Open your hearts, and mind

These past few days in Cuzco and surrounding regions have been nothing short than incredible. We have the best guide in the world, whose name is Percy :) he comes from the Quechua iwi who are one of the Indigenous peoples of this area. They have their reo, values, religion and culture still intact, despite the Spanish conquer in the 16th century

Day 4: Cuzco is a beautiful place. Cobble stone roads and ancient buildings, temples, churches and ruins. It's clear to see the Spanish influence here over the Indigenous Inca Capital. Altitude here is 3200 metres, which made us feel instantly nauseaus and woozy! Walking around the town and eating lunch, shopping and sightseeing helped with the acclimatisation process. We met our tour group that we'll be living with for the next week who are a combination of couples, sisters and solo travellers from Scotland, Austria, Canada, Australia and US! We are the only Native/Indigenous people in the group, so have instantly warmed up to our guide, Percy.

Day 5: Can't quite believe that we've only been away from home for 5 days! Feels like months already! Today started with an early pick up and drive to Ccaccaccollo (a small community in the Sacred Valley who have a textile and weaving project). We spent the morning here hearing about how they make their beautiful colourful blankets, bags, scarves, hats etc. It was such a privilege to hang out with this Indigenous community and hear about how they've resisted Westernisation and Catholicism. Their weaving project helps to bring some economy into the community and our tour company contributes by building a weaving house, and working with the whanau to bring in visitors to learn about the weaving project and purchase their taonga. I just wish we had a second bag on this trip... could only afford (space wise) an alpaca scarf and a small texttile blanky.

We then moved onto Pisaq, a cute as little town at the bottom of these amazing man made terraces. They were built by the Inca's as reinforcement for the mountains. The Inca's would build and settle their communities on top of the Andes mountains, rather than at the bottom (close to the river) so that the river banks would be used primarily for crops. The terraces act as reinforcements incase of erosion and have doubled as irrigation. Amazzzzzzing.

Their houses and urupa are all built with stone that have been carried great distances from quarries. The architecture is 500-600 years old. Many were ruined during the Spanish conquer, their urupa were raided as their tupapaku were buried with gold and silver which were stolen. Hearing of the histories from Percy has made us so emotional and pouri, as we come from a similar place of struggle. 9 million Indigenous people of Peru were killed during the Spanish conquer...

 

We visited another amazing place called Ollantaytambo, which is where we stayed the night. They have huge mountains surrounding this community which a large temple was built (but not finished) along with terraces, houses, and structures built into the mountain side. A great story was shared about the man Ollantaytambo (a commoner) who was the right hand man to the King Pachacuti.

So much ancient history, we feel so lucky and privileged to be here and give honour and respect to the tangata whenua, their awa, whenua, maunga, reo, tikanga me nga kawa. Most of the ruins we are seeing on our tour are of the Incas, but there are many other Indigenous peoples (51) and their unique histories, stories and wahi tapu in these areas and in Peru.

Day 6: It's about to begin. The great hike to Machu Picchu... excited, nervous, humbled and privileged.

Will be sure to write our thoughts down and take photos to share this incredible experience with you our whanau, and post more blogs upon our return in 4 days time.

Our guide, Percy asked us to do one thing on this tour; open our hearts and open our minds to the incredible history and Native people who we will hear about and visit during this haerenga... We're ready

 

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