So, we woke up and the road blocks and strikes were still going on. So, we had a nice breakfast prepared by the cooks and visited with the people we would be spending the next five days with. After breakfast we got the plan from the guide. The plan was to have a local guide give us a tour of local Incan ruins. He also suggested that we could buy a sheep from a local farmer and they would prepare us a special lunch. It cost us each about 10 soles, or 3 dollars and the farmer proceeded to go out to the pasture, grab a sheep, bring it out in front of us, and kill it. It was a little disturbing. They cut its throat and then drained the blood from it as much as possible. Afterwards they broke its hooves and started to gut it. In the middle of killing it though, the farmer had to go sharpen his knife on a rock, so the sheep sat there half dead, half alive waiting for its death. I would qualify that as cruel and unusual punishment.
After the sacraficing of the sheep, we treked up the hill to see some Incan ruins. On the way up we saw many irrigation channels and they absolutely stunned me. Much of Peru get little if any rain during the winter, so farmers rely on the glacier melts and springs to provide water for their crops. They make channels through out their farm land to get the water to the places they need it. It is really quite impressive.
The ruins were also pretty interesting. We were told that the government is helping the village research and rebuild parts of the ruins in the hopes that someday the village could increase their tourism for profit. This is also probably why they would not let us pass on the road blocks. When we got to the top of the ruins there was a big soccer field or pitch and village children had followed us up the hill. A bunch of people from the group ended up playing a soccer match with the village children. It was quite the site to see. It ended up being that this detour was pretty cool.
We returned for lunch --- the sheep if you remember. It was prepared specially in a Peruvian style. The sheep was cut up and hot coals were placed in a hole in the ground. The hole was then covered with tarp and then dirt and the sheep was allowed to cook there. It is supposedly a very good and popular way to cook in Peru. The sheep was very good and the lunch in general was very good. The sheep was a little tough, but it was good.
After lunch we were told that we were just going to chill out for the rest of the day and that we would probably leave around 3am for our next trek site. I took a nap and many people toured the village. This village was really quite interesting. Everyday the farmers would take their cows and animals up the hill to pasture, then return to do other things. In the afternoon, they would go back up the hill to gather their animals to bring them back for the night. The children played all day and we spent a lot of time with them. They loved our flashlights and cameras --- especially when we took their picture and showed them their images on the digital screen. I am pretty sure it was the prime definition of culture shock.
I did not see this, but the Irish and Dutch saw the local women get together to play a soccer match in the village. They got together and played even in their skirts. They told us about this and we talked for a long time about how Western civilization doesn´t really have community anymore. How we don´t go bowling or play sports together. This is something that my family has talked about a lot as well. We go home to our private sanctuary. We work on our backyard to make it ours and special to us. We build fences away from others. Perhaps this is why our communities aren´t as safe. If we trust everyone and know everyone, when someone does something wrong to you they don´t just commit a crime against you personally but a crime against the community. It is just an interesting thought and I think the moral of the story is that we can all try to create better communities by doing things wiht others.
We ate dinner that night in the ´mansion´ that was built by the government in the hopes that it could be used as a hostal when the incan ruins were finished and the village became a tourist site. So, we technically were the first tourists to use the government project. It was pretty neat. After dinner we started a fire, but our van arrived and we were told that we needed to get going to our next campsite or the road blocks may come back tomorrow. We quickly packed our things, said our goodbyes to the children, and got in the van to go.
The road blocks were so impressive. The size of the rocks were just crazy. In some places the rocks were as large as cars because the the farmers had used dynomite to have huge rocks fall on the road.
We arrived at our campsite though and we set up our tent. It was very cold because we had went up in altitude, but we made it though it. Tomorrow we would start the real trek and it was going to be quite the adventure.
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