Spring Planting with a Community School in Taray

We found out about an amazing, Waldorf-inspired community school for Quechua children in in the nearby village of Taray, in Peru's the Sacred Valley. Since the rainy season is beginning now, in October,  farmers are preparing to plant their corn and beans. We were invited to participate in this community planting ceremony with the parents, teachers, and students.  It reminded us so much of the Waldorf school-celebrations we'd become used to back home, but of course with the local Andean traditions integrated into it.

The Elemental Ritual


Following the ancient Andean tradition before planting,  an altar was set up on the edge of the field. Bags of the seeds to be blessed were arranged in a circle. Each of us took our turn to blow our prayers and intentions into a trio of coca leaves, laying them on the altar, and finishing by sprinkling water over the altar. I watched as each of the farmers removed his shoes and hat before performing this ritual.

The team of oxen carved out the furrows in the rich alluvial soil. Then, the girls placed the seeds, while the boys followed with handfuls of guano (sheep and llama poop in this case). Seeds were covered with soil, and songs were sung.





Finally, we all sat in a circle and shared a snack of choclo (roasted corn niblets) and chicha morada (warm purple corn drink--not fermented). Beautiful.


Then we dipped in the creek to cool off. A wonderful day in Peru!!!

River Cleanup in Pisac!

Trash is a big problem in Peru.

River cleanup in Pisac (Serena in green hat)

 Today we joined the monthly river cleanup in Pisac. The 8 of us--representing Mexico, Chile, Canada, and the USA--spent the morning pulling garbage out of the little river that flows into the big Urubamba River.  We were so proud of our kids who showed enthusiasm for this volunteer work.

Afterwards, we shared lunch donated by a local restaurant near the river.

Serena helping "Oso" (Chile) to sort garbage

Great helper that girl!

Another "tire-less" helper!

William fearlessly wading into the cold water to pull out trash

While we were working as an efficient team to gather the garbage, we discussed the scale of this issue.
In Pisac, there is a lot of trash generated but very little recycling available. It seems only plastic bottles (plenty of those!) can be recycled.  Plastic bags are handed out with every purchase, unless you remember to bring your own. They end up all over the place, and people even dump their trash in the river.  In fact, the municipal garbage dump is right next to the Rio Urubamba!  The problem seems daunting. But at least we made a start.


As it turns out, the Big Tree on the Plaza, some 430 years old, was struck by lightning at 2 am this morning, thus demolishing this icon of the town. The pieces were trucked to the riverside dump just as we were bringing our collected trash there. The girls played with the beautiful moss from the old tree's branches.

Cleanup organizer and all-around super hero, Paz

Tarantulas as pets?

Everyone has heard of this big, fuzzy kind of spider, but how many of you have let one crawl over your hand???  Not for the faint of heart...

During a rainstorm, the kids found this one crawling on our porch. Will enthusiastically collected it in a jar, and we brought it to Mark's place (our next door neighbor). Mark has a lot of experience with spiders and scorpions, it was a childhood hobby, so we took turns letting it crawl on our hands. Nobody got bitten, and we learned about their life history.


Thanks, Marc, for teaching us not to be afraid of big fuzzy spiders!

Natural Sanctuary: La Veronica

Glacier - fed cascades run down the forested slopes of Veronica

Will hiking up to the waterfall

Joy communing with one of the dozens of spectacular waterfalls in the Veronica Sanctuary

We are so fortunate to have connected with an amazing Peruvian man whose dream is to protect a special piece of land in the Sacred Valley.  30 years ago, Miguel's parents built a rustic house on a piece of land at the gateway to one of the most pristine tracts of native Andean montane forest left in the Sacred Valley.  He brought us there for a personal tour of what he hopes will become a protected natural area, El Santuario de la Veronica.

There are a few small meadow areas surrounded by wild forest

    How we met Miguel:  Gary just happened upon a small store near the plaza in Pisac, la Tienda de María, where a sign advertised the natural sanctuary.  María, a long-time family friend of Miguel's family, helps support the Santuario de la Veronica project by selling Miguel's t-shirts (his original designs). María's daughter, Noemi, put me in contact with Miguel, and our mutual friendship and enthusiasm for protecting this wild place took off.

The forest is rich in bird life, including five species of hummingbirds, numerous species of song birds, hawks, eagles, condors, and also rare mammals like puma, spectacled bear, and Andean deer.

Mountain orchids grow abundantly on the Polylepis (queñua) trees.

This is an important refuge for rare and endangered animals, since their mountain forest habitat is all but gone in the Sacred Valley, deforested by centuries of human inhabitation.

Miguel is an avid photographer, fascinated with the abundance of epiphytes (air plants) in this forest.

Here are some views of the Veronica Sanctuary, from our first visit. It is an amazing, unusual place, very steep forested flanks of a big (18,000') high mountain, Nevado Veronica. Looooong, thin waterfalls cascade down the green slopes, encircled by the giant arms of the mountain. There are a few trails roughed in by the cows and Miguel's father, but much trail work is needed.

Miguel clearing trail on our first visit

Already Gary has written up a proposal, is preparing to find grant money to hire a guardian, and spreading the word to organize service learning opportunities for young people.

A Visit to the Salt Pans of Maras

Plaza sculpture at Maras

We've been enjoying weekend explorations to some of the many places around the Sacred Valley. We took a fascinating hike last weekend to the Salineras, or salt pans, outside of Urubamba.  Urubamba is only  a 45-minute bus ride down valley from Pisac.  Upon arriving, we found a pleasant guest house aptly named "Los Jardines" (The Gardens), where we dropped our overnight luggage, and got some valuable suggestions from the owner, Raul, then headed down to the bus stop.

Beginning the descent from Maras

Getting to the start of the hike

Although we realized were getting quite a late start (3:00pm), it only took about 45 minutes to get to the trailhead.  First, we hopped on a Cusco-bound bus from Urubamba, asking the driver to let us off at the "desvio" (turnoff) to the small town of Maras.  There, a run-down taxi was waiting, and for a few Peruvian Soles he took us 15 minutes to the beautiful little plaza of Maras, set on top of a vast plateau with panoramic views of the Andes.  Although it was mid-afternoon, there was nobody on the plaza to ask directions. So I wandered over to the Police Station, where the friendly Police Chief shook my hand, and cheerfully sent me off toward the north, to find the trail behind the old adobe church.  Behind the San Francisco church there were several unmarked trails, but after some debate, we chose to follow the "acequia" (aqueduct) around the hill, where we hit the main trail (also unmarked) down to the Salineras.

As we plodded down the heavily eroded horse trail, we passed pairs and trios of young kids herding the family burros and cows up and down the trail. They assured us the salt pans were only about 45 minutes away, though we took twice that. The clouds cleared and the sun turned up the heat. Farm families worked in their corn fields and hawks soared overhead. More groups of burros passed by. Much of the time we were completely on our own, with no one to ask if we were still on the right path. We passed remote homesteads surrounded by beautiful green fields of young corn, seeing young kids keeping an eye on a team of oxen at rest. We saw no other foreigners on the hike. Then we met coming up a friendly old cowboy on a beautiful strong horse; he was tickled that a North American family with kids were passing through his territory. His boys listened to pop music on their cell phone as they herded the burros up the steep trail.


The trail switchbacked down into the canyon, and as we came around the corner, suddenly the salt came into view. Wow! You can hardly imagine the sight of some 5000 salt pans, blazing white, in the middle of a reddish canyon slope.




It's quite a touristy place actually, but at this point, around 4:30pm, most of the crowds were gone, and we had a feeling of having the place almost to ourselves.  As we tiptoed carefully along narrow, salt-covered pathways through the salt works, we were constantly saying wow! and check this out!, asking each other questions about how they were able to produce so much salt for so many centuries (since pre-Inca times we were told).  

Though they were selling small  bags of salt at the gift shop, we opted to toss a handful into our pocket. Beautiful, totally unprocessed mineral salts, evaporated in small basins and scooped up daily for export all over the world.


The steep descent finally flattens out,  reaching a bridge over the Rio Urubamba.  We made it back to the highway just at dusk, and flagged down a taxi back to Urubamba. Round trip was about 3 hours.

Staying Cool

Serena tests the waters

The weather's been hot, and naturally the kids are asking to go swimming. There is an Olmpic-size swimming pool in Pisac (I kid you not!), adjacent to the fancy Royal Inka Hotel. For 15 soles (about US$5) you can use the pool for the day. But we also found a really awesome natural swimmin' hole in the creek just up the nature trail. The kids can play there for hours too, for free.  The cliffy canyon wall is covered with cactus and other drought-tolerant plants. Much farther up the cliff wall are the Inca terraces of Pisac.

Refreshed!

Joy and the kids after a refreshing dip in the mountain creek above Pisac

Where we are living in Peru

Moving in day, our casita in Pisac

We are living in a tiny 2-room adobe cottage on the edge of town. 

The Andes Mountains

Typical adobe brick house in Sacred Valley, Peru

Known to South Americans as "la Cordillera de los Andes",  or simply "la Cordillera",  the Andes Mountains comprise the longest, as well as the second highest mountain range on Earth (the Himalaya is #1 of course). It is a grand, extremely diverse range, forming the continental divide along the entire western edge of the South American continent.  Extending some 5000 miles north to south through more than 60 degrees of latitude,  from tropical to temperate to subpolar,  from the lush Caribbean to the storm-battered island of Tierra del Fuego, the Andes boast an incredible landscape diversity that defies generalization. 

Living in the Sacred Valley of Peru

We have based ourselves in the small town of Pisac, in the Sacred Valley of the Incas.  A mile-deep gorge carved by the Urubamba River, the Sacred Valley, and Pisac especially, has been an important agricultural center since Inca times. Its fertile, well-watered farmland still produces large amounts of food, primarily corn, beans, squash. There are extensive Inca ruins on the mountainsides above Pisac, and modern day farmers still make use of the lowest terraces and their irrigation system (see below).  

Tropical Highland Climate

Though our latitude is just 12˚ South of the Equator, the climate is pleasantly Spring-like, on account of the 9000 feet of elevation.  It's not unbearably hot during the day, and mornings and evenings are quite cool and crisp. Alpaca sweaters are abundant and not expensive, perfect attire for the cool, damp weather.  We arrived in September, near the end of the dry season. Now, in October, the rainy season has begun, and farmers are busy planting corn. Still, there are beautiful sunny days and gorgeous clouds and rainbows between showery periods. 

Rainbow over Pisac, Peru

Traditional Springtime (October) corn planting in an indigenous "comunidad" above Pisac, Peru

Sunday Market in Pisac

Indigenous girl with lamb at Pisac market, Peru

Raising llamas, alpacas, and also sheep, the local people masterfully weave, embroider, and proudly wear beautiful, brightly colored clothing. Pisac is famous for its large Sunday Market, where you can find all sorts of artesanía (hand made goods), as well as crystals, jewelry, and musical instruments. A large proportion of the people speak Quechua ("kech-wa") as their first language, and you hear it in the market interspersed with Spanish. Serena took this photo of a local girl in her "Sunday best".

Why go to Peru ?!?!

Life in North America had become so comfortable, modern, hygienic, hyperactive, expensive, over-regulated, and insulated from Earth-based wisdom. Even though we ate organic food, bicycled and hiked and gardened, we were caught up in the modern economic treadmill of work and consume; we were showing symptoms of "affluenza", an excess of material goods.  Most people seem to just go with the tide, but we could see this is not a sustainable way to live.
But how do you break out of the culture you're surrounded by???

There comes a time to seek adventure, to leave behind the familiar, to venture out into the larger world...like the “outward bound" ship leaving its safe harbor,  we saw our opportunity, and made a decision to go.  Actually, we'd been talking about doing an immersion with our kids in Latin America, but we felt that Serena needed to be at least 6. Then, when Gary's teaching job suddenly ended, the time seemed right.  Synchronistically, just then another Sunfield Farm (Waldorf) School family invited us to join their family (mom and two kids 10 and 12 yrs old) for a 6-month sojourn in Peru.  The plan was for us to travel together, giving our kids a rich intercultural homeschool experience in an amazing land.  It didn't take us long to convince ourselves that NOW was the time to go. So we said, sure, why not?!  Some of our friends and kinfolk envied and applauded our decision, others thought us crazy.

Dreams and preparations

 Quickly, we generated a formidable to-do list that nearly exhausted us, because it included not just preparing for Peru, but also moving out of our comfy home so that we could rent it out.  Many big changes followed: we sold our beloved Toyota truck, and became a 1-car family again.  We started "radical pruning", paring down the volume of stuff we’d accumulated over the years. Everything was triaged, resulting in selling/donating/gifting/tossing what we could,  moving our keepsakes and treasures up into the attic.  We advertised the house for rent, found great renters,  got passports, plane tickets, travel insurance, money belts, acidophilus capsules, travel books and maps, bug repellent, etc. We emptied our closets and boxes and pulled together clothing for hot jungles and cool mountains, plus swimsuits and sun hats, sunscreen and bug juice, homeopathic remedies and first aid kits.  It was exciting and gave us a focus. We practiced using Spanish at home and borrowed books about Peru.

Launching the adventure

After several months of increasingly painstaking planning, preparing, packing, perspiring, and paring down our stuff, we left our cozy home in Port Townsend for an amazing 6-month adventure.  So many thanks to all our friends and family who helped!!!

Phase 1: Overland to California    September 1-12, 2013

We started our travels  with a 12-day, 1200-mile road trip to L.A. in our 1991 Toyota Corolla sedan, which we dubbed “Milagro”,  Spanish for miracle.  That little blue car somehow carried us to where we wanted to go without any mechanical issues (other than noisy windows and lack of a stereo), and she got good mileage to boot.  Our plan was to leave the car at Gary’s mother’s home in Los Angeles, and fly to Peru.  This allowed us to visit friends and family and favorite places along the way.
William stayed in PT for a couple more weeks with his dad, flying by himself to meet us in L.A.  It worked out well since there wouldn’t have been room for him in the car anyway.

When we finally rolled out of the driveway of our Port Townsend home,  Milagro was packed to the gills, including a newly-purchased top carrier filled with camping gear plus all our Peru luggage.
Along the way, we visited our family (Everett, Seattle, Olympia, Eugene),  and friends, and some of our favorite places too--Jackson Wellsprings in Ashland, Mt. Shasta, Castle Lake, and  the old growth redwood forest in Northern California.  South of the redwoods, the weather heated up, and Milagro’s air conditioning didn’t offer much relief. But we found relief as we discovered swimming lakes, air conditioned health food stores, and the foggy Monterey Bay.  We splurged on a hotel near Monterey, and the next day enjoyed the best fish tacos in a little Mexican restaurant. We even visited a Peruvian family living in Santa Barbara, getting some contacts and recommendations for our trip.



We also spent some wonderful time at a few of our favorite places, including Mt. Shasta, Castle Lake, and Grizzly Creek Redwoods in northern California.  Twelve days after leaving Port Townsend, WA, we arrived were able to spend a few days with Grandma Barbara in Palos Verdes, a suburb of L.A., and left Milagro safely parked at her house for the winter.

Phase 2: On to South America

The four days in LA went fast and furious. We attempted to balance beach play with the rigors of packing, packing, and repacking.  We all loved playing in the waves in southern California.
Finally the BIG DAY arrived, September 16th.  Arising at 4:30am, we caught a van to LAX and before we knew it, we were flying from Los Angeles to Lima, Peru, (stopping to stretch our legs in Atlanta). We arrived in Lima at 10pm, but still it took another hour and a half to collect luggage, pass through customs, and get to our hotel. Fortunately, Gary had reserved a room for us at the economical Hostal Iquique in the Breña sector of Lima. The friendly staff sent a van to pick us up from the airport that first night.  As we pushed our luggage out of the crowded baggage claim area, Joy glimpsed our driver holding up a sign that read Hostal Iquique, "Eduardo Berves"-- close enough, I suppose. Our tired heads hit the comfy pillows around midnight in Lima. Long first day!

We're in Peru ! ! !

The months of planning and preparation are behind us now. We spend a few days in Lima, the noisy busy capital city. Here we are on the Plaza de Armas, the central town square. We didn't care to stay too long in the big city, but we did find some pleasures, including a great natural foods store that served delicious yogurt and granola for breakfast.

Lima has beaches but they aren't so inviting,  but we did enjoy a little beach play time that first day in Peru. Time difference is only 2 hours ahead of Seattle time, so not much jet lag.

Kids enjoying some barefoot play in a nice park in Lima.

Will checks out the rock beach at Barranco, in Lima.