The nature of reality in the Sacred Valley is impermanent and shifting, just as the clouds and mist rise and fall, the rains come and go, and the waterfall behind the house shifts in size based upon the rains.

We heard there would be another paro, or strike, after our return to the casa. Maybe Monday, maybe Wednesday, the first week of school, we heard. We watched and waited, and no paro! We asked for directions to a waterfall above the retreat center in Harin, and were told by 6 different people anywhere from 1/2 hour to 1 1/2 hours, or maybe the waterfall didn’t exist. When walking to town in the evening, there was often a magical moment when the greeting from one of our neighbors would shift from ¨buenas tardes,¨ to ¨buenas noches,¨ and we would know that it was night. Magically, this moment seemed to coincide with the appearance of the lights in Lamay, a 20-minute walk from home.

Writing about my experience of volunteering for a month at the Casa de Milagros (House of Miracles) children’s home feels like attaching permanence to reality, pinning it down to a defined sense of explanation, and I have struggled this past month to put into words my experiences.

Casa de Milagros is nestled in the Sacred Valley, near the Urubamba River which was sacred to the Incan people, as they believed it reflected the Milky Way. (Unfortunately, the Urubamba is now too murky and polluted for drinking or even swimming.) The sides of the valley are comprised of phenomenal tall, green mountains, which are known as Apus, or protector spirits. Wade and I shared a sweet little 2-story cottage, which had a skylight through which we could see the waterfall high above!

Our work consisted mostly of helping in the gardens--weeding, harvesting and occasionally planting (the lush valley has a year-round growing season). We also got to help out in the kitchen, usually peeling potatoes and shelling hava beans. One of our favorite games was sharing new words with the cooks-- they would teach us a word in Quechua, we would teach them the word in English. We would all laugh, and immediately forget what we had just learned. We brought along a Quechua phrasebook, and did manage to learn the traditional greeting.  We didn´t learn as much Quechua as we had hoped, one new language (Spanish) turned out to be enough...

There are 32 children at Casa de Milagros. The youngest is Sol, age 1, with a smile as bright as her name. She is learning to walk, and the older kids all love to help her learn! The oldest is Roberto, who at age 18 goes to school in Cusco during the week, and returns to visit on the weekends. All of them have a past of neglect, abuse, and trauma, with a story that could break your heart. but you wouldn’t know from looking at them. They are full of joy and fun. The oldest boys play soccer and guitar, the older girls knit. The younger boys love trucks and bugs and the little girls dolls and dressing up. All help to cook and clean. The children returned to school one week after our volunteering started. Our favorite time of the day became homework time, when all the kids would sit at the long table in the kitchen, with the older kids and the moms helping the younger ones.

Luz Marina, the oldest girl, passed away at age 16, a month before our arrival due to complications from lupus. Apparently, only one doctor in all of Cusco even knows what lupus is! Life in the Valley is so close to death, and the people in the neighboring pueblos depend on Kia, Alan, and Marie when a member of their family is sick, or in emergency situation such as the time a landslide covered the neighboring people. Alan told us, ¨There’s no 911 here.¨
One of the other volunteers arrived the night of Luz Marina´s passing, and joined the funeral procession across the bridge to town. We witnessed the lingering tiredness and sadness in Kia and Alan, and in a few of the older girls who had been closest to Luz Marina.    What grief can compare to the loss of a child?

One of my greatest teachers was Rut, who spent 24 hours a day, five days a week, with Urpi, a girl with autism and mental retardation. Rut was so patient and kind with Urpi. Rut also is an amazing painter and crochet-er, she uses the wool from the alpacas and llamas that her family raiser. She talks often of the importance of patience, and it shows in her handicrafts, and time with Urpi. Rut has a teaching degree, but wants to get a degree for working with special needs children as well. One of my happiest moments was when Urpi lifted her arms up to me for a hug, and when I lifted her up, she wrapped her arms around my neck so tightly and laughed and laughed.

At one point in our stay, there were 8 volunteers (!), and it was hard not to become lost in our world of English and familiar culture. The number dropped to 5, then 4. We visited the local Choclo festival in Huayabamba, with ears of corn, popcorn, corn beer... We had several movie nights, and made sure we all had access to vegetarian food options. One day we rode the combi to drop the kids off at school, and continued on to help with the market day. On the ride, one lady handed us our daily milk supply, in a 2-liter bottle. Another woman passed in a big bag of corn, which we gave to the avocado and plantain lady at the market. The moms walked back and forth in the market, negotiating for kilos of fruit, dried goods, and meat. Perhaps the meat counter was the most interesting, a part of the market I usually avoid. Axes, saws in use, a lady leaning against a slab of meat while a little boy kept poking another with his finger. The piece of meat which seemed to be the anus, and was later gone, perhaps bought up as a delicacy?

One highlight of our volunteering was several days spent at the Hanaq Pacha retreat center. Kia created this center for visiting yoga groups, as a way to raise money for the kids, and also to create jobs for them when they grow up. It is amazingly tranquil, underneath a waterfall in its own little valley off the sacred valley. We practiced yoga, worked in the garden, did some work towards a new water fixture off the patio, and ate many fresh organic salads.

Ana Sonqo, who we met at the start of our Sacred Valley journey, is starting a center for women above Kia´s property. Called Quilla Uno, moon water, it is named after the waterfall above the land. The town below, Harin, has a huge problem with alcohol, and Ana and her partner Luna seek to help the women of the town. Their first plan is to build a community bread oven, as the women all currently head to Calca to buy white bread. They would use traditional grains like quinua, coca, and amaranth to bake bread for the community. Ana told us about the Apus of this little valley, that the divine feminine and masculine are embracing this place. We camped on her land for the fall equinox, creating a ritual under the near-full moon in this sacred place.

In our last week at Casa de Milagros, we were treated to a hike to the waterfall above by Seth, who is 8. We didn’t make it all the way, but he pointed out which fruits to eat or avoid, a baby bird in its nest, an old Inca wall, and a hole that supposedly a campesino fell into, and died, after yelling for days about the Inca gold he found. (Several people we talked to wanted us to return to look for the Inca gold with them, in the valley...). On Good Friday, we partook of a feast of 12 traditional dishes, 6 sweet and 6 salty, that the kids had helped to prepare. On Saturday, we had the kids decorate Easter eggs with markers, paint, and glitter. (An extensive search in 2 local towns found neither plastic eggs nor food coloring, but no one minded). Easter Sunday, we set up an Easter egg hunt. We were down to 50 eggs from the original 75, but the kids kept the hunt going and going by re-hiding the eggs! I dressed as the Easter bunny, and another woman painted my face (photos to come). Of course, everyone was delighted with the chocolates we had bought as well... that day for lunch we had pizzas the older boys cooked in a barrel oven, and then were invited to attend the end-of-soccer-season party at the field in the neighboring pueblo. There was chicha and beer, and a bonfire. I danced several times with a man and once with him and his wife, and then with a group of small girls...It was the dance party I had been hoping for, an unexpected delightful parting gift...

 We had a slight brush against hardship, that at times the phones or internet were down, for several days there was no gas for the stove and all the cooking was done on the fire (which is used almost daily, when big pots of soup are made), for about a week we had to wade through water up to our knees to get to town. We also confronted our own expectations, weaknesses, doubts, and fears about our experience. We learned so much about running an organization abroad, a dream of ours-- how hard it really is to subsistence farm, that it is essential to be fluent in the language of the country where you are working, how hard it is to get around the legalities, and the difficulties of hiring local people.

I feel my heart has grown wider and more open, for having known these children, this family. I am so glad to have gotten to know them, to see their shining lights, and will carry them all with me. The Casa, as we grew to call it, is short on funds, as so many other honorable non-profits, and I carry also with me the hope to connect them with additional funding.

After leaving our month of rural life in a children´s home, we returned to the very cosmopolitan and tourist-oriented  Cusco, where we enjoyed passion-fruit pisco sours and chocolate-mint daiquiris in a bar called ¨Fire and Ice,¨ which would be at home in New York City.  Very modern, artsy decor with bathrooms decorated to match heaven and hell, and glass-covered bathtubs for tables.  We also got to attend the theatrical production of Kusikay theater company´s ¨Chaska-una historia andina.¨¨ The multi-media production included dance, aerial dance, music, and told the story of some of the peoples of Peru, both pre- and post- Incan. One of the performers, a colorful mystical bird, actually was one of the first theater directors at Casa de Milagros, and we met him and his family when they were visiting during Easter weekend.  How could we not go, knowing one of the performers?  We were enchanted, and delighted as well for the English translations projected on a screen!

From Cusco, it was time to move on, first to Puno, across the border into Bolivia and on to Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca.  Muy tranquilo, a touristy little beach town with Bolivian prices (much cheaper than Peru!) From Copacabana, it is a short boat ride to Isla del Sol, which according to various legends is the birthplace of the first Incans, Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, the supreme Incan deity Wiracocha, and even the sun itself!  We walked across a high ridge across the island, exposed to the intense sun and wind, exploring the Incan ruins and the sacred rock from which the lake takes its name (Titi Khar´ka-Rock of the Puma). We found a beautiful beach for our third (!) dip in Lake Titicaca... We stayed in a sweet little hostel just outside of the island´s biggest town, with an amazing view of the sunset over the lake.

Back in Copacabana, we spent a morning watching the bizarre spectacle of the car blessings that take place in the plaza outside the Cathedral.  The black Virgen de Candelaria (whose statue appears as porcelain white as the virgin of the candelaria in Puno) is known for her miracles, and her blessings of vehicles has become the most popular form of car insurance in Bolivia!  We saw brand new cars from Peru and La Paz in the plaza.  All are doused with pure alcohol on the tires and engine, as well as car body, fireworks are lit underneath, and they are decorated with beautiful wreaths of flowers.  Afterwards, the entire family sits around and drinks any of the leftover blessing alcohol and beers.  Several times riding combis in Bolivia we have seen vehicles with banners stating they have the blessings of the Virgin of the Candelaria.

From Copacabana, it is a 3-4 hour bus ride to La Paz.  As we entered town, we dropped people off in various locations around El Alto, the mostly-indigenous city which has grown on the upper outskirts of town-- the city with the highest Aymara population in the world.  Luckily we had been spending time at altitude, as the 14,000 foot elevation was not too much of a shock to our systems!  We set out to find a hostel, after the advertised "Adventure Brew Hostel" (attached to the world´s highest micro-brewey) was full.  We found the rooms in the Happy Days hostel acceptable, if a bit pricey.  We asked the woman at the desk if there was hot water, and she turned on the electric shower to show us how well it worked.  Unfortunately, the fire that sparked out of the shower head detracted from our impression of the hostel!  We left, doubled over in laughter... and we were reassured the next day as we walked by and saw the doors open for business that the fire had not spread.  For us, the food in La Paz is one of the greatest attractions-- there are street vendors everywhere selling bread, juices, empanadas.  The ¨comedors¨¨ sell cheap coffees and sandwiches.  We also sampled Indian and Middle Eastern food. While the curry was great, the chai left something to be desired... 

 We left La Paz for Coroico, a sleepy little town in the cloud forest.  When we bought our bus tickets, the woman told us the bus was about to leave, but we ended up spending almost 2 hours sitting in the bus waiting for it to leave. (Almost doubling the actual 2.5 hour ride!) Once we got started, we stopped to pick up several large (50 kg) bags of concrete, to transport them to another location on the way out of town!   We have marvelled at the amount of food people buy before and during bus rides, in Peru as well--even for such a short ride!  We were excited to find a woman selling outside the bus window plato paceño, a ¨typical¨ vegetarian La Paz dish--that we couldn´t find in any of the city´s markets!  It consists of hava beans, small potatoes of 2 varieties, the popular large-kernel choclo corn, and a piece of fried Andean cheese. What unbelievable cloud forest! The winding, mountainous road from La Paz to Coroico is breath-takingly scenic.  The ¨world´´s most dangerous road¨¨ (so called due to the number of fatalities, due to the narrow-ness of the road--one bus had to pull onto the cliff to let the other pass, and the number of land-slides) luckily has been replaced with a newer, safer road quite recently.  Now you can mountain-bike down the old road for a souvenir T-shirt that you survived the most dangerous road... we opted for the bus, though Wade was interested in the bike ride.  

Coroico is very much of the cloud forest--- all or part of 3 of the 4 days we spent there it was shrouded in clouds and rain.  We were surprised that a town with a reputation for attracting tourists has little infrastructure for tourism--not even a single tour agency in town, though a number of agencies start a boat ride to the jungle in Coroico!  We ended up having to call La Paz to book our trip from Coroico to the jungle!

We left Coroico at 9 in the morning for a bouncy jeep ride along the side of a cliff.  "This road is very dangerous, you must drive on the left side so you know how close to the edge your tires are," explained our driver, as we listened to a mix of ´70´s and 80´s American music... At one point a group of people called us to stop, as they looked down at the bottom.  A truck had slid off the road in the rain the night before, you could see where the earth gave way and the tire tracks went down... there were footprints outside the truck, apparently the driver had survived.  Yet another reminder of the perils of travelling this road, though I have surrendered myself into the trust that many people drive safely on these roads often...  

We stopped in a town named Caranavi for a lunch that ended with fried plantains, and Wade bought 10 avocados for around $1... We drove several more hours to Guanay, where we met up with our boat for the ride down the Kaka and Beni Rivers.  We stopped briefly in a town filled with shack tiendas (stores), one offering dynamite... and headed down the river.  Just before we left, we saw a man float by on what looked like an inflated sack, with a paddle.  He waved, as obviously this was his choice and not the result of capsizing... We saw many people searching for gold along the rivers, living in makeshift shacks of bamboo and tarps.  We camped on a beach along the river, with a bonfire made of driftwood at night.  

The second day on the boat took us to a small indigenous community named El Carmen, which consisted of 5 families. We had an introductory walk in the jungle, and got to try the ever-popular tourist activity of piranha fishing, which our indigenous guide succeeded at, and the rest of us faltered.  I abstained, catch-and-release fishing to me seems un-necessarily harmful to the animals. One little girl, around age 7, was so curious about me and Celeste, the other woman on the trip... touching our hair, our jewelry, enchanted by Celeste´s dreadlocks.  We tourists slipped as much food as we could to the community´s dogs, the skinniest by far we´ve seen.  Hiking at night we learned that flashlights catch the eyes of spiders, and were amazed at how many we could see!  The third day of our trip we stopped for a hike in the Madidi National Park, which was only set aside for preservation in 1995!  We were introduced to a ¨walking tree¨¨, which has its roots above ground, and can move as much as 12cm in a year to seek out the elusive jungle light. We also had our first opportunity to taste cacao fruit--orange on the outside, white and juicy on the inside around the cacao seeds.  I was amazed by the size of the bare feet of the man who cut the fruits down from us... he truly looked at home in the jungle.  (We also marvelled at the feet of the indigenous people in the Altiplano, who wear sandals year-round, their feet attaining the rough appearance of hooves...)    

Rurrenebaque, or Rurre, as it is called for short... the Spanish-ized version of an indigenous Tacana word meaning ravine of the ducks... filled with the roar of motorcycles through town, 90 degrees even at night. We stopped our second night at a touristy pizza restaurant for icy daiquiris and were treated to a rousing Guns and Roses´ Welcome to the Jungle.  Apparently a book in Israel has made Rurre a popular destination for Israeli tourists, and signs in Hebrew outnumber those in English.

We signed up for a 3-day jungle trip through an organization called Mashaquipe, which is run by a community of Tacana people.  After finding themselves exploited by the growing jungle tourism industry, they created their own lodge down the river from their community, and over 30 members of their community--including women--now act as guides.  Our brief stop in the community included an introduction to several new fruits, and Wade got to help our guide Eber push around the giant wooden lever that ran 3 wooden barrels to crush sugar cane for making juice!  Muy rico!  (rich and delicious!)  Our guide Eber was excellent, for the first day Wade and I were the only tourists with him, on the second and third days we were joined by an Australian tourist who guides trips in the rain forest in Northern Australia! Eber introduced us to the medicinal vine of cat´s claw (which is an abundant source of clean water), we saw jaguar scat, heard wild pigs (chancos) in a mud hole.We took a night hike on which we heard numerous frogs, saw fireflies and a small (3-foot) alligator.  We visited a cliff site up river which is home to macaws and parrots, and we watched them flying back around sunset. Eber opened a small coconut to show us the white worms named Tuhey Tuhey, which are good for curing coughs... Do you want to try it, it tastes like coconut?  I did, and it did!  The sounds at night were amazing, the night is alive with insects, and early in the morning, far off howler monkeys--which have different names in each local, so you could ask someone if they have howler monkeys, and they´d say no, as they have their own name for them. The scientific community recently discovered a ¨new¨¨ species of monkey in the park, which of course was always known to the indigenous residents. The lodge is home to a semi-pet spider monkey. A member of the family bought her in a market, so she could have a more natural life.  She is around age 3, and they imagine when she´s ready to mate she´´ll find her own tribe.  All limbs and tail, she is a joy to watch, and I got to feed her a banana.. When we asked Eber about the possibility of encountering wildlife, which can be hard to spot in the jungle---especially in the more-touristed areas, as there is a history of tourists hunting until the park was created--- he told us ¨¨todo es possible, nada es seguro¨´ (everything is possible, nothing is certain). When we booked the tour, the agent told us we´d be eating ¨¨typical food,¨¨ which like on the boat meant lots of pasta and fried bread--though we did also get amazing, real local coffee and hot chocolate--unfortunately we arrived after mango and avocado seasons! A real accomplishment for Wade and me, this marked our first tour all in Spanish!  The jungle was not as hot, rainy, or mosquito-infested as I had feared...

We spent another 3 days on a pampas tour.  I believe the pampas translates roughly into ¨grasslands,¨ but just after the end of the rainy season it was more like a swamp.  We spent much time cruising through the pampas in a boat, observing many birds, monkeys, and alligators, and even glimpsing a capybara, the world´s largest rodent!  A highlight of the trip was the afternoon we watched from the deck of the lodge an alligator eating a black mambo snake, one of the most poisonous in the world!   The other highlight, by far, was swimming with the pink dolphins, one of only 3 or so freshwater dolphin species left in the world!  We also got to head out on an anaconda hunt, wading in water up past our knees while the mosquitos attacked.  Apparently it´s much easier to spot the anacondas in the dry season, and our guide turned back before we got much deeper, for risk of approaching an alligator nest.  The alligators in the pampas are not aggresive to humans, except when they feel their nests are endangered.  We got to partake of the popular tourist attraction of piranha fishing yet again, and the cook fried up our groups´ catch for dinner. We watched the sun set from a bar down the boardwalk from our lodge, where we also spent siesta in hammocks. An interesting discussion around communist politics evolved between Tony, who lived in the Chek republic under communist rule, and Ergun, who is a Turkish fan of Chief Seattle, Che Guevara, Evo Morales, and Hugo Chavez. On our way to and from the pampas we discovered the elusive young coconuts, our first in South America save one pricey one on the streets of La Paz.

From Rurre back to Coroico we embarked upon a crazy long bus ride-- 16 hours over windy dirt roads that either blew dust into the windows or were mud trenches during the rain.  At our lunch stop, we purchasd coca leaves from a group of men who wanted to discuss politics, they oppose George Bush, who used to consume cocaine, yet wants to prohibit coca.  Coca, in its natural form, has been found in the remains of many ancient civilizations.  It has strong spiritual and cultural traditions, and enables people to work through difficult conditions with little rest, food or water!  It enabled us to continue our hike at Machu Picchu after we had run out of food and water. The mines of Potosi would probably not still be running, were it not for the coca that fuels the miners... Coca tea is given to visitors in the Andes, to help transition to the altitude.

We enjoyed a couple of beers for sunset, and I was able to read a bit... though sleep was not easy.  We stopped in a small town for dinner--unless I am mistaken its name is ¨52¨--where we found the most amazing dark chocolate wrapped in plain almost leaf-like paper. We arrived at the traffic post outside Coroico at 4am, not finding the fleets of taxis that the bus ticket salesman had promised, nor the cheap hostels our book recommended.  We did finally get one very overpriced taxi to town, where we futilely knocked on hostel doors. There was a sweet older woman selling empanadas, who recommended one hostel after another until finally at 6am we landed...

In Coroico we had a sweet little cabin at the Sol y Luna hostel where we had stayed before... definitely our favorite romantic, peaceful retreat of the whole trip!  The grounds have 2 pools, amazing views, trails above the hostel, a yoga space, a propane-heated hot tub ¨tina caliente¨, and gardens lush with flowers, banana trees, citrus trees... We were able to cook our own food for the first time in over a month!  Our second day, we took a beautiful hike to 3 waterfalls outside of town!  On the way back, we took the road, and finally caught a combi to town, again with the blessings of the Virgen of the Candelaria...

Back in La Paz, we struggled through a sleepless night with the return of city traffic and that 14,000 foot altitude... luckily we know where to get cheap coffee in this town!  Our last day, completing all of our touristic tasks... walking almost a mile in our quest for vegetarian salteñas--pastries stuffed with a juicy stew, which traditionally come with meat, chicken (which is not considered ¨meat¨), or both, visiting the museo de coca,  which is one of the few places you can buy organic coca leaves, purchasing some gifts and souvenirs at the low Bolivia prices in the artesian market and the witches´ market (where you can buy all kinds of statues and potions, and even llama fetuses in various stages of development, for good luck in your home--try to get that through customs!) We also had to enjoy once more our favorite Bolivian treats: a 32-ounce glass of  "vitaminico" juice at the juice stands lining the street, humitas al horno (sweet tamales with anise and a touch of cheese baked in the oven for a crispy top layer), and El Inca beer, which is dark and the label pronounces its health benefits (the juice ladies all mix it into shakes with raw eggs).

After 3 months of travel, our journey returns us to the coast of Peru and Lima, its largest city!