Sacred Valley: Destination Urubamba
We’re at our final volunteer project on this trip and have set some roots for the next month at Wilka T’ika, a yoga retreat center with a vegetarian kitchen. They don’t have a volunteer program like most yoga centers, because this place is not like most yoga centers. The staff is all local Quechua and the center is more set up for outside yoga groups to come and tailor their own trip. The place is beautiful and made with all local materials and the details are so impressive. Gardens galore filled with territorial hummingbirds of all sizes, rooms with natural stone work, large yoga rooms with hardwood floors..it’s so nice to sit on the ground again and stretch or read in the grass not filled with litter and nastiness.
My project here is to teach vegan and gluten free recipes that they can add to their lacto-ovo repetoire. Matt’s project is to teach English and answer computer queries. The staff is really friendly and most of them are family that helped with the construction of the site. I’m having a lot of fun teaching them stuff in the kitchen. Last night we served my first entree here and it was a big success: Lasagna! We made the pasta dough from scratch, ricotta and sauce from scratch and sauteed up some spinach and garlic to give it a kick. It was delicious and the guests liked it so much that a group of them requested it for lunch today. We didn’t have time to make the pasta, but it still came out yummy.
It’s fun teaching comfort foods and homemade bread and vegan cuisine. The gluten free teaching hasn’t begun yet, as I can’t seem to find any buckwheat or sorghum flour. Not sure if it exists in Peru, but we will try. Oats just seem too risky to use…especially since the only oats in Peru are Quaker brand. Yeah, it’s probably all sorts of tainted with wheat.
Our free time has been spent meditating and reading and we don’t really have much of a desire to leave the center most days, it’s just too beautiful and peaceful here to want to go anywhere else.