At Gopal and Drupadi's

Our next plan was to get off the gringo trail offered by the Lonely Planet and follow up on a tip Leah received while dining alone in a veggie restaurant in Cuzco. (Aside: she was alone because Jeff was experiencing his first round of tummy troubles, which kept up for the next month. It turns out he was waging a war with some persistent "parasitos," which were determined to be living in his guts after a very special test. You see, Jeff thought he was going to have a blood test done to help determine the cause of the problem. The nice lady at the clinic handed him a plastic cup. Jeff was confused. The kind lady kept repeating "copralogico" despite Jeff´s lack of understanding. Finally, she shouted, in english, FECES! Oh. That kind of test.) Anyway, this friendly woman from Lima told Leah about her friends Gopal and Drupadi who live on an organic farm outside of Cuzco and have three rooms that they rent out by the night.

So we followed her slightly vague directions and ended up on a beautiful, tranquil, self-sufficiency-oriented organic farm in the Sacred Valley. We ate tasty veggie food with Gopal (a late middle aged man of french canadian origin) and Drupadi (younger and of Peruvian origin) and their kids, hung out with the cute kittens, dogs and horses, relaxed to the tunes of the Cranberries and ancient Jewish Sephardic melodies from the middle ages (!) and listened to Gopal expound upon his spiritual beliefs, with his mouth full of coca leaves, black, cold coffee, and cigarettes - literally. One time he ashed in his hand and then ate it. They also had a great DVD selection.

The spacious innards of their house - built entirely of local materials.

One of the house kittens.

Looking out from their front door.