...are as follows:
1) Our first lunch with our lovely host, Beth, who feeds us the most amazing quinoa soup we have had before or since, made by her smiling house keeper, with much wine and enthusiastic conversation. It was a wonderful welcome, and Beth a wonderful friend.
2) Standing in the court yard of the Planeterra village, watching the ladies turn grubby llama wool into clean threads of a hundred different colours and then weave, knit or embroider into fantastic fabrics, all without the help of a single man made chemical or a spark of electricity.
3) The Santa Ana festival, with its beautiful mixture of festivity and reflection, it's colour and vitality, and the sense of family that pervaded the little Santa Ana square. Not to mention the blatant disregard for the traffic.
4) The art work, especially San Blas, with its artistic vibrancy and beautiful, cobbled streets and little brightly coloured shops. The way that the art work is so genuinely stunning as to be capable of moving me to tears.
5) The daily walk through green lush countryside, mountains in the distance and fields of bright quinoa growing either side, down towards the central vale of Cusco, which we can see in panorama below as we walk and again in twinkling lights below the stars when we make our way back in the evening.
6) Day two of the Inca trip, our first hiking the trail. The scenery, the exercise, the excitement and the company. The subsequent sickness which cut the experience short could not damage or taint my pure happiness at being there that day. One day that hike will be continued.
7) Moray, with its beautiful green terraces, and Moras, just a few miles down the road with it's unworldly salt pools set into the side of the mountain.
8) Cochuasi, with it's small but passionate staff and its rescued animals. I was so pleased that it existed to look after animals which had been so let down by humankind, sad that they had to be there, but so privileged to see animals like pumas, wild cats, parrots and condors so close up.
9) Sitting in the tiny upstairs room of a little cafe watching lively story telling in Spanish with puppets and sparkling eyes, and no concession to tourism.
10) Riding the most unhurried horse in the world through stunning scenery, blue lagoons nestling in green fields, Inca ruins, snow capped mountains in the far distance and frequent snack breaks. (For the horses). The entire absence of any sense of subordination in the horses or necessity to tie them up, or of urgency. "This is English time," says Beth to our horse wrangler, "English time means now." He smiles at her indulgently, chewing a piece of grass and watching the horses strolling towards us in the distance.
"Never mind English time", we reassure him, " we'll get enough of that in England.'
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