ATVing to the Salt Mines in Maras, Peru & Last week in Cuzco

This week we visited the salt mines in Maras, which is in the Sacred Valley about a half an hour from Cuzco. We toured the area on an ATV! Mike was the driver. :) Since it's the rainy season here in Peru, it was quite muddy, and there were lots of fun puddles that Mike loved to drive through! You can't beat the scenery!

The salt mines were constructed during pre-Incan times. We were amazed! The way they work is through a system of channels that lead into hundreds of little ponds. The source of salty water comes from the Qoripujio spring. The water feeds into the ponds, and then as its water level is controlled, it eventually evaporates, and is harvested by the salt farmers. Since it's the rainy season, the ponds were over saturated and appeared to be muddy, but we got the idea! I love how they are still using this system. 

It was our last week volunteering at San Judas Chico hogar. :( We had a great day today! We celebrated a few birthdays from the month, and invited the boys and the girls from the other two orphanages for a party! We combined it with a carnival celebration, and we had a huge water balloon fight and singing clowns! The girls also made some beautiful masks and necklaces! They are so creative! 

Here's a video of some of the girls talking about themselves a bit...We are going to miss them soooo much! Time flew by way too fast! 10 more days until we're back in Wisconsin.

Carnaval in Cuzco!

I haven´t had a chance to post in awhile...our access to internet has been slim! Since our last post, we celebrated Carnaval in the Sacred Valley. It was a lot of fun, and I´ll post more pictures as soon as we get internet back. We went into different towns, and watched dancing and listened to traditional music. I was expecting to get wet, because I was told to bring extra clothes. I didn´t know if I would actually get involved, but I had no choice! We bought cans of this spray snow, which is like colored shaving cream that can shoot far like silly string. As we drove by in our car, we sprayed random people with it! After we parked, we walked around and sprayed people too. Little did I know that women are the main target of this! The locals have buckets of water prepared, and the kids hang out at the water fountains ready to get you wet! I got drenched! Good times! After stopping at a few towns in the Sacred Valley, we had a late lunch in Urubamba, and did some dancing. We tried the strawberry chica drink, and danced around a tree decorated with various cooking utensils. We danced around the tree hand-in-hand taking turns with the axe to try and cut it down! After it got cut down, people scramble around to get the cooking utensils off the tree, like a piñata! Fun traditions for Carnaval! I think we should do this in Wisconsin!

Softest thing ever!!

This afternoon Mike got to hold a baby alpaca! It was the softest thing ever!! I want one really bad! I am having pet withdrawals...picked up someone's kitten last night too. 

We also had another cooking class today. We made Causa Limeña, which is kind of like a cold shepherd's pie, made with avocado, chicken, and tomatoes inside. It was delicious! 

Fiesta de la Candelaria Video!

Lake Titicaca Tour: Uros, Amantaní, & Tequile Islands/Fiesta de laCandelaria in Puno!

We had another amazing weekend visiting Titicaca Lake on Uros, Amantaní, and Tequile Islands! We started on one of the floating islands with the Uros people, and it was amazing to see how people survive by making everything out of these totora reeds...They even eat them! They also eat small fish and they hunt ducks. Their transportation is also made from the reeds, and kids even go to school in them! The Uros people are a pre-incan civilization, and people actually still live on the floating islands this way...Amazing! 

After visiting for some time on the floating islands, we headed to Amataní Island, where we met our host, Don Víctor. He showed us his home and finca, and we put our stuff in our room for the night. Then we had a late lunch, which was delicious! We had some coca tea with muña, which helped us with the altitude. Then we met our group in the plaza to get ready for a hike up Pacha Mama & Pacha Tata hill temples. This was an amazing hike, and once we made it to the top (after about two hours), we had a beautiful view! Then we went back to our home to have dinner and get ready in our traditional outfits for traditional Amantaní music and dancing! 

We woke up Sunday morning bright and early for a pancake breakfast, then said goodbye to Don Víctor, because we were off to spend the day at Tequile Island. Tequile Island was also beautiful, and we had lunch outside with an awesome view of Lake Titicaca and Bolivia. Then we walked down the 500+ steps to our boat, and took a much needed nap on the boat ride to Puno. We knew we'd need the energy, since it just happened to be the biggest celebration in Peru this week! 

When we arrived in Puno, we noticed there were a ton of people, and lots of music and dancing people of all ages wearing intricate costumes! This was the Fiesta de la Candelaria in Puno, which is the biggest dancing/music and cultural celebration in Peru, and the third largest festival in South America after Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro and Carnaval in Bolivia. It was incredible! We were so fortunate to be in Puno this particular weekend! I have never seen anything like it! I will post a video of the parade as soon as it finishes uploading. :)

Uros floating island on Lake Titicaca & boat taxis...The kids use them to get to school too!

Las hermanas!

On the boat ride from Uros to Amantaní Island!

Everyone eats vegetarian on Amantaní Island because fish and meat is not easily accessible. These were our meals, including fried cheese which we thought was fish at first! With every meal we had fresh coca and muña tea.

 Our room for the night on Amantaní Island...

Don Víctor, who hosted us for the night on Amantaní Island!

 Some pictures from our hike up to the hill temples of Pacha Mama and Pacha Tata on Amantaní Island...

At the top...Pacha Mama temple. 

Breathtaking view of Lake Titicaca at the top of Pacha Mama!

 Three more photos from Pacha Mama on Amantaní Island...

 After our hike up Pacha Mama, we got home just in time for dinner, then we got dressed up in traditional dance clothes, and went dancing!

 On Sunday morning we got up early to say goodbye to Amantaní Island and hello to Tequile Island...We had trout for lunch on Tequile Island, and had this view, with Bolivia in the background! 

Flying above Titicaca!

 On our way down the 500+ steps down to our boat on Tequile Island...

Fiesta de la Candelaria Sunday afternoon/night in Puno!

So many people! So many amazing costumes and dresses!

Photos taken by Nicole! 

Las niñas :)

We made piñatas with the girlies! 

Some pictures from English class and play time. :)

Playing "sin sillas" in our English class!

Lil' Camila!

If you feel inclined, please vote for this photo Mike took during our volunteer project in Quito, Ecuador. If we get the most votes by the end of February, we will get our registration fee covered for a future volunteer program through IVHQ, which will help us out a ton. Here's the site: https://www.volunteerhq.org/volunteer-photo-competition/alicia-shannon/esperanza 

After clicking "vote now" you'll receive a confirmation email, and can then vote once a week this month. We really appreciate your support! 

Arequipa & Cañon del Colca

We had a great weekend about 10 hours south of Cuzco in Arequipa! Arequipa is known as the white city, because the colonial buildings are all made of the white volcanic sillar rock. It was beautiful in the plaza at sunset with the cathedral lit up! We spent a day in the city, and the next day we went on a tour of the Colca Canyon, which was breathtaking and cannot be shown for all its glory in photos.

Arequipa at sunset...

The Colcan Canyon is actually the deepest canyon in the world--it beats the Grand Canyon! We left for the tour at 3 in the morning, knowing that it would take us about a 3 hours drive in the high Andean plateau to get us to the canyon. We all fell asleep, and woke up at 5 in the morning to snow! We were totally not expecting this and it was so awesome! We were at the high point of about 5,000 meters above sea level called Pata Pampa. You could see a pretty good view of the volcanoes in the distance, and just a lot of flat land covered in snow!

Then we were on our way to the village of Chivay. On our way, we learned a lot of interesting things about the ancient indigenous cultures of this region before the Incas. One big difference between these indigenous cultures and the Incas is they believed the mountains were gods, not the sun. They would even purposefully shape their heads to be flat at the top, or pointy at the top to resemble their gods, the mountains, since they believed they descended from them. The only way they could do this was to start shaping their heads as infants! Nowadays since Incan influence, they wear hats to represent the mountains the same way, just not as extreme. We also learned about the food that they would cultivate and prepare, like different kinds of potatoes, quinoa, corn, and wheat. The meat they would eat was alpaca or cuy (guinea pig) meat. These villages nowadays thrive mostly on tourism, but farming is still very important!

We ate breakfast in the village, and took some photos of the beautiful view. A little girl was "photobombing" our pictures so that she could get tips with her traditional outfit and her baby lamb. We found out afterwards back in the van that the little girl was actually a boy! In the past, boys would have to dress up as girls in order to sneak in as a suitable match for an important young lady. Sneaky sneaky!

After breakfast, we stopped a couple more times to take in the beautiful scenery, and then we arrived at el Cañon del Colca! It was amazing! We also saw some huge condor birds perched; unfortunately they weren't interested in flying for us! After the Canyon, we headed to some hot springs, but we decided to eat our lunch instead since we weren't prepared to swim. On our way back to Arequipa, we learned about the difference between llamas and Alpacas (llamas are much taller), and stopped by to see a ton of them grazing on the land! Mike tried to get close to them, but they weren't interested in a photo shoot!

El Cañon del Colca...Check out the video below too!

The condors!

Mike and the Canyon!

Alpaca bums...