mucho trabajo

let´s catch you up to speed on this week which is essentially our last week of production: today is our last offical day at the musuem and we´ve spent most of this week shooting around ollantatambo, conducting final interviews and getting lots of shots of activity and locations around town. we spent some time with a scottish woman named louisa who has lived in town for several years and has started a group called ¨leap local¨(http://www.leaplocal.org/) that helps travelers connect to guides, housing, etc themseleves instead of going through a travel agency. we also spent some more time with joaquin randall at the albergue, the hotel that his parents opened when they settled in ollantaytambo (http://www.elalbergue.com/en/). we talked about the history of the place, his own history, and his run on the mayoral ticket in the last election. we´ve also continued our filming of lucho at the musuem and his peruvian pottery process.

we´ve done a bit of traveling as well. on sunday we went with albizu and the other CATCCO volunetters, bill and michelle, to a festivasl in moray celebrating the inka new year. albizu´s family lives in the neighboring town of maras and we stopped by their house, had some tea and met his grandfather. at moray we watched what must have been a four hour ceremony in the round inka terraces that have made moray famous.

after moray, we headed to salineras, a site of active salt mining. needless to say it was like another world with its salt pools terraced in a narrow valley. albizu found a long salt pipe-like tube, broke off a piece for himself which he held in his mouth like a cigarette and gave the rest to me. it´s good luck to receive one of them, he told me. i thanked him. it broke a few minutes later.
tuesday afternoon we headed to cuzco and met with klever at his office. we talked a bit there and found out that there is going to be an anti-protest protest in cuzco on saturday to make the protesting teachers and their supporters aware of the effects of their methods of protesting on the economy and on the tourism industry in particular. afterwards we met up with albizu and another scottish woman, fiona, who has a travel agency in cuzco, which klever´s brother just happens to work for (http://ecotrekperu.com/index.html), and who also does a bit of work with sonia from hearts cafe. we treated ourselves to a fancy dinner at an italian restaurant right off the plaza de armas that raphael had recommended to us. we had salad with arugula (which i have missed very much) and some of the best pasta ever.

it was back to ollantaytambo yesterday with albizu in tow. chris and albizu headed straight to patacancha and huiloc for one last visit and will be returning this afternoon. we´ll then finish up our filming and our work at the museum and probably begin saying our goodbyes.

tomorrow we will (finally) be going to machu picchu, saturday to cuzco and then sunday we will begin some serious (but fun) traveling. first stop: lake titicaca.

more photos up: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mayamumma/sets/72157601044243609/