We came to Urumbamba to learn Spanish! We have lived with a lovely family who speak practically no English and have spent 5 hours a day in one to one Spanish lessons - tricky at our age!
Our wonderful host 'parents' have been Luisa and Juan-Jose - see picture on Facebook, our technology skills have just failed us being able to add another picture here!! They are both teachers and have 9 year old and 17 year old boys. Their lifestyle has some similarities to the UK but many differences. Breakfast and dinner are indistinguishable - very informal meals (bread, jam, Peruvian tea and coffee). Lunch is a fantastic family affair at Luisa's mothers house with a random selection of a very large extended family (and us). At the start of the week we sat at lunch in silence, by the end we were able to join in a little. One evening we managed to cook pasta bake for the whole family - of course we over catered but were delighted to see it eaten up by the family the following evening when we took our Spanish teachers out for dinner. We soon learned to brush our teeth by 9pm as the water mysteriously disappears from the taps - as it also does at random other times in the day!
Urubamba is a small, tranquil town in the Sacred Valley. It has a staggering number of people and dogs crammed in to a very small area. Every other house is a shop, bar, restaurant or hairdressers. The dogs are only out-numbered by motor-taxis (tuk-tuk) that will take you anywhere in town for 40p. Incredibly the streets are kept amazingly clean despite all the dogs and the people are immensely happy and incredibly friendly - although they will radically inflate the price of a coffee if you are not careful! We have posted a couple of pictures so you can get a feel for the place, the people and the scenery.
Our Spanish teachers, Reyner and Maria Theresa, are a husband and wife team who were both very patient and great fun. We ended up teaching them how to make English pancakes and drinking some excellent Peruvian wine.
Other highlights included spotting a lake appear in our host's garden and fixing it at source (an irrigation channel had got blocked), finding an excellent local "brewery" in someone's house (redefining micro-brewery) and, currently a rather drastic hillside fire. We hope we don't have to evacuate! Now we are off to the cloud forest to start our archeology project and meet the mosquitoes!