Urubamba!

Monday morning we said good bye to our nice home in Cusco, and headed to Urubamba. We walked down to the paradero, and took a "colectivo" (a large 20 person van), paid our 6 soles/per person, and rode for about an hour and a half to the town of Urubamba.

According to Wikipedia, Urubamaba or Urupampa in the Quechua spelling means "flat land of spiders"....poor Maija.  (We didn't tell her yet... she can wait until we leave or she reads this blog post to find out).

The Sacred Valley is much warmer than Cusco, and is full of flowers.

A beautiful little town

Beautiful flowers everywhere.

The colectivo dropped us off, and from then we took a moto taxi (to Terran's delight!) that would drop us off in the side of the highway, where we were to meet our Airbnb host. The kids were really looking forward to a place with a large yard, and this place did not disappoint.

This is us inside the moto taxi. When Wyatt saw the moto taxi, he figured we would need to take two. 4 people, 4 bag packs, and a market bag,, no problem! We will have to remind our kids about seat belts, car seats, etc when we get back home. 

Urubamba does not seem to cater to tourists as much as Cusco.  It is much smaller, but it is a very charming place. Our Airbnb home here is called "El Jardin Secreto" and it is just beautiful. Below Maija gives you a tour of our yard for the next 5 days...check it out....

And here is one of our little cabin. The cabin has the best showers we have had in Peru, and it is solar powered, with internet. I love this little place. Very peaceful. The kitchen is well equipped, just an awesome place.

Urubamba is just lovely, warm yet windy, small and charming... there was one little thing though, that freaked Maija (and, who are we kidding, me too) out a bit.  As we were walking towards our cabin, we saw this fellow carrying a Tarantula. I have never seen one of these guys in the wild before.

The Tarantula is actually paralyzed by a type of wasp called a "Tarantula hawk." The Tarantula is about 5 cm in diameter...the wasp is almost as long. According to Wikipedia this little fellow is a parasitoid wasp, using their sting to paralyze their prey (the tarantula in this case) before dragging it to a brood nest as living food; a single egg is laid on the prey, hatching to a larva which eats the still-living-prey! Gross right!!! and with those happy thoughts...sweet tarantula-filled dreams my friends.