Hola Amigos,
I am in the town of Ollantaytambo, a bustling hub for visitors headed to Machu Picchu (MP) by train or bus. I visited M.P. last week with my bike tour and can understand now why it is one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Photos soon!
I returned to Ollantay (an hour away from Cusco) two days ago via adventure taxi ride on rocky road. Today, in an hour, I join a small group of merchants from a fair trade organization. We will travel higher up in the mountains to visit the small town of Patacancha. The women there make traditional weavings and I look forward to learning how they make the gorgous materials.
The others will return to Ollantay. I have opted to spend the night there with a local family. I have been advised to bring a sleeping bag, for warmth and flea protection, but I don´t have one. I will have my back pack stuffed with warm clothes. I will spend the night there and eat with the family for 60 soles, which is about 20 dollars. I will also present them with a bag of cane sugar, which is highly prized.
I won´t be back online for a few days. I also have a whole batch of emails that I wrote to many of you that I can´t send for the time being due to technical issues here. At least the electricity is back on today after a series of planned day long outages on Thursday and Friday. I was told that the electricity had to be on today so locals could watch futbol games on the handful of tvs here.
