Once a year four Peruvian villages come together to build a bridge out of grass over the Apurimac gorge. It takes four days and connects their villages. So it has been for over a thousand years. This bridge, built in collaboration and ceremony among neighbors, is the last Incan bridge. We will be there to witness the making. 

This 11-day tour is a journey to another Peru, one truly off the beaten track, beyond the guide books and cozy hotels. This is an expedition to far, barren and spectacular corners of a land of living, ancient cultures. This is a journey of high elevations and cold air, lots of walking, village home stays and a notable lack of en-suite bathrooms. Please note, this is not a trip for everyone. But it is a trip for some. 

Our trip culminates around the days of building the last Incan bridge, staying in a simple village lodge at 12,000 feet, twining grass. But it begins a bit more gently, in the canyon bottom, riverside Incan village of Ollantaytambo at a mere 9,000 feet, where we’ll get our lungs used to thin air and our eyes used to the site of the massive Andes, the unfathomably fine Incan stone work in the ancient ceremonial centers we will explore and the rich culture that surrounds us. We will walk old trails, sometimes with llamas, following pieces of the ancient Incan road systems. We’ll be led through a cacao ceremony, participate in seed gathering, adobe block forming and make offerings of gratitude to the earth. We’ll meet skilled village weavers and crafts people. In a high mountain village of stone and straw we’ll be wrapped in the clothing of the Quechua and pulled into a raw and beautiful village ceremony, with flute and drum, barking dogs and a herd of llamas. It is a prayer for abundance.

From straw bridge building to making offerings to the earth to a collective dance with flutes and llamas, this expedition takes us into the heartbeat of ancient, soulful community ceremonies. What does it feel like to gather with others to build, cook, or dance for the collective good? For rarefied moments we will immerse ourselves among people of community who’ve never forgotten such ways and feel the pull. 

Come prepared to go deep and to be deeply moved. 

D/Ollantaytambo

B,L,D = Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner included

Today you’ll want to arrange to fly to Cusco, which might mean arriving the night before in Lima. We will have you met in Cusco and taken to our hotel in the town of Ollantaytambo at the much lower elevations of the Sacred Valley.  We will meet, introduce ourselves and have dinner in this ancient Incan village that was built as the royal estate of Emperor Pachacuti.  

B, L / Ollantaytambo

With the soft solemnity of a cacao ceremony we initiate our time in Peru. Let the immersion begin! We will hike about 4 miles on an ancient mountainside trail, one of the old llama roads to the spectacular ceremonial centers above Ollantaytambo. In this way we arrive at the Temple of the Sun with its massive stone works, terraces and views upon view. In the afternoon we’ll learn about how communities govern themselves and explore Ollantaytambo. 

 B, L /Ollantaytambo

This morning we walk with llamas, becoming, for a period of hours, shepherds in the Andes. Our walk will be facilitated by the Llama Pack Project, a social impact organization that works to recover traditional uses and breeding of pack llamas for the tourism industry as a tool for sustainable rural development and conservation of mountain ecosystems. Not a bad thing to be walking with at all. And stunning to boot!  We’ll have free time in the afternoon to go slow. These first days are intentionally easy going as our bodies adapt to the thin air. 

 B, L /Ollantaytambo

 Our day begins with a drive as scenic as any there are, up and up and up into the Andes. Our destination is a speck on the map. A village of perhaps  20 families where electricity has only recently arrived, but old ways have never left. The people of this village are Quechua potato farmers, herders and weavers. As we arrive today they will wrap us in their kind of clothing and draw us into a ceremony called an Alpaca Ch’uyay. This ceremony, carried out in a stone corral with a drum and flutes, surrounded by a herd of alpaca, is a ritual for abundance. This is not a show, you don’t get to be a wallflower. It takes a village to raise the prayer to pachamama and the mountain spirits clear enough to be heard. And today we are part of a village. 

B, L,D /Raqchi

Today we  travel, moving through the Sacred Valley and stopping in Pisac with its abundant folk art and street market. Deeper into the country  we’ll explore the  ancient fortified ceremonial center of Pikillaqta built by the Wari culture 1,500 years ago. The place is vast and quiet. Onward we travel, visiting the robust and adorned colonial church of Andahuaylillas. Late afternoon we arrive in the old, old village of Raqchi. The village hosts visitors with homestays, simple, clean rooms adjacent to or within local houses. We will be welcomed to the village, meet our hosts and be taken to our rooms. Late afternoon we’ll be guided through the Temple of Wirachocha archeological site with its soaring adobe walls. 

 B, L, D /Raqchi

Today to work! Light work, but real work, and the kind that is done with others, under the welcomed sun, a bit of sweat on the brow, with concrete results. Or in this case, earth results. We will take part in a family gathering to make adobe blocks. As grounded as you can get! And with the earth on our hands, we’ll also participate in seed gathering and selection, a job as ancient as agriculture on earth. This will be combined with an offering and ceremony of gratitude and prayer for abundance to the farm fields and earth.  Elemental reminders of where all we have comes from, combined with the reciprocal gift of gratitude. Not a bad way to spend a day on Earth. 

B, L, D/Winchiri 

The morning of the 6th we depart at the crack of dawn today. We have a shaman and a bridge builder to meet this morning and if we don’t get there early, their calendars will be totally booked for the next 4 days. Timing right, we’ll meet these rural men of calloused hands and deep old knowledge. They are the bridge engineers; material and spiritual.  

We have arrived at the Apurimac gorge, the place where the last Incan bridge, and the four communities who make it, have never given up. For the next three and a half days we will slow down and observe. We won’t be traveling from site to site, but rather becoming part of a site and a story. The site is Q’eswachaka, the living story is thousand years old and is of hands coming together to rebuild a bridge. 

At 12,000 feet the only thing that grows is grass and potatoes. Each June, every villager cuts grass from out past their homes and twines it into a certain length of cordage. Hundreds of these cords are gathered and combined. Some are worked into cables as thick as a tree trunk, others as thin as a finger. From this a new bridge is born out of the collective work of villagers on either side of the river gorge. This is true communal collaboration.  During the whole process the shaman prays and when it's done a great festival is held with dance, music and food. 

Few from the outside world witness this dynamic creation of communal civic art. It is a thing that is simply done, with all the pragmatism and grace of old ways, and we are fortunate to be able to observe. This is truly a peek into the deep roots of communal cooperation. 

We’ll also learn to twine grass, or give it our best, and try our hand at making mini bridges.  

We stay at a simple village lodge with shared bathrooms and two people per room. Single rooms are not an option during our 2 nights here. Our lodge is just above the river and an easy walk to the bridge. 

B, L, D/Cusco

We continue throughout the day to observe the building of the bridge and all the surrounding activities.  As the sun sinks low in the sky the final weaving of the bridge structure should be completed. With a holler it will be celebrated and shortly after we take our leave, bidding farewell to this high, barren, cold…and strangely warm and welcoming, timeless place. We will travel through sunset and into the night towards soft beds, private bathrooms and the other considerable wonders of the ancient capital of the Inca, Cusco.  

 B, L, D /Cusco

All roads lead to Cusco. The bridge we just saw being built was  a link on one of the arteries of an ancient road network connecting Cusco to the rest of the world. Same can be said of the stone roads where we stayed in Raqchi. Ollantaytambo, from our first nights, was the summer estate of the Cusco Incan royals. And the high village herders we visited will, perhaps once in their life, follow the paths and roads to Cusco. And now we have arrived, from the remote and wonderful peripheries to the center, like salmon coming home. We will spend the day exploring Cusco, soaking in the feel of this ancient cosmopolitan center, and perhaps putting our feet up for a spell.  We’ve earned it! 

 B, /Departures

Our journey closes after breakfast. Book a flight from Cusco to Lima to home. Or stay on a few days and simply wander the streets of Cusco. You won’t regret it. Make plans to visit Machu Picchu. There are plenty of reasons to stay on. Wherever you head, may you fly like an Andean Condor, carrying with you some of the majesty of this land and its rooted cultures.