Urubamba, Peru

Not going to lie, I was very doubtful of the soundness of my decision to book a few nights in Urubamba earlier on.  As we rode away from the bright and cheery city of Cusco into the dust, my apprehensions were confirmed when our driver mysteriously got pulled over by two policemen.  It was entirely too easy to fall in love with cutesy Cusco, but Urubamba was a place that we had to figure out.  Maybe it wasn't quite as raw and rugged as the wilderness where we were trekking, but we had nobody to lean on this time around.  Soon, though, we realized that the rhythm of life here is just as real as it gets.  It's a small town.  There were no coffeeshops, English menus, or people dressed in traditional garb walking around the plaza with llamas like Disney characters asking you to pay to get your snapshots.  We drank chicha in somebody's house, not in a picantería.  We stayed at a quinta with Peruvian families, not a hostel with young globetrotters.  We ate food that was cooked using methods passed down for centuries, flavors intact, untouched by Westernization or mass production.  We actually didn't meet any other tourists here - it is always fun to talk to other tourists about their travels or about their countries of origin, but for these few days in Urubamba, we were talking only to people who live here (thank goodness I speak some Spanish).  Some people came from different parts of the world and found their hearts at peace here, building a new life off the beaten track.  Others are native to this land and follow the same traditions that have been handed down from generation to generation.  Everyone showed us through their beliefs and warmheartedness that they are extremely proud to call this place home.

Known as the "Sacred Valley," the Urubamba Valley was formed by the Vilcanota River, which was (and still is) worshipped as the wellspring of life by its inhabitants.  But we think that it's the inhabitants themselves who make this valley sacred and special.  We didn't know what to expect, coming way out here for a few nights, but we left feeling that we had been touched by the true spirit of Peru.  People were kind, and not just pleasant and polite, but so eager to share and wanting to include us.  There weren't a lot of foreigners around, so maybe people were excited to have us, even if we were just a pair of sorely clueless foreigners.  Here, we never got the sense that we were being looked down upon, or looked up to, or treated with any kind of bias or reservation.  It was amazingly easy to bond with people, even though my Spanish was not good.  It's no wonder that people from different parts of the world fall in love with Urubamba and settle down here.  I wonder if people all come back from the Sacred Valley in Peru still dreaming about it at night or secretly making plans to move out there to start life afresh.  We did, for a little bit.