Day 5...Cusco and Lamay District Villages

While we were visiting the outlying villages in Peru, we stayed in a major city, Cusco. I was a crowded, yet beautiful city definitely influenced by Spanish architecture.
One of the mornings Jacob got up early and took a hike with a few other people from our group to a point overlooking Cusco. This is a shot he took of Cusco in the early morning...

Another shot he took, a rare site to see, an almost deserted alley way...

On our fifth day, after rising early we headed up to a daycare center above the city. The daycare center was built by the surrounding neighborhood for the poor workers to drop their children off before they leave to work. There was one problem with the center... it was by a very busy street and there was no fence or wall to contain the children. Several children had died because of this, so they asked Hope Projects to supply the materials to build a wall around the center. We were there to dedicate the finished wall. It was impressive and most of the work had been done by the mothers.

Our next stop was a water system that needed to be dedicated, which should have been a quick stop since it was outside of a village and there wasn't going to be any type of real ceremony, but things didn't quite go according to plan. Our large 30+ passenger bus wasn't able to make it on the narrow road that lead to the site, so after backing back down the mountain (this was when I would have preferred to get off and walk) our driver turned the bus into a field to try to cut across it. We got about half way when our rear tires got lodged in a ditch. Villagers came to our rescue and tried many methods to get the bus out, including throwing rocks, sticks and straw under the tire, using a rope and small truck to pull it out, and finally brought a tractor from a nearby field to help pull us out. After about an hour we were free and ready to not try that again.
Our third stop was this village in the Lamay district where there were several schools and a bathroom and they had taken the initiative to start building the structure for a room where they could teach the older kids some sell-able skills, but needed help to acquire some more materials to complete it. The whole village was out and they were going to have a big feast. I think the ladies in the picture above were roasting a whole cow along with some corn and potatoes...yum!

an old lady watching the festivities.
it's always the children that touch me the most...

but I love this smiling mother.
Here two school boys are performing a dance.

and these three girls danced along with them.
Looking at the village. The nicer blue building on the left is the secondary school.

Some fields on the side of the hills. They really farm wherever.
This man wanted to take Jacob to his house to show him his Guinea pigs and home that he was very proud of.

and of course a trip to Peru wouldn't be complete without a good game of soccer. After challenging us, the Peruvians were very intense and came out to the field with full uniforms on. And the Americans were...winded to say the least. It was a close game, but I'm pretty sure that even with having 3 goalies, we still lost.
Bradley