Living in and Leaving From Urubamba

In total, I spent about five weeks living in Urubamba, during which I got to know the town pretty well. For a town of only 2,700 people and in a valley two hours away from Cusco high in the Peruvian Andes, there is a surprising variety of things you can do in Urubamba, and quite a number of good (and not very expensive) restaurants.

During the time TGS stayed there, we must’ve helped the local economy quite a bit, by taking Mototaxis regularly and buying many snacks (after all, we’re students). In fact, my preferred store for Oreos, which sold only imported stuff and was conveniently located between our residence and the school, decreased the price of Oreos for me several times.

Our school usually offers activities that we can sign up for on the weekends, and one of these activities was a hike to a place where the Incas used to mine rocks for their temples and other important buildings. The hike took us from Ollyantaytambo, at about 2,700m, up to around 3,300 on a fairly steep path. Here are a couple photos of that:

Oh, and here are a couple photos that I took at around 3,300m above sea level during one of our reforestation Wednesdays:

And here is a picture of the place we had school at:

Urubamba, I will miss you!

This and more stories were originally published on www.myredsuitcase.com .