish teacher who loves Bob Dylan and his poetry as well as the others of that era.

Bye for now and "see" you next week.

November 20, 2011 Hiking, Inca Ruins, enjoying the good life

We have enjoyed another full week in Cusco. We have a new friend, Jean-Jacques who owns the Spanish school that we are going to - Centro Tinku, and he and his dog love to walk on Sundays so we have joined him for two Sundays. In less than 15 minutes we are outside the city in amazing mountains with lush scenery.

Plaza de Armas - view from above the city,
the start of our walk last Sunday.

In this blog I am including more information on the pictures to help explain our time here.  We started last week with a city tour of all the major ruins within the Cusco area. Though we have seen some before, I do not tire of them, or the descriptions by the guides. We do some tours in Spanish and some in English and we can usually understand either! I have been reading two books simultaneously while here that have much history and modern explanations of what is going on in the area - one is "Exploring Cusco" by Peter Frost and another is a new book out this year entitled "Turn Right at Machu Piccu" and is a story of present day explorers walking the same path as Hiram Bingham who "discovered"....really...."rediscovered" Machu Piccu in the sacred valley in the 1911.

Always fun to be joined by dogs on our walk.
Our new friend Jean-Jacques has taken us to
 places we would never find on our own,
 along with his faithful companion Corey.
The other dog is Icarus - friend to Thelma.

A niche in Qorikancha - always made in this
shape to be earthquake proof. Again, notice
the stones with no mortar between them.
This site is right in the middle of the city and
is now part of a big church and convent
(minus all the gold that was taken by the Spainards)

Sacsaywaman - some of the most
incredible ruins - also right above the
city.  Some of these ruins we saw
6 years ago but always intriguing.

One of the larger stones - this gives an
idea of their size.

The beautiful colors used
for the knitting and weaving of sheep,
and alpaca yarns

Alpaca factory - shopping trips are
always included in tours.

Dinner with our friend Ru who is
from London - we meet him
at the school in Montanita, Ecuador.
Thanks to facebook - we have stayed
in touch. You might remember him
from the pictures of the mud trip - he was
our buddy there!

One of the fun things about this South American trip has been the people we met along the way in Ecuador and here in Peru and the fact that we can stay connected. Sometimes they are a few weeks ahead of us on a similar path (Fernanda from Brazil) and can advise us of hotels and sights to see; and this week we had the chance to see in person one of our friends from Ecuador. Skype allows us to talk every week with our "family" in Cuenca and some of you. I think I would feel very disconnected without technology. So, though I lived without it for many years of my life, I am very grateful for the connections it allows today.

Very old bags - used by men to hold their
coca leaves. Each is a gift from a woman - first
their mothers, then their girlfriends and
then their wives.

Typical courtyard of the colonial
houses of Cusco

Icarus, dog friend of Thelma who owns
a store with beautiful fabric items. Here he
is showing us his piece of fabric.

 Dogs are in our lives, which makes Richard especially happy. We have a dog "Danke" in our house who visits us often during the day. She has her spot on our couch.

Yesterday's very long day tour of the Sacred Valley took us to Pisac, Urubamba, Ollantaytambo and Chinchero. Now I think we have seen all the ruins that are on the "tourist" list and any more will be ones that we stumble upon during our weekend walks with Jean-Jacques.

Pisac - in the Sacred Valley. Again many levels
of crop planting built into the mountains. We hiked
a precarious walk up and around with a large group.

Again - amazing shapes to be seen from above at Pisac. 

Ollantaytambo - large site in the Sacred Valley built
above the town. The size of the people walking up will
give you perspective of this amazing site.

View of Ollantaytambo from above
 the ruins

Another example of these large stones - here you
can see some placed in between - again to
avoid earthquake destruction. It is possible
that these were pre-Incan.

Today's walk started at this cemetary -
working up rather than taking up
too much space underground.

One of many photos of the countryside

Corey loves the water and the mud.

A ruin in the middle of our walk.

This window/door caught my eye.

We say goodbye again this week, a special week for most of our "peeps" as it is Thanksgiving. It is always a good time to remember our family and friends and we are so thankful to have you all in our lives. We shall miss seeing you and will celebrate in some special way here, because it is also a big day for me...my birthday of the year of medicare! Happy Thanksgiving to ALL with love from Susanita and Ricardo.