So, I've already hinted that something somewhat dreadful occurred involving sheep (oveja). Since few of you have heard the story, today I'll post it today. And don't hesitate to read on, its not disturbing or violent, just terrible on our side.
Patrick and I decided to take advantage of a friend of mine who has a vehicles and provides private ride service. For 20 soles, he agreed to take us to out of the city so we could hike back into our neighborhood. We planned to use the trail starting at a location outside of the city called Tambomachay. However, we opted to skip actually visiting those ruins and instead hit the trail, thinking the hike was to be between 3-5 hours.
We passed the ruins of Puka Pukara (which means Red Fortress in Quechua) and stopped to look around a bit. The place is located right along the Inca trail and could have provided important lodging for travelers on their way to Cusco. There are clearly defined rooms and aqueducts in the ruins.
After this we set out across the p'ampa (countryside in Quechua) and Nahele soon made a dog friend he pranced along with us, though he had no interest in his human companions. As we got up to a viewpoint with a small gazebo, we closed in somewhat closely to an elderly women with her sheep. Nahele's dog friend was completely uninterested but Nahele was...curious. Patrick had to give him a terse warning to leave the sheep be and then Nahele seemed content to continue hiking with us around the southern side of the mountain. But Nahele has made the sheep just nervous enough that they started moving around to the north side of the mountain, with the woman getting up to move with them.
As Patrick and I moved on we realized we were disappointingly close to Cusco and that we could walk back in as little as one hour if we wanted to. So, when we stumbled upon some interested circular ruin, we stopped to check it out.
There were smoldering fires all over this structure. Within the fire pits there were remains of different sorts of materials, the most clearly distinguishable were charred white clam shells still visible in nearly all of the fire pits. Magic stuff, need to learn more.
However, while Patrick and I were talking and speculating, the woman and her sheep had rounded the northern side of mountain, coming into view for our terrible dog Nahele. I think his curiosity became too much and he took off to have a closer look. Well, the sheep took off too, which Nahele now believed to be great fun. After circling the sheep into a tight knot, one poor little thing was out of the herd. So Nahele decided just to play with this one sheep and chased him down down down down down the mountain - Patrick and I screaming and running full throttle down the mountain after him. He was refusing to acknowledge us. See the video below my candid explanation of these events.
Well, needless to say (for those who saw that we need to figure out how much a sheep costs), Patrick didn't find the sheep (though I'm not sure what he would have done with it if he had found it anyways). Despite some very helpful bits of information from observers (who kept emphatically pointing downhill to Patrick), he had no idea where the little guy went.
After Patrick and I reconnected, I went to go speak with the woman. Turns out, she does not speak any spanish - only Quechua. Transitioning from spanish to Quechua was a bit challenging but I was able to communicate with her. However, at one point I did think she was either asking to have our dog or to kill him, which of course were not options. But she did seem to be very interested and perhaps optimistic in relocating the animal. In general, she did not seem all that upset and instead I got more of the "I'm 85 and nothing upsets me" vibe. I'm pretty sure she watched us chase Nahele like maniac with a look of pure boredom on her face.
In the end, we emptied our pockets and gave her everything we had. We are completely horrified that Nahele would do this, but at least now we know he is interested in sheep like this. I don't believe he was out for blood, though I can't be sure.
