How time flies!
Lourdes and I have now lived in Sauce for over ten years and have just got back from Cusco and the Sacred Valley where we went to participate in a southern hemisphere winter Solstice gathering in the small town of Taray. This was where we lived back in 2006 when we first met and married. In the photo above taken on our second day I am chewing coca leaves to counteract the strange effects of altitude which in Cusco is over 11,000 ft.
It was wonderful and slightly surreal to be back there after so many years. There has been much building of houses and businesses and the children of Lourdes' Waldorf education class are now young adults. Here's Tika who I remember as a 7-year old and is now studying chemistry at the university. She is soon to fly to the US for further studies.
And here's Lourdes back at Ulrike's Cafe in Pisac, home of the best carrot cake in Peru.
Our hotel on the Plaza de Armas in Pisac.
Lourdes at the new crafts market in Pisac.
Here is the bonfire that kept us warm as we stayed up all night in the open air at 10,000 feet on the longest night of the year accompanied by music and traditional dances by many indigenous groups from all over Peru including the famous and fabulous scissors dancers of Ayacucho.
And here is Joel, another former Waldorf student from the Kusi Kawsay school, showing us his organic garden from which he supplies many local hotels and restaurants and whose water supply is an astronomical pool carved out by the Incas.
Some of our ex-students are now black belt karate champions, some of whom have been on the Peruvian national team.
We stayed two nights with our friends Sergey and Mercedes Baranov in the town of Calca at their natural medicine center called Huachuma Wasi.
We spent our last day visiting the city of Cusco with its curious mix of colonial and Inca architecture. I had a Guinness at the highest Irish pub in the world.
