Friday, March 18: Cusco

Today we head back to Cusco, but with several interesting stops along the way.  After a nice breakfast and checking out of the hotel, we loaded back into our tour bus and headed back to Cusco, but via a different route than we came.  It was an interesting ride, seeing all the different fields and towns and even a few local people dressed in traditional clothing as a normal thing, not for a special occasion or attraction for tourists.

3810 This guy was watching us as much as we were watching him.

We went through a number of towns where there was a lot of construction activity: it appeared that this part of Peru was experiencing a significant boom.  Part of the reason was the new airport being built nearby to the town of Chinchero to replace the congested Cusco airport.

Either in or close to Chinchero we made our first planned stop at a shop of “Weavers”.  There are many small groups of weavers throughout Peru, mostly women, making thread or yarn from Alpaca or Lama fur, then weaving it into beautiful cloths and finished items.  Our stop was at a building with weavers to demonstrate their trade and sell their products. 

3825 Inside the shop, some of the dyed Alpaca yarn

One lady leading the demonstration spoke very good English and made the whole event both educational and interesting.  Once the fur or wool was cleaned and combed, it is spun by hand into thread or yarn, as 4130 demonstrated in this video.

One amazing feature was the kinds of local items that they used to make dyes of many different colors.

3830  Items on the floor are dye making materials.

When the various plants or insects were crushed and mixed with water, they make very effective dyes.  The red comes from tiny beetle-like insects that live in cactus.

3855  Dying some Alpaca yarn

All the time the demonstration was going on, one woman continued to weave a cloth into an intricate pattern. 

3860  I don’t think I ever saw her face.

They also had a sense of humor.  Listen carefully to what the lady says about the bone in 4145 this video.  At least, I think it was humor.  It appeared that the primary building block that they produced was a woven cloth about 18 inches wide and perhaps 10 feet long.  This could either be sold and used in that form, or combined with other similar sized items to make a much larger cloth.  It takes a weaver about three months to make one of these basic pieces.  One use of these pieces is to wrap up their infants so that they can be easily carried while the woman does other chores or weaves. 

3880 Amazingly, the baby seemed to sleep through the whole demonstration.

After all this “entertainment”, we had to buy something, so we purchased a piece of cloth of Alpaca wool with a beautiful pattern done in natural colors: no dyes.

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