Cuzco Trip part 1

Wow. This is going to be a difficult post to write, simply because so much has happened in the past two weeks! I'll start by saying that our trip to Cuzco was amazing. We not only went to Machu Picchu and other Inkan Ruins, we drove through mountains, hiked through the jungle, saw the most amazing night sky I'll probably ever see, ate potatoes, and oof, so much more!

Our trip began with a few nights in Andahuaylillas, which is a pretty small town in the mountains. We spent the first day relaxing and acclimating to the altitude. The next day we visited a few old churches, from the days of Spanish conquest. We couldn't really take pictures inside, but the images on the walls were beautifully painted. Here's a picture of one that's being restored.

The next day, a group of us decided to climb one of the nearby mountains before we moved on to Ocongate. We got up pretty early in the morning and managed to hike pretty high up, stopping a few times along the way for breakfast and photo ops. Here is a photo of the mountain we hiked:

We climbed all the way to the letters, here's the view:

After spending one night in Ocongate, we separated into two groups. My group went to Quincemil, which is over the mountains in the high jungle. We spent the day driving, stopping for a few hours in a mountain village learning how to use a knitting machine, loom, how to throw a pot, and then got to paint them! Unfortunately, my camera's batteries died pretty early in the day, and I could not find batteries ANYWHERE! that worked. During our stay in Quincemil, we conducted a few interviews with people in the town about the impact of the new highway (the Interoceanica) that runs from Peru into Brazil. The next morning, we left for a "four-hour hike" in the jungle, to go see an Artesinal Gold Mining area. I wrote that in quotes because, due to the conditions of our terrain, we were hiking for seven hours in total. Our trail was extremely muddy and by the time we got to the mine, our feet were weighed down by lots and lots of mud. We walked back along a riverbed, so we were able to get a lot of it off, but since we were in two groups, the second group bought boots before they set out. I'm in the green and black:

After the hike, we cleaned up and returned to Ocongate for a few nights, until the other group caught up. I will post later today/this week about part 2!