The Sacred Valley

My students finally arrived. Ross and I spent an evening in Cusco in preparation for their arrival, and both had a difficult time sleeping that night. I woke up at four o´clock in the morning, restless, the wheels inside my head turning fast, imagining what the coming weeks would bring. I was happy that I arrived in Peru ten days before they arrived. I felt prepared and able to share my adventures and introduce them to Peru.

The guys were exhausted when they arrived, and we quickly transported them to a bus, and began to make our way to Ollantaytambo and the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Several passed out immediately, and the others stared wide eyed out the windows as the impressive landscape spread itself on the pallete of a brand new world.

We stopped the bus, a half mile short of Ollantaytambo and hopped out amidst towering Andean peaks, to catch our first glimpse of the extensive network of Incan aquaducts, and ceremoniously pass through the stone arch on the way into town.

Our hostel hosted gorgeous arrangements of various types of local botany, and a small lawn sat nestled in open air courtyard. In the center of the courtyard stood an immediately popular game, where players take turns throwing a series of gold coins in the air, attempting to land them on a small table with different sized holes, earning different amounts of points depending on where the coins land. In the center of the table sat a golden frog, with a wide open mouth. Sending a gold coin into the frog´s mouth almost guarntees an immediate win.

We walked into town for breakfast, and began to debrief the students on life in Ollantaytambo, Peru, and eventually their homestays in Chilca. Our project starts on Monday, la dia de independencia for Peru, a national holiday. Over the next two weeks we will finish a guinea pig farm, and construct a school cafeteria out of adobe bricks. The guys are an adventurous bunch, and I imagine this experience has the power to change their lives.

This morning we toured the Sun Temple, Incan ruins lying directly outside Ollantaytambo. The people in town still farm with the aquaducts built by the Incas several hundred years ago. I began work on a film I intend to create for the World Leadership School, highlighting the experience of the Landon students, and a documentary style account of what this trip has to offer schools back home.

Email and phone contact will be much more sparse over the next few weeks, but every few days, a few guys will head from Chilca back to Ollantaytambo to write an update on the trip and post it on the web.

I was able to bargain for a few items in the town square this afternoon, a few suprises for folks at home. It was a great transition moving from solo travel, back into the role of teacher and mentor, but I welcomed it wholeheartedly. The experience is truly a fantastic imagination of colors, cultures, hopes, and dreams, etched into ancient walls, and stretched across quiet blue skies and deep green fields.