30 Oct Voyages culturels: Peru
This October, a team of twelve Rosey adventurers grabbed their back-packs and headed to Peru: the great land that sustained the Inca civilisation. Twenty hours later, confronting altitude sickness at 4,000 metres above sea level, making our way through numerous boxed lunches and without wireless signal (tough conditions), we at last arrived at the awe-inspiring Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas. Also on the trip’s itinerary were the ruins of Sacsayhuaman, the floating islands of Uros on Lake Titicaca, and pre-Inca tombs in Sillustani. Along the way we fed llamas and vicuñas, shopped at traditional street markets, saw breeding places for guinea pigs, sampled Maras salt from Inca salt pools, hiked and rode on trains, planes, boats and buses.
Activities aside, one of our principal aims for the trip was to visit a primary school in the agricultural Urubamba valley, one of the poorest places in Peru almost entirely sustained on agriculture and farming. Throughout the weeks before, we had been selling brownies to students and teachers at Rosey, and used the 820 dollars raised to buy a range of school supplies, sport and art equipment to take to the primary school. We loved being with the children inside and outside their classroom, exchanging knowledge and games and sharing in their own local culture; saying goodbye was a difficult moment for us and a piece of our hearts stayed with the children of that school.
