After a couple weeks of living in a very full homestay and passing our days with Spanish classes, salsa lessons, and some slightly chaotic construction work we were all ready for some serious rest and relaxation. Lucky for us, Sunday brought the beginning of our highly-anticipated yoga retreat just thirty minutes outside of Cusco in the stunning Sacred Valley. It certainly turned out to be restful and relaxing, but more so on a spiritual than physical level as we started off our mornings at seven with an hour of meditation followed by two hours of yoga in addition to a second two hour yoga class in the evenings. Our classes definitely erred on the side of more advanced which led to many sore muscles but also had the majority of the group doing handstands and exploring a few acro-yoga moves by the end of our retreat. The morning meditation sessions ensured we were challenging ourselves on a mental level as well. Throughout the retreat we had the opportunity to experience the unique benefits of mantra, breath, and chakra meditations. If I do say so myself, the intense reverberations and power of our collective 'oms' were downright otherworldly by the time our final classes rolled around.
When we weren't busy quieting our minds or "twisting ourselves up like pretzels" as Sarah would say we were busy participating in other activities aimed towards personal growth. For starters, we had an hour long morning seva. A seva meant doing chores around the retreat center including sweeping, dusting, weeding, helping with cooking, or anything that could help beautify or improve our living space all with the intention of showing appreciation for the incredible place we were sharing together. We were also able to participate in art workshops aimed at personal introspection, attend classes about vedic astrology and the seven principle chakras, and even had the opportunity to delve into the history and practice of reiki massage with a local master. Fortunately, amidst all our spiritual growth we managed to stay true to classic Sam I Am form in eating a lot of very good food, this time of the delicious vegetarian variety! Every meal presented a plethora of fresh fruits a veggies in the form of pastas, soups, salads, juices, cookies, and pizzas proving that healthy, delicious, and environmentally friendly can very easily go hand in hand.
Just so we didn't get too relaxed while soaking in the gorgeous sunny weather and towering green mountains, Michael C. orchestrated our second group game of Assassin. For those of you who are not familiar with the game here's a quick rundown: each person is assigned a "victim" that they have to kill during our day to day activities by getting them to do, or refuse, a certain task or action. It has to be rather sly though as to not alert your victim or others present to your ulterior motives. In this round Nick was assigned the near impossible task of getting our loving Simone to refuse a hug. In the end he had to resort to the not-so-sly measures of walking out of the kitchen open armed after having coated his chest in honey and a few other remnants of breakfast in order to finally commit his "murder".
Wednesday brought the end of our retreat. We were all instructed to write down habits we wanted to leave behind in addition to something we wanted to take away from our four days there. We then proceeded to sing, chant, and share around a small fire before dropping our papers into the flames to burn physically so they could then manifest in our lives. Our final and greatest triumph of the week came about thirty minutes after we should have left the retreat center in the form of a five-person, three-story, downward facing dog pyramid. Hopefully, technical difficulties will not prevent me sharing the epic photo evidence with all of you.
We then proceeded to make our way into Cusco and bummed about the city for the evening before taking off on an overnight bus to visit Lake Titicaca. We stumbled off the bus at the lakeside city of Puno at 5:30 in the morning and proceeded to our travel office. After a very early and sleepy breakfast, we all climbed into our tour boat for a quick ride to the famous floating islands of Titicaca. The islands are made of reeds and anchored to the lake floors with rope, the same reeds provide building material and food for the islanders as well. While it was an incredible experience, it was definitely the most touristy situation we have found ourselves in as of yet. We had an hour to explore the islands and be pumped for as many soles as could be extracted from us before taking off on another boat ride. The second ride allowed a few of us three glorious hours to nap on the sun-drenched rooftop above luxurious blue waters before arriving on the stunning island Amantani. We then spent the afternoon recuperating from our bus-ride. However, Sarah and Michael C. opted to jump into the freezing cold waters of Titicaca instead of take a nap as their form of rejuvation. It certainly looked invigorating and luckily no one suffered from hypothermia post-swim. We then reconvened to hike up to the second-highest mountain peak on Amantani in order to watch the sunset and soak in the full glories of Lake Titicaca. From there we could see the snow-capped mountains of Bolivia and even soak in the intense sights of a far off lightning storm on another side of the coastline. The view was certainly one to remember, but even our brief hike at the 14,000 foot elevation winded us enough to make us all a little curious about how this four-day trek up to Machu Picchu is going to treat us...
The evening brought some dancing and singing with the local Quechua poeple of the island and then very sound sleep for all after a long day. The next morning we were up bright and early to catch a boat to Taquile, another island about an hours ride away. Simone had to dig into our med-kit and rustle up some motion sickness pills for a few folks for this particlar ride as it was certainly a rocky one! After arriving we then had a couple hours to explore Taquile and enjoy a yummy trout lunch before loading up for our final three hour boat ride back to Puno. We all ventured off into the city to acquire dinner and kill time before our second overnight bus ride in three days. We arrived in Cusco bright and early this morning and ventured to our hostel to drop off our luggage before all going abouts our various explorations and activities around the city for our free day. Simone is teaching a yoga class this afternoon at The Healing House, a local living space and learning center that collaborates with the yoga studio we worked with this week. I am looking forward to attending the class if I don't find myself in need of a nap after last nights bus ride.
This week has certainly been an eventful one. The yoga retreat was an excellent opportunity to cement and further explore all we have learned on this trip, and take a closer look at what we may want for ourselves in the future. We're reaching the last leg of our adventures together, with only the rainforest and Machu Picchu ahead of us but I'm sure those will provide a bounty of incredible experiences and memories as well.
Lots of love and good energy headed to all our friends and family back home,
Daniella
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