Planting Around the World Mission 17 & 18 (Ollantaytambo, Peru)

In our Planting Around the World Mission our challenge is to plant at least one tree for every country we visit during our world backpacking trip. Why? With all the talk about carbon emissions we may help the environment in our small way. But also because we love gardening, plants and nature, we thought it would be a respectful gesture towards the countries – and its people – we visit. And of course, hopefully, a long lasting memory of our visit.

On our way to Ollantaytambo, a few kilometres outside Urubamba, we pass a few sign-boards advertising plants for sale. The guilty memory of not having managed to plant a tree in Bolivia (nor Chile) haunts us still, so at this time we’re very determined not to fail in our mission again. We’re not far from Ollantaytambo and it’s still early afternoon, so we pull in to investigate.

Within minutes, we’re inside Vivero Valle Sagradao (28B a few Km West of Urubamba, Tel:201588). It’s a plant nursery and they also have trees, so by the time we depart we have in our possession two native trees, both sounding somewhat like Lord of The Rings characters:

1. Frezno (some type of Ash)

2. Nogal (part of the walnut family)

With puzzled looks from the nursery owner, we wave farewell and move on. Ollantatyambo, about 20Km further West from Urubamba is a beautiful looking Incan style village, almost completely built of beautiful grey rock. The moment we enter this town, we notice a few large, round stone flower beds, two of which hold large trees, but one of which is empty. What a perfect place to plant a tree!

Not wanting to offend anyone’s sensibilities, we park the bike and speak to the lady living at the house aside the cobbled street about our intention. She’s absolutely fine with the idea, in fact the asks whether we would plant one of our trees in the stone cylinder right in front of her house, where a smaller tree currently lives alone.

The kind lady lends us some tools and we’re off to work.

The Frezno gets planted at the entry of the town on the right hand side, in front of the lady’s house, together with the existing pink flower tree. Ebru gives this one the nickname Özlem.

Nogal we plant in the vacant stone cylinder, next to the two others holding huge trees, probably centuries old. This one receives the nickname Aziz.

Why two trees? Well, as you may know we have not planted anything in Chile nor Bolivia as yet, so we may well have to rely on these as cover; but we do intend to return to these countries along our route, so with things turning out best and us being able to plant trees in the countries we missed, hopefully these will just be extra greenery to please the eye.

Gorw little ones, grow!