Day 3 of Tour of Peru - Weavers and Dyers from Chincero

Tour of Peru

June 15-28, 2010

I figure that the easiest way to document this trip is to start from their itinerary and add my own comments, observations, and pictures. My stuff is in black.  Theirs is in blue.

Day 3/June 17: Meeting and seminar.  Later, for those who wish, hike up into the mountains on a trail to see the majestic mountains and the ancient Incan terraces still being used to this day.  Truly, the Apus continues to bless this place of inner peace and nourishment. Or, take the rest of the day to relax, journal or shop.

Time during this trip was very fluid.  It was impossible to keep track of the days – we just went where we were told when we were told.  It was wonderful.  There was a national strike the “first two days” we were there.  Apparently natural gas was discovered in Peru and the people were protesting the government’s plan to sell it away from Peru.  So some of our stay got rearranged because the bus drivers were concerned about damage to the buses and the PowerPlaces people were concerned about the potential damage to the travelers.

Because of the strike, we could not go to Chincero as listed for day 4, but on day 3, the weavers of Chincero came to the monastery and gave us a spinning, weaving, and dying demonstration.  One of the amazing things is that the woman conducting the demonstration showed us how they clean the wool.  She took a small bowl of water, and grated a root over it.  Then she strained the water through a reed bowl which acted as a sieve.  Then she “fluffed” the water, which made amazing suds!

  

Grating "Soap" Root into Water.

     

Soapy Water in Bowl.

Look at the colors of the wool in the first picture.  Marlena showed us the herbs, insects, and other stuff used to get those colors.  (I have tons of pictures of those if you are interested!)  The man holding the bowl is Walter, our Fairy Godmother.  If we needed anything, Poof!  Walter would get it for us!  (Rooms, food, water, porters, transportation!  All with amazing good grace, gentleness and humor!)  And here is the result of swishing a hank of wool straight from the sheep, llama, or alpaca (I can’t remember which) for just a few seconds in the water.

Clean Hank of Wool.

We did take our hike up into the mountains and saw fantastic scenery, rushing mountain stream, sacred steps where women are supposed to go up the left side of the steps and men the right side.  Don’t know why these steps were here.  They didn’t seem to be part of anything in particular…

Sacred Steps.

Along about this time, I realized that it would probably be a good idea to get a copy of the pictures being taken by a professional photographer who will be selling us his CD of photos after he gets back and edits them.  He took about 1500 pictures!  I don’t know how many we’ll get, but am sure they’ll be better than mine.  So there will be fewer pics in the rest of this narrative as I only took things that were of particular interest to me.  (And I had already OD’d on scenery!)