On our second day here we were treated to a reenactment on the stone terraces of the Ollantaytambo fort. The dramatic event told the story of the Inca General Ollantay (note the name) and his prohibited love for the Inca king´s daughter. This enormous production happens only once each year and the celebration is called Ollantay Rymi.
For the rest of the day, On Assignment teams continued with their projects. The first two photographs posted below were taken by students (Zoe from Minnesota and Jennifer from New Jersey, respectively) in the On Assignment Photography project. Below is a travel manifesto written by Laura from Virginia, in the On Assignment Writing project:
"Tourism has in many ways been the history of my travel experience. I have heard it said that 'the best tourist views the world from their own doorstep' and I can attest to the validity of that statement. Thus at times it has seemed to me that authenticity of experience and personal connections with locals are the defining characteristics of what one might call true travel. This experience can at times be a quest for one´s self, as much as the favorite dining spot of locals or the culturally significant landmarks of a nation. The strange irony of this search for self lies in the requirement of gaining distance not just from the physical home, but from all that is familiar, all that has shaped who we are so as to be further molded by new experiences. Yet this distance cannot be so great as to exclude our past from our present and certainly no meaningful experience can be left out of our future. In this way travel becomes a sort of migration not just to the place but through time, spanning each period of our lives, and if we are lucky, the world. This dependency of travel on history is evident, as often the things that make the biggest impression even on the average tourist are the onces that have transcended ages of human life. From the colosium in Rome to the Forbidden City of China and the Al-Hambra of Spain to the Incan terraces of Peru, where I now find myself, the ancient is often the quintessential aspect of a place and a culture that never forgets, but likewise never stops evolving. So, like time, the traveler´s journey can be difficult to define and impossible to finish."
