Incan traditions a vital thread of Peru's rich tapestry

When you think of this part of Peru, in the Sacred Valley between the city of Cusco and the mighty Machu Picchu, you think of the Incas. With the ruins of their temples and towns still dotted among the mountainous landscape, it's hard not to imagine how the great civilisation would have looked before the Europeans arrived and wiped it out.

It's easy to forget that many parts of Incan life still remain today - literally woven into the culture of this region's people.

Here at the Ccaccaccollo community near Cusco, the weaving may well be women's work but for a long time it has not been profitable work. The knowledge has been passed down over many years, but the traditional techniques have made it hard to compete with modern manufacturing.

One of the weavers, Patricia, tells me it's important to protect their cultural heritage, so the way they weave today is how it was done hundreds of years ago by the Incas.

"It's impossible to change the techniques," Patricia says. "There are schools to learn weaving and spinning techniques, but we learn it from our mothers and grandmothers, generation by generation. We are still practising the Inca's techniques with the same tools like the llama bone, for example."

She shows me how they take the wool from the indigenous animals - alpacas, for instance - and spin it, dye it, and weave it into clothes. From top to bottom, from the head to the feet, they make everything. Beanies, socks, and anything in between.

Once it was all just for themselves, but now they are weaving for the world.

In the past few years, clothing production has once again become a business for the Ccaccaccollo community. With the support of Planeterra, the non-profit social development arm of tour company G Adventures, tour groups exploring the Sacred Valley are now coming to this weaving cooperative to see the traditional work and buy the handmade products.

"Before this project," Patricia says, "only the boys were working in this community, going away to look for the best grass to feed the animals. There was spinning and weaving but it was impossible to sell to anyone."

"We started with 12 ladies working at the beginning but lots of tour groups came, so we needed more ladies and now there are 60 spinning and weaving here in the community."

I visit with my group on the way to the start of the Lares Trek towards Machu Picchu. When we arrive, some of the women are working indoors at wooden looms that have been donated to the community. This is as modern as it gets, though.

Walking through the small village, we come to a large outdoor area where more women are sitting and working on their pieces in the fresh air. Each has two sticks with wool stretched between them, tied to a pole and stretched taut into a lap. The workers bend over, little details added to their tapestry, gradually. They work by hand on these woven pieces efficiently but without hurry.

Around the edges of the work area are little stalls with finished pieces. I ask Patricia about the designs because there seem to be some recurring patterns in the clothing on display.

"The most important are the llama eyes," she tells me.

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"Through the llama eyes we can read the stars and the moon so we know the best time for planting season and harvest season, when it is good to plant potato or corn or other Andean cereals. So the llama eyes are part of our religion and the most important."

It's not just the weaving techniques which have been passed down through the generations, but also the patterns. And both might have disappeared one day if it wasn't for the assistance from Planeterra. It's an important reminder that tourists and local communities often have a form of symbiotic relationship - we want to discover authentic culture but our visits may be the only thing that's enabling it to survive.

The truth is, the people of Ccaccaccollo may have been maintaining their cultural heritage, but they were not doing a very good job of integrating it into the modern world. The project here now provides that integration without any need to sacrifice tradition, making it sustainable for the foreseeable future.

Sure, the women seem to have adopted a rather contemporary style of bargaining in US dollar amounts that seems particularly non-Peruvian - but who can blame them for trying to make the most of an opportunity? And anyway, the reality from a tourist's perspective is that the stalls with piles of clothes for sale still offer excellent quality handmade products at a lower price than many stores in Cusco. (Plus, the beanie I pick up turns out to be just what I need for the chilly nights on the hike to Machu Picchu!)

For the women of Ccaccaccollo, it's been a huge success. They now have more alpacas to provide a steady supply of wool, they have money to send their children to school and university, they are learning business skills, and fundamental services like healthcare have improved.

And, of course, they are now proud to be able to pass this tradition on to their daughters like their mothers did for them... and the mothers before them did for hundreds and hundreds of years. The Incan spirit lives on.

Michael Turtle was a guest of G Adventures. You can see more things to do in Peru on his Time Travel Turtle website.