We are now in Anccasi, a tiny Quechua village of wattle-and-daub huts and a handful of cinder block buildings around a dirt square at somewhere around 3700m, a full day’s drive from Cusco. It is cold. Period.

Fortunately for us some money for the community materialized about a year ago and allowed Alejandro Chispe (the mayor) to build a simple structure  — a community center – with a metal roof, wooden floor and freshly painted peach walls and shuttered windows. This room is where we are all camped, our whole entourage laid out side-by-side, with our equipment and gas-powered generator along one wall and food along the other. A couple of water barrels and a plastic board and squeaky fold-out chairs serve as our dining area.

Our crew is an eclectic mix of Babel proportions, which so far has led to a great deal of humor and confusion – as we all have varying degrees of competency in Quechua, Spanish (here called castellano) and English. Besides Toby and myself, we are:

Veronica (our 26-year-old fixer from Lima who is both tiny and exceptional), Vicente (formerly of Spain but with the laid-back humor of Northern California and the energy of a Real Madrid forward), Willy (our soft-spoken Peruvian sound recordist whose thin clothing and hipster glasses betray a preference for urban environments), Fernando (our baby-faced mountain guide) and Toro (the excellent but shy camp cook).

We are also joined by Milton Gamarra (the passionate potato researcher from Asociacíon ANDES) and Ricardo (a potato farmer and volunteer production assistant who is half Jokey Smurf and half Bionic Man) and, lastly, Fredy Flores Machacca.

Ah, Fredy, an aspiring filmmaker and the only Q’ero among us as we prepare to meet his community in the next days. He is full of energy and passion. What an inspiration!