Do you ever have one of those moments where, out of the blue, something hits you and you have a "light bulb comes on" kind of moment?  Suddenly you just get it… whatever "it" is.  This was precisely one of those moments for me.

   While planning our travels in Peru, our travel agent recommended we visit two mountain communities while we were in the Sacred Valley area of Peru; Willoq and Patacancha.  Both communities are situated high up in the Andes Mountains, up a long gravel road out of the beautiful town of Ollantaytambo.  My interest was piqued when it was mentioned that we could visit some little schools there for a small cultural exchange.  Up to this point, our travels had left us with very little true and authentic cultural experiences, and so this sounded like something really cool to do.

    If you happened to catch my "Ten Years of Travel" post, I mentioned how our travel motivations had changed over the years.  We had first sought out opportunities to be served while we traveled (i.e. all-inclusive / people bringing you drinks while you lay on the beach) and that slowly morphed into us wanting to serve others in some way when we traveled.  This visit to the Willoq and Patacancha communities was where that mental shift started.

   Before leaving Ollantaytambo to head up into the mountains, our guide wanted to stop by a market to pick up a few things.  Holly and I had no idea why… so we jumped out to take it all in.  Now, Ollantaytambo is a tourist type destination because of some very interesting ruins there, and there are markets there that are more or less setup for tourists to visit.  This was not one of those type places.  This was an open air type market where the locals got their food.  You could find everything from fruits and fresh vegatables, to freshly skinned animals ready to take home and cook.  It was pretty intense at the time, and a real eye opener.  When we immerged, our guide was standing there waiting on us with a huge bag of oranges.  We all got back in the car and were on our way.  

    When we arrived at the villages, we realized what the oranges were for… they were gifts for the children.  The kids were so excited!  Most of the kids stuffed their oranges in their shirts to take home with them, while others ran to the field and began playing soccer with theirs.  I was totally shocked and surprised at how happy the kids were to receive such simple gifts.  Two things immediately hit me; just how much we have and how much we take it all for granted, and how far the US dollar can go in places like this.  I have no idea how much that bag of oranges cost, I'm sure it wasn't much, but had I known what they were for I would have bought every orange and apple I could find.  The point of course is not that we're all comparitively rich to the rest of the world (though that's true) and it's not that we should just take "stuff" everywhere we go, but that we have a huge opportunity to affect people's lives in a very positive way.

    And that's why I love traveling so much.  There are all these neat things in the world to see and experience, but more than that, your world view gets expanded.

–Dan Thompson