A Very Peruvian Weekend

We had a short week of training this week because of the independence holiday. From what I gather, July 28th is the actual independence day, but the holiday is celebrated both on the 28th and 29th. Because of that, we didn´t have training on Friday or Saturday of this week. We felt like little kids on school vacation when we got out on Thursday because it was so exciting to have a three day weekend.

On Thursday night, Hana and I made soft tacos for dinner for my family. We made flour tortillas and guacamole from scrath and they were so delicious! They were a big hit with my family and I was so happy since it was such a disaster the last time. I wanted them to know that I really can cook well. My little host brother ate about 4 tortillas in ten minutes. He loved them! I must admit that even I was impressed - watch out Cactus Cantina! They were ranting and raving all dinner how good everything was. I asked if it was better than the last dinner and they all immediately said YES!!! It was so funny. My host mom wanted to contribute something to the dinner too (even though she bought all of the ingredients) so she made us strawberry cocktails out of pisco. They tasted like strawberry smoothies and were so delicious! As far as I´m concerned, she can contribute those to any meal and I´ll be happy. Haha. We also made Hana´s magic bars to take to a party with us later that night, but we shared some with my host family before we left. They were also quite a hit. We definitely left a lasting impression on them.

On Friday morning, we left at 7:30 am (even though it was supposed to be 6:30) to go to Marcahuasi with a group of our friends. We were accompanied by our friend Jorge´s host sisters and a couple of their friends. Marcahuasi is this town way up in the mountains where there are rock formations in the shape of turtles, frogs, human profiles, etc. dating back to pre-Incan times. However, it is a 2 hour hike to access Marcahuasi, so everyone drives to this town called San Pedro de Casta and hikes up from there. San Pedro is almost 10,000 ft. above sea level so it took about 2.5 hours to get there. We drove on the narrowest, windy, dirt road to get there (the same one that we drove on to get to the crazy horse races) so you can imagine how bumpy and uncomfortable the ride was - not to mention the bus that we rode in must have been made for midgets because even my knees were digging into the seat in front of me so much that I had to sit sideways the whole time. We were crammed right in there so sleeping was not an option even though we´d all only had about 4 hours of sleep the night before. We did have our own bus though so that was really nice, but within the first 30 seconds of the trip, the driver reversed right into this pole and hit it really hard. That was really reassuring of the ride to come.

We arrived safe and sound in San Pedro around 10 am and I immediately fell in love with the town. It was so charming with a cute little main plaza and cobblestone roads. There was a gazebo in the plaza and a few little restaurants and tiendas (stores in the front of people´s houses) with a couple of vendors selling hand woven scarfs and sweaters and the like. Nestled way up in the mountains, it has a spectacular view. It made me think of a town we might be placed in for the next two years so I was really happy to feel so comfortable and happy right away.

After getting our hotel, which cost less than $2 for the night, we went to eat "lunch" at a family friend´s house before we set out on our hike. It was kind of funny to me to be eating such a big meal at 10:30 in the morning before we set off on this big hike, but it was so generous of the people, that we all graciously ate our big bowl of soup and overflowing plate of arroz con pollo (chicken and rice). The house was really tiny and quaint. For the first time since I´ve been here, I really felt like I was in Perú. This was what I had imagined when I envisioned coming here. Not that I don´t love my family here in Santa Eulalia, but I certainly never would have imagined living in a house with two computers connected to the internet!

Despite our food comas, we set off on our hike around noon. We hired a guide to lead us to make sure we didn´t get lost and to help us identify the different rock formations. He had a donkey with him that carried all of our backpacks, but I had my camelbak in mine with all of my water so I carried it myself. I was drenched in sweat when we got to the top, but at least I was hydrated! The hike was pretty intense since Marcahuasi is 12,000 ft. above sea level and we were hiking during the hottest part of the day, but it was well worth it! The views were really incredible. I´ll try to post some pictures (even though they don´t do it justice) because I can´t explain the beauty. I almost enjoyed the hike more than seeing the actual rocks because it seemed like many of them were open to interpretation. The first few I had a really hard time seeing and some of them I never actually saw the resemblence. You can look at the photos for yourselves and see if you can identify the pregnant lady, turtle, Chinese man, human face, and bird in them. It was neat, but also very amusing and after a while we just started cracking jokes like, "oh didn´t you see that merry-go-round over there?" or "i think that one is the new york city skyline" or "what do you mean you can´t see my face in that rock?". Haha.

We were pretty exhausted once we finally made it to the top so we decided to rest and have a litte picnic of crackers and jelly, fruit, tunafish, raisins, and other random things we had packed for the hike. It was great to sit and relax and just enjoy the view and each other´s company. It also felt so nice to be doing something outside of Peace Corps (not that I don´t love it) with a small group. It was a lot chillier at the top of the mountain and I was beginning to be very grateful that we weren´t camping up there like most people do. Although I love camping (especially when there is a wind storm - haha), I probably would have froze to death that night. We did notice, however, while we were enjoying our picnic (or "picinicky" as Hana´s family likes to call it) that there was a huge cloud of smoke that kept growing bigger and bigger. No one else seemed to be concerned besides us, but it seemed to be moving rapidly. Later, on the hike down, there was a whole section of the trail where the ground around it was black and still burning. Still none of the Peruvians seemed to think twice about it while we were all very concerned.

We got down from the hike around 6 pm and all decided to take a nap because we were exhausted. That didn´t work out so well for me though since the bed was the most uncomfortable bed I´ve ever slept on. I guess I shouldn´t expect too much when I pay less than $2 for the night. There were tons of horizontal bars running the length of the bed that dug into your back no matter what position you were in. It also didn´t help when we heard one of the beds collapse in the other room. We all shared beds to save money so Hana and I were a little worried we´d be the next ones on the floor. It was so funny. Between that and the excitement from the hike, my mind was racing too much to be able to fall asleep, but it was still nice to just lay down and rest my body a little bit. To give you a better idea of the hotel, the toilets didn´t flush (the one in the women´s bathroom overflowed) and the sink drained into a bucket because there weren´t any pipes. It was quite an experience and made our houses here seem like luxury! Hana was joking that she never thought she´d be so excited to return to her house where they use a bucket to flush the toilet (that doesn´t have a toilet seat) and her matress is covered in plastic. Also, our neighbors blared Bob Marley from their room all night long and burned insense. Interesting.....

That night we thought there´d be a huge party in the main plaza since it was independence day and Peruvians love to party, however, it turned out that we were just about the only ones in town because most people had headed up the mountain to camp at Marcahuasi. While Hana and I were calling the doctor for our friend, Sarah, who got really sick from the altitude, our friends Amelia and Jessica made friends with this group of guys from Lima. They were supposed to hike up to Marcahuasi that night and camp for two nights, but they ended up staying and hanging out with us all night. They were really nice guys and we had a lot of fun talking with them and hanging out in the gazebo. It was nice to practice our Spanish so much too because we wouldn´t have spoken any Spanish had we not met them. They all knew a little bit of English so they kept trying to say things to us. Most of what they know are song lyrics (like Bob Marley) so it was pretty funny. Somehow they convinced us to sing the Star Spangled Banner (that´s a popular request around here), which was hillarious. We never actually made it through the song because we´d start laughing at how bad we were - especially since my tone deaf self was carrying the team. After that we proceeded to sing for the next hour or so, but we couldn´t think of many songs we knew all the words to so it was pretty funny. At one point we sang "Part of that World" from The Little Mermaid and somehow we also sang "I Believe I Can Fly" by R. Kelly. That was a hit with them and they kept requesting for us to sing it again. Haha. They even tried to record us on their cell phones and camera! Hahahahaha. One of the guys taught Hana and I this song about Marcahuasi (called Cerrito de Marcahuasi) that he learned from one of the little old ladies in town. It was so cute. Just a sidenote, the guy happens to be in love with Hana and his name is Jesus so we, of course, thought it was hillarious (A Jew for Jesus). Hana said her dad used to send her stuff on how to say no to "Jews for Jesus" when they came to campus. Uh oh, Abba, don´t be mad. Two of the guys were also really good at twirling these chains with fire on the ends (I don´t know what it´s called) and Hana and I convinced everyone she knew how to do it. They kept asking her to do it, but she said she only does it in Synagoge. It was really funny, but we finally gave in and told them it wasn´t true because we couldn´t stop laughing about it. She tried anyway without any fire and ended up getting charcoal all over her fleece. Oh my little Hanita. She and I were exhausted from the long day so we went to bed at 1:30, but the party was still going strong. It was funny because they had met this group of 4 sisters on the bus ride up to San Pedro from Lima and they promised the girls to accompany them on the hike up since they were going at night in the dark. While we hung out with the guys, the girls hung out with our guy friends, Jorge and Pete, who came with us. It sort of reminded me of a middle school dance. Anyway, Jorge told me that the girls were getting really annoyed and kept wondering when they were going to leave for the hike. Jorge guaranteed them that as long as the gringas were around, they weren´t going anywhere. He was right - they all ended up camping in San Pedro that night and hiking early the next morning. What a great night! We finally made some Peruvian friends!

I felt so bad for my friend, Sarah, who was so sick. The Peruvians have all of these crazy beliefs of why people get sick. One of which is drinking cold beverages. When I had a fever and diarrhea, they told me it´s because I drink cold water everyday. So after we talked to the Peace Corps doctor and he said Sarah probably had altitude sickness and was dehydrated, we bought her 2 bottles of gatorade. Jorge´s Peruvian sisters told us we needed to put them in the sleeping bag with her to warm them up or it would kill her lungs and she´d get even sicker. They also tried to tell us she was sick because she ate a mandarin orange. Don´t ask me why - they have their reasons I guess.

The next morning we didn´t do too much because we were all so exhausted from the day before. We ate breakfast at a little restaurant in the main plaza, but some of us brought our own food in because we didn´t want to pay when we had brought so much with us (that´s normal in Perú and they don´t find it offensive as long as somoene buys something). The rest of the morning we just sat in the gazebo in the main plaza talking and playing cards while we waited for the bus to come pick us up. It was supposed to be there at noon, but we didn´t leave until 2 pm of course - that´s called "La hora peruana" (the Peruvian hour).

The ride home was crazy because we had to pass a lot of cars on the narrow road. It´s unbelievable the way people get road rage even on a windy, mountain road that´s only wide enough for one car. They get mad if they think you should have stopped to let them pass and they keep driving at you while you back up. At one point, we were trying to pass this huge dump truck and our bus was literally backing into the rock wall next to us. We could hear the tires spinning and rocks crunching under the bus. Most of us had our eyes closed because it was so scary. While the truck was trying to pass us the first time (without success), Pete reached out the window to knock on wood - the wood of the truck we were passing! Oh Dios Mio! We did make it home safe and sound though around 4 pm and all went home to finally shower and take naps. When I took off my sunglasses, I had a line from all of the dirt that had been blowing in my face the entire ride home! It was definitely the best shower I´ve had since I got here - I even had hot water! What a luxury!

On Sunday morning, I finally got to "sleep in" for the first time in a long time, though by sleeping in, I mean that I was up by 9. While I was eating breakfast with my family, my host mom told me we were going to go to my uncle´s house for lunch because it was his son´s birthday and they were making a Pachamanca for him. Pachamanca is a very traditional dish from the sierra where everything is cooked together in the ground! My uncle just lives down the street from us so they replicated it on their roof. They built a little pit with bricks around it and then put very hot rocks and coal in the bottom. Then they put potatoes, sweet potatoes, meat (chicken, beef, pork, and sometimes cuy), bananas (really big and sweet), abas (which I think are fava beans), and cheese (it was cooked in a little pot). Then they cover everything with huge leaves from a banana tree and then puts lots of layers of plastic and blankets on top to keep it warm. Apparently it´s so hot inside that it only takes an hour for everything to cook! It´s pretty incredible. About two minutes before we left, they asked if Hana wanted to come. Luckily she wasn´t busy so she got to come along for the experience. It was really fun because it´s such a Peruvian thing to do and they were so excited to show us. They let us help pull some of the food out when they uncovered it all and it was extremely HOT! They were also all about us taking pictures and were so proud to feed us our first real Pachamanca (apparently I had it once before in my first week, but it was made in a pot and isn´t nearly as good). One of the best parts about it is that you eat everything with your hands! There is something so fun about eating with your hands.

Of course they wanted us to drink with them too because what´s a birthday party without a little beer. The way they drink socially here is to pass around one cup and one bottle of beer (though they are much bigger here) and everyone shares the same cup and beer. You pour a little for yourself in the cup, drink it, and pass it on. I used to be freaked out by it because of all the germs, but it´s one of those things you just have to laugh at and get over because it´s not really accepted to ask for your own cup or not participate. Since it was a Sunday afternoon, Hana and I would just pour a little swig for ourselves and then pass it on. Then they started passing around this wine made from honey. It comes from the selva (jungle) of Perú and was surprisingly really good. I was laughing when we first arrived and my host mom introduced me to my "cousin" whose birthday it was because he was way older than I thought. For some reason I thought he was only 12 or so, but he actually turned 23 yesterday. I was a little off. He´s the younger of the two kids too. Oops.

Later that afternoon, Hana and I went to play soccer on the little canchita in Santa Eulalia with some friends. It was supposed to start at 4:30, but we just vollied the ball around for the first 30 minutes because none of our friends were there and lots of other people were using the court. We finally got to play around 5, but there were only 7 of us so we played 3 guys on 4 girls. It was really funny because most of us aren´t that great, but I had a really good time anyway. It was nice to run around so much after eating such a huge meal earlier in the day. Plus, I needed to work up an appetite for Picarones that we ate at Hana´s house afterwards. They are sort of like fried dough, but in the shape of a doughnut, however, they´re made out of sweet potato and zucchini. I know they sound disgusting, but they´re actually sweet and really good. They serve them with honey poured over the top, but it´s homemade honey that they make from orange peel and leaves of different fruits. They were really delicious, but I was about to explode afterwards from all of the food. I guess it´s good I ate so much though because Lindsay invited us over for dinner, but her mom never came home so we had to leave without having anything. It was really funny, but I was somehow really hungry anyway. I had to tell my abuelita that I had already eaten though when I got home or she would have tried to serve me this gigantic meal at 9:30 pm. Instead she gave me about 2 lbs. of arroz con leche when I told her I just wanted a little bit. She´s so cute though.

So I know this was the longest entry ever to talk about 3 days of adventures, but so much happened this weekend that I wanted to be sure to tell everyone about it. I had such a good time and the best part was that it was all very Peruvian. This was also the first time I really felt like I was in Perú. We´ve been living in a pretty urban area and have been so caught up with training and being surrounded by gringos all the time that sometimes it´s easy to forget why we´re really here. It was so nice to be away from training for a few days and spend the weekend in Marcahuasi with some of my favorite people in our group. I had a really great time bonding with those people and getting to know them on a deeper level than we can in training. I´m really looking forward to spending time with all of them over the next couple of weeks. It´s hard to believe how quickly training will be over. We go away next week for almost two weeks and then we only have two weeks of training left! Part of me is so excited and the other part of me is really nervous.

Tomorrow is a really big day for all of us because we get our site assignments. I´ll finally know where I´ll be living for the next two years of my life - how exciting! Of course that means I´ll be posting another entry very soon. I´m going to try to put up some pictures now in another entry of the weekend. I took some of my house too so hopefully I´ll get those up pretty soon too.