An Eventful Trip to Ccorccor

Woke up after a much needed 11 hours sleep.
Plan for the day - get to village to meet Elsa; but First - shopping for gifts for the village. Kate kindly gave £100 from her football team which we successfully spent on footballs, gloves, pumps and cones.
We caught a parade en route to the shopping district recommended by Felix - very Peruvian - not an Inka cola top in sight!
The lady in the toy/stationary shop gave us a big hug upon leaving - realised we’d spent around £70 in there.

We then piled onto a crowded bus. There were 4 seats at the back so we squeezed in as directed between a larger lady in traditional dress with unfamiliar veg sticking out of her bag, and a younger lady listening to the radio loudly (didn’t think we’d be humming along to
Boyzone whilst cradling our large overnight bag and plastic bag of supplies). As usual the hysterical laughing inappropriately kicked in, when Rach offered the radio lady a sweet, realised she only had enough for her…glanced over to traditional dress lady who looked to be asleep and asked “is manna watching?!”. That was it. Perhaps it was one of those “had to be there” giggles…

The bus was bound for Chinchero (approx 1 hour) and just outside of Cusco the police stopped the bus to check IDs… we didn’t catch why but we thrusted our passports, only for the policeman and passengers to giggle and respond “nationals only”.

Once in Chinchero, it’s was surprisingly easy to find a taxi to take us to Corrcorr village - down the very bumpy dirt tracks for around 20 minutes. We arrived safely, and managed to contact Elsa (our host, and one of the head honchos of the village) via the other villagers that were milling around. We were shown to Elsa’s house, where we met her and her son David - very kind and patient people we were so lucky to stay with them thanks to John.

It was amazing how we managed to all communicate in our broken/ limited Spanish/English and Google translate.
Beautiful veg stir fry for lunch, then a walk around the village. This was really special, as it was the annual tree planting time, so we helped fill the small plastic bags with compost and pine seed in the vivarium. Rach managed to altruistically re-pop her rib by shovelling and hurling the dirt into an A Frame griddle device, but in true competitive style soldiered on. It was really nice to see men and women working together, older women in traditional dress and hats also. Rachel commented that she liked the hats, and was shortly after presented one to try on. The “tea break”
was quite different - the villagers sat in a circle and one member poured Chicha (a 1 day fermented maize drink) from what looked like a Gerry can, into a bottle cut in half, which was drunk in turn between chatter and laughter. We were given a cup to try, and it was not dissimilar to kombucha.

After the drink break, and a warm welcome from Elsa/ the villagers we walked further and helped with some potato planting. We were greeted warmly, and people were happy to teach us techniques and let us get stuck in.
We then inflated the new footballs and played with David and pals as the sun set over the lake.

After dark, we headed back to our barn where we spent the night, and did some puzzles and colouring with David and his best friend. Elsa brought us all a delicious garlic pasta soup for tea and David asked to sleep in the barn with us, so Elsa promptly set him up a bed on the floor. With the many beautiful handmade llama wool blankets keeping us toasty, we soon fell asleep.Baca lagi