An Andean Adventure

My family and I returned this week from an epic trip to Peru… It had been a little while since we had done a properly adventurous trip, life just kept getting in the way. As it turned out, we ended up planning this experience somewhat spontaneously only a couple of weeks earlier.

This trip was cleansing, grounding and joyful- beginning with the most gentle people mixed in with unreal landscapes, insane colours, and ancient history.

We landed in Cusco, the second largest city in Peru with an altitude of 11,500 feet (yikes!)- it took us several days to catch our breath. Since we are not fond of guided tours, my husband took over and we hired a car. We spent our days with overnight detours and day trips, fully self guided and allowing us to get delightfully lost.
In some instances, the villages and mountains we explored were so far off the beaten path that we often ended up with a completely different day than the one we had planned on.
We wandered around the picturesque small towns, chatted with locals, were encircled in llamas, alpacas and vicuñas galore, gazed at the breathtaking views around us, and kept learning about this fascinating culture so unlike any other we are familiar with.

The hikes were very challenging, and in hindsight, perhaps we should have been on a guided tour. During one very challenging hike, there was a very narrow path with a high mountain on one side and a terrifying cliff on the other; I was treading carefully on the cliff side when a Peruvian man saw me and urged me to join the others single file on the mountain side. After climbing and returning back to that same path, we were shocked to see the section I was walking on prior to the warning was entirely gone- in two hours, a mud slide carried that entire section down the cliff!

Just before leaving for the airport on the way home, I was wrapping a gift in a town square near our hotel in Cusco, and a kind Peruvian woman joined me and sat down to help. We began chatting, and she pulled out her makeshift loom and proceeded to demonstrate her ingenious method for weaving on the go, where she was able to create the most intricate patterns effortlessly.
Since I love the manufacturing of everything, this was fascinating and very exciting to watch.

It was such a wonderful and very much needed trip, and it made me so much more excited for the next adventure!