In Ollantaytambo
Ollantaytambo is the town in which Awamaki is based. We work principally in Ollantaytambo, and unless you specifically choose to live in Patacancha, your accommodations will be in Ollanta, and your placement will be in town or nearby.
We strongly recommend that all volunteers stay in homestays with local families. This is the best way to become part of town life, to immerse oneself in Andean culture, and to learn Spanish. All homestays are a close walking distance from each other, the volunteer placement sites, the market, general stores, the health clinic, decent internet, bars and restaurants, hiking, mountain biking, river rafting, horseback riding, and Inca fortresses – in short, everything you need in the Andes. Homestay placements are fully supported: families are screened, interviewed, and trained in hosting volunteers. Ollantaytambo is a small, everybody-knows-everybody town, and if we don't know the family well, we rely on recommendations from our other families. We look for loving, open, kind families. We also look for families that have a strong home life, maintain a clean kitchen and bathroom, and don't have problems with alcohol.
The cost of a homestay is S/. 750 (approximately $270-$280 USD) per person per month. Homestays include a private room and all meals and drinking water.
Alternative Accommodations
We strongly recommend that all volunteers spend at least their first month in a homestay. This is the best way to learn Spanish, experience Andean culture, and get to know the town. If afterwards you want to move, or have a compelling reason to not enter a homestay, we can help you find alternative accommodations around town. We do ask that if you plan to look for independent accommodations, that you work with us to do so. We are trying to control our impact on local real estate prices as best we can.
In Patacancha
In addition to staying with families in Ollantaytambo, volunteers have the option to stay with families living in Patacancha, the community where the Weaving Project is based, about one hour from Ollantaytambo. We especially recommend this for those working in the weaving project. Although much more rustic than Ollantaytambo, living in Patacancha gives a volunteer insight into how the women and their families live. In choosing families, we use the same criteria as in Ollantaytambo and we place volunteers almost exclusively in the homes of members of the Awamaki weaving cooperative. There are no alternative accommodations to homestays in Patacancha. Homestays in Patacancha are the same $16 per night for volunteers.
Amenities
In Ollantaytambo, the homestay includes a private room, unless you come with a friend or significant other. It also includes all meals, and boiled clean drinking water. Most homestays do not have private bathrooms. Most likely you will share a bathroom with the family. Some homestays have warm showers, but most do not. If you do not have a warm shower, your family can heat up water for you to bathe. If you get desperate, a hot shower is available at a hostal in town for $1 USD. As the homestay includes drinking water, please do not buy water in plastic bottles, unless you plan to take the bottles back to your home country to recycle them. Otherwise your plastic bottle will probably end up in the river.
In June and July, there may be other volunteers in the same homestay. Other times of the year, probably not.
Living or staying in Patacancha, you will likely have a private room but in the high season (May through August) a room might be shared with another volunteer of the same sex. There is one hot shower in Patacancha that sometimes works.