Weavers

At the weekend we went with Mani, Martha’s sister to two weaving places.  One, Huilloc, was a very poor, scruffy village a long way up a valley.

But they had an amazing warehouse of a shop from which they sold their products.  The girl in charge of the shop that day – who spoke no Spanish, only Quechua – had two little hen chicks to keep her company.

One might think that all this weaving is done entirely for the benefit of tourists.  However, the villagers do still seem to want to cheer up their lives with the bright colours.  Martha spotted the exact manta  she wanted on someone's washing line and here are a group getting off the bus (a lorry).

The next day we arrived rather hungry in a well-known Sunday market in Chinchero.  Despite the warnings of our driver that our weak gringo stomachs would not tolerate it, we ate at a market stall for the first time - with no ill effects.  I had fried fish and rice while the others all had fried pork and fried potatoes.

The white hats indicate that the women are unmarried or widowed.

After the market we went up to a place where a group of ladies demonstrate how they clean the alpaca and sheep’s wool with a root and then dye it with extracts of plants and various minerals – fascinating. 

We were all particularly pleased to see the cochineal beetle being prized out of a cactus and then squashed to make the red.  Here Titus demonstrates:

They were very jolly lot of ladies and embarrassed us all with this photo before we left.