Day 1 with the community

The day started off with breakfast. I was able to post a quick blog, too. This is a picture of the bread that is all over Peru. It's plain, but I love it. By the way, I loved the cauliflower as did everyone in the tour with me!

 

Our hotels located on the back roads of Peru. We have had a great bus driver named Freddie. I'm convinced that he is the best bus driver in the world. Theme of the roads are so narrow, but he manages to get through them without hitting anything and he doesn't look stressed at all. How does he do it?! Can you see how close we are to the trees? Holy Moly!

 

 

We drove for a bit to go into the town so that we could get to the ATM. Wile same of us stopped at the AATM, others walked around the little town square. All of the towns we have visited are built around a town square. That isn't very common in the United States. It's so much fun to sit down on a bench and people watch. Do any of you enjoy people-watching? I do! What I noticed is that there are many tuk-tuks in these small motorized vehicle that is smaller than a taxi. It also seems that everyone takes a taxi, bus, or tuk-tuk to somewhere. After we got to the ATM and bought water, we headed out to the community. Its a small farming community way up in the Andes mountains.

 

 

We were headed to 13,000 feet, so we were told to bring a whole bunch of warm clothes and a rain jacket. I am so happy that I bought a rain poncho as it has gotten quite a workout. Three cheers for REI!

 

When we got to the community, all of the women who lived there were waiting for us. They greeted each of us with a beautiful necklace made out of yarn and flowers.

 

There were about 25 of us and 35 community women, so we each had our own person to greet us. All of the women in the community are weavers. After they gave each of us a necklace, the brought us to a village center. When we were at the "town green," we heard about how we were going to work on the farm. They showed us the various tools that we would be using, and then we loaded the donkeys us and all walked to the farm. Throughout the morning, the weather was warm, cold, rainy, windy, and then warm again! Below is a picture of Gary, our guide and expert while we spent the day in the community. His English was fantastic and he told a lot of joke, so we laughed a lot as well.

 

Our time on the potato field was awesome. First, we saw how the Peruvians love Panchama and have special rituals that involve giving offerings to the earth. Mid people are going to harvest the land, they need to gift a gift to Panchamama (mother earth). We all gave an offering to the earth before we started our hard work.

While we were giving offerings to the earth, some of the women started a small fire to cook potatoes while everyone was working. They started the fire using dirt and twigs. It's amazing how resourceful everyone is. By the way, I had one of the potatoes later in the day and it was so tasty. Also, I was reminded that are 2000 varieties of potatoes in Peru. The potato is a main staple in Peru. They eat everything in its pure form. There are potatoes everywhere, but I haven't seen any French fries. I did see a KFC in Cuzco. Come to think of it, I saw a huge KFC in Ghana.

The Internet is pooping out, so I guess that I'll end here. Hopefully I'll be able to continue My story from today. We're going back to the community tomorrow to visit tow schools. That's going to be fun. Then in two days, we're flying to the Amazon where we will be for two days.

That's it for now.