Parackin´ Out

This past week we were supposed to have gone to Arequipa, hiked the Colca Canyon, eaten some rocoto relleno and relaxed in what is supposed to be one of Peru’s cleanest and most beautiful cities.  Unfortunately, our plans were disrupted by some strikes, but we made the best of a bad situation, traded in our bus tickets and headed to Paracas, a nature reserve located on the coast of Ica and one of the country’s fastest growing attractions. You see, in Peru, when life gives you lemons, you hand them back and ask for limes.

Paracas has two main attractions, the first being Las Islas Ballestas, three small islands, maybe ten or fifteen miles off the coast, which various animals call home. You see a huge quantity of the guano birds, which produce inch upon inch of crap until some poor soul comes out and shovels away several feet of it to be used as natural fertilizer. There are also terns, pelicans, boobies, and even Humboldt Penguins. However, by far the most stunning sight is the countless number of sea lions lounging about: a couple thousand at the very least.

Number two on the “to do list” is the nature reserve. While dominated by mile after mile of sand inland and rocky cliffs along the coast, there are some truly beautiful beaches, and the dunes make for a beautiful backdrop. You can see the scattered attractions in a tour bus or a private taxi, but we decided to rent bikes – not thinking ahead of time what eight hours on a bike seat will do to a person who hasn’t been on a bike in nearly two years. We got back to our hostel sore and many hours later than we had planned, but it felt good to do something active and thoroughly exhausting.

Being on the coast in a touristy area of Peru, it’s only assumed that we ate plenty of seafood. Ceviche, fried fish, grilled fish, calamari, you name it. It was all delicious. What we hadn’t anticipated was to find a restaurant specializing in paella, one of the signature dishes of Spain. We have absolutely no experience in what paella should be, and it’s possible that a Spaniard would scoff at the Peruvian imitation, but it was damn good nonetheless. And the best part of Paracas? It’s home to another volunteer, with whom we were able to catch up and grab drinks (mine an embarrassingly tall and tri-colored concoction named after Machu Picchu).

Our original vacation was set for a week, but this included 17 hours of travel to Arequipa from Lima and 17 hours back. Paracas is just under four hours away, so we were able to spend around four days in Paracas and the rest in Miraflores. While there, we checked out a high-end chocolate shop, grabbed a burrito in Barranco, and accidentally found a third location of the chocolate museum we’d already visited once in Cuzco and once in Miraflores. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the particular chocolate dessert Menda was looking for, so we headed over to the Miraflores branch and somehow ended up walking out with a bar of dark chocolate weighing in at a kilogram. It’s probably sold for baking purposes, but who’s gonna say otherwise if we want to just eat it straight?

Parque Kennedy is the focal point of Miraflores, the neighborhood in which the volunteers usually stay when passing through Lima, and one of its many appeals is the curious quantity of cats roaming around. We had a few hours to kill one morning, so we decided to see how many photos we could take of different cats. We never got an exact count, but I think we hit somewhere between 80 and 90. Below we’ve included some of the better photos of them along with pictures from Paracas and a few from past entries that I never got around to uploading.

[MEOW]

In Case You´ve Forgotten Us...

We are, indeed, still alive. I apologize for the extended absence, but I assure you all that we are as well as can be expected. We’re just about at the year and a half mark, and were I to write in detail of every little thing, you’d find yourselves in a particularly bad bout of déjà vu, for since late November (the anniversary of our having landed in Paria), it seems we’ve been stuck on repeat ourselves. Therefore, with this post, I will try to keep you updated while still shy of over-informed.

Summer School:

As some of you may recall, in the previous summer we taught two months of vacaciones útiles with each week devoted to a different theme and always a bit of English vocabulary. This year, we taught the same five courses for the two months straight with each day of the week assigned to its own subject. I taught public speaking, English, health and science, and Menda taught geography. Public speaking I cancelled after five weeks because no one was willing to prepare a speech beginning to end - even after being walked through step by step how to do so for over a month; English went reasonably well, all things considered; health was basically going through the healthy homes aspect of Peace Corps Peru’s Community Health Program; and the science class was definitely my favorite part. Rote learning is the standard in Peru, and I wanted to do a little something that showed the kids that learning can and should be interactive, so each week I prepared two experiments with which the kids could practice the scientific method and hopefully enjoy themselves as well. Menda’s geography class covered a different continent each week and, among other things, discussed the differences and similarities between the students’ lives and those they saw in videos from the Sesame Street Panwapa series.

English Classes:

Throughout January and February I also taught an adult intensive English class. Five nights a week, I met for two hours with three students and went through as much as we could cram in. I’ve had my heart set for some time on teaching high school English, but this experience makes me think that working with a more adult population could be very rewarding as well, maybe in a night school or junior college setting.

Peace Corps Projects:

Since my overwhelmingly unsuccessful attempt to teach sexual education last school year, I’ve modified my approach. I’m hoping to work within the framework of an already established class (personal, familia y relaciones humanas) with a younger group (that might still have some inkling of respect for authority), and use the scores on the post exam for a grade. Fingers are crossed. My job with the mothers took a hit after the health promoter I trained last November and December disappeared off the face of the earth. So I’m training a new health promoter during a one hour cram session and starting house visits with four mothers starting at the end of this month. Amanda’s trash can project continues to be both a daily encouragement and sucker punch to the nose. The community’s looking cleaner, people are by and large using the trash cans in the correct way, and it’s good to see something physical that our time in the Peace Corps will leave behind. But... There are always a few black sheep who are unhappy with any changes made, and they always bleat the loudest. We should be able to shrug it off , but it’s not always easy to remember that the happy majority don’t usually feel the need to report their satisfaction and appreciation for a job well done. It looks like yet another attempt by Menda to plant a bunch of trees has fallen through due to people’s unwillingness to dig their own holes. You’d think as many free trees as they’d like would be incentive enough, but they want the trees first on the promise they’ll dig the holes later. Another volunteer has had moderate success through the sale of stickers in Huaraz that fund payment to the landowners wanting to plant trees. Though we still don’t necessarily agree with paying someone to receive something for free, we certainly sympathize with the struggle all other volunteers face in trying to help someone who doesn’t really want to be helped. You do what you have to. Lastly of our current Peace Corps projects is GLOBE. Look it up. It’s an international climate change monitoring program that uses kids to gather the data. I built a GLOBE box last year, and I’m currently repairing an old one from another volunteer. With these two, Menda will be able to teach climate change in a very hands-on way to kids in two of the grade schools in our community.

Mid-Service:

I’m not sure if I’ve yet written about mid-service. Summed up, after a year in site, they pull us back to Lima, shame us into thinking we’ve not done enough, make us poop in a cup, and send us back to finish out the rest of our service. Not really, though. It was nice to see the faces we went through training with, I found the other volunteers’ successful projects to be more inspiring than discouraging, and pooping in a cup was... awkward, but we both came back with a clean bill of health.

Carnaval:

As I mentioned last year in this here blog, during Carnaval, each community takes its giant cross and walks it down to Huaraz, a priest says mass over the crosses (apparently with no room for people), and then they’re walked back up to their respective sites. And then everyone gets drunk. And chops down some trees. And then drinks some more. Etcetera. What I didn’t write about last year was Martes Guerra (Mardi Gras), mainly because I was violently sick last Martes Guerra. Depending on where you celebrate this day, there are varying degrees of wildness. In Cajamarca, for example, gangs of youth roam the streets with buckets full of water, paint, used motor oil, or any other spare fluid they can find and proceed to dump it on their victim of choice. Advice from a volunteer who has gone to this storied event was to duct tape your shoes, but don’t wear a giant plastic hazmat suit, because it just makes you a bigger target. Once upon a time, they say that Martes Guerra was as crazy in Huaraz, but now it’s usually just water and flour that the gangs of youth throw on you. We were hanging out in the fourth story apartment of a third year volunteer, throwing water balloons and dumping buckets of water on unsuspecting people below. But as they say, it’s all fun and games until someone breaks a windshield with a poorly aimed water balloon. No, seriously. I had to pay the guy 250 soles, but he was really nice about it. He took it all in the spirit of the day, but just wanted his windshield paid for.

Other Activities:

We’ve been in Peru for a year and a half, but I’m only now starting to feel like I have the things I need to feel... normal, I guess. I may have mentioned this previously, but I started a book group among the volunteers. Each month we meet after our regional meeting, discuss the book chosen the previous month and choose a new one for the next. We’ve read Candide, Mountains Beyond Mountains, A Thousand Splended Suns, Bel Canto, Americanah and Tenth Of December. Ultimate has also started up again, and each Friday there’s a pickup game with various Huaracinos, volunteers and tourists. And to top things off, the new volunteer leader for Ancash is an experienced swing dancer, so the three of us are giving swing lessons and are hoping eventually to do a swing bomb (swing dancing flash mob) in the plaza de armas. Also, Menda has been meeting with a friend (from the church we went to for a while) to practice her Spanish (and the woman her English). She is likewise baffled by some of the obstacles faced when trying to help people in the campo. For example, she tried to donate her time teaching campo women to read only to find that they refused to be taught unless you gave them a gift of some kind – money, sugar, etcetera. It’s good to know that we’re not the only ones facing these kinds of challenges.

I think that’s it for now. As always, an email, phone call, letter or package will always be appreciated. As it usually takes a month or so to mail anything, your time is quickly running out to support us with gifts of pictures of candy.

End Of Year Wrap Up

Here are some photos from these last few weeks of the school year here. A few from classes, a few from a chocolatada, a few while planting trees, the winners of a poster contest Menda sponsored and of course some from Christmas with our host family.

[Fotos]

Thanksgiving

So we had a few Thanksgiving celebrations. The Sunday before, we had a potluck with the other volunteers in which we took over the kitchen of a local café. There was turkey, green bean casserole, sweet potato pie, pasta salad (Menda´s plate), spiced peaches (my own contribution), apple strudel and several others. The apple strudel was made by two Austrian women who, as it turns out, work three times a week at the school in our site. So I´ve begun helping them out in whatever small ways I can with the English classes they organize there.

We also celebrated thanksgiving in Trujillo, eating too much Papa John´s while sitting in a mall. It was the most ´Merican I´ve felt in a long time. The rest of the time, we explored the city and relaxed on the beach in Huanchaco. Not too shabby.

We´ve got a few pictures for you from Trujillo, but also included are a few shots of the kids in Jinua transplanting the cherry trees they´ve been growing since April. Here they are: Trees and Trujillo

Happy Birthday, Paria

So I guess yesterday was the anniversary of our town. I was pretty sure they celebrated that a little over a month ago. Oh well, here´s an album of little kids in traditional Peruvian dress.

Just A Small Update With A Few Photos

In no particular order:

We got some chickens.

Menda's public trash can project is a success.

We almost "stole" another neighbor's cat - by this I really mean that we gave it food when it came by to visit, but the last cat we did that for never left.

Menda got a 500 gram bar of chocolate at a museum in Lima. It only took us a few days to finish it off. They also had a 1 kilogram version, but I think it was two of the smaller ones back to back in the same package.

A neighbor gifted us a puppy, but after spending the night whining by the door, it sprinted back home when our host dad left for work in the morning.

We had a big birthday celebration for Menda, me, and our host sister (who happens to share the same day with me). Our host brother and sister came in from Lima, our other host sister from rural Ancash with a few friends, a smattering of various family members from the community (including our cousin's new baby girl), and a handful of volunteers. It was a bit early for a Thanksgiving celebration, but that's really what it felt like. We had twelve people packed around a small table, ate picante de pollo, and politely turned down the bubble gum flavored soda - a matter of national pride here.

Menda points out that a fair number of our posts have at least some small mention of a kitten. I apologize; fewer kittens in the future.

Chickens, a Kitten, and a Big Bar of Chocolate

Manu Manu (do doo do do do)

So we just finished up our first big vacation in Peru, a seven day trip into the reserve zone of Manu National Park, the least disturbed rainforest in the world. We went with a company called Pantiacolla and would highly recommend them to anyone interested in seeing the jungle. We left our house the afternoon of the 1^st and got back the morning of the 12^th. There was a lot of travel time packed in there (by foot, car, bus, boat, train and plane), but we got to see a lot. The total number of identified animals that we saw came to around 80, including 8 species of parrots, 6 species of monkeys, 4 species of vultures, 4 species of woodpeckers, 2 species of caiman, and a jaguar. Here’s a rough itinerary of our trip and the pictures that are worth 303,000 words:

1 October:

We took a night bus from Huaraz to Lima, getting in around 5:30.

2 October:

From the bus station, we grabbed a cab to the airport, and after spending less than 15 minutes to get from check-in, through security, to the boarding gate found ourselves with an excessive amount of time to wait around.  The flight was only an hour and twenty minutes, and by mid-day we’d already arrived in Cuzco. A short cab ride later, and we found ourselves with the majority of the afternoon free to do nothing but draw out money to pay the tour company and explore the city. Well, drawing out money between our two Peruvian accounts and our American account ended up taking the better part of the afternoon due to cash limits and foreign flags, and we still didn’t have enough. We even had my mom running to the bank back in Urbana to try to sort everything out. Thankfully we had scheduled an extra day in there so any travel delays wouldn’t prevent us from making our tour on the 4^th, so we were able to pull everything out we needed the next day and even took advantage of that extra time to book a day trip to Machu Picchu. We also ate at a restaurant called Greens that night. They have their own organic garden, and have everything on the menu labeled by percent organic. This is a place that in the States would have cost a small fortune, but with Peruvian prices it was maybe only slightly more expensive than a meal at Olive Garden. It was without a doubt the best meal we’ve eaten while in Peru and would make a serious running for best we’ve ever had.

3 October:

We were picked up around 4:30 in the morning, and an hour and a half in van to the train station, an hour and a half in train to Aguas Calientes, and a half hour in bus later, we got our first view of our first wonder of the world. To be honest, I was expecting to be underwhelmed, but I was pleasantly surprised at just how wonderful this wonder was. Also, while we were there, we ate the 8^th and 9^th wonders of the world: the chocolate chip cookies they sell there. We would go back just for the cookies. They really are that good. We got back to our hostel around 6:30, drew out the rest of the money for Pantiacolla and ate a small dinner.

4 October:

The first day of the tour is primarily travel, starting at around 5 in the morning. However, this isn’t so bad, as it includes driving through the mountains of Cuzco and descending into the cloud forest (the entrance to the cultural zone of Manu National Park). Along the way, we stopped frequently to see various animals and even got to see a group of eight or so Cocks of the Rock, the national bird of Peru. The lodge we ended the day at was basically a small collection of screened in huts with a few beds, but there were hot showers, so we definitely had not made it into the really jungly jungle just yet.

5 October:

We left the lodge at about 5 the next morning and travelled a couple hours in van before getting to the Madre de Dios River, where we began the first of many, many hours in boat over the following six days. Along the way, we picked up people who were on the 9 day tour, and stopped in a few interesting spots before arriving at our lodge just outside the reserve zone – very similar to the last one but no hot showers. All along the river, any time there was an animal, we’d stop and take pictures; or if the situation allowed, pulled onto a beach and set up the telescope as well. You’ll notice some of the pictures are significantly better than others. Those were either taken with our camera through the telescope or taken by our guide with his camera and our memory card. We also stopped at a tree that has aerial roots that drop down from the branches; the end effect is that a single tree looks like a huge forest of smaller trees. Around the trunk, the roots are so dense, you can’t get past them. The guide called it an “Avatar Tree,” as it resembled the trees in the movie.

6 October:

From 5 until noonish we travelled in boat from the lodge outside of the reserve zone to the one inside. However, as before, we stopped frequently to see animals and other interesting sites along the way, so it didn’t feel like just travelling. That afternoon, we did some of our first actual hikes, first to a lake in which we spotted animals and, once it got dark, searched out some caiman (cousins to alligators and crocodiles). We hiked back in the dark, searching for eyes that reflected back our the light from our flashlights and got to see a bunch of spiders, as well as a poison dart frog, the most poisonous land animal on the planet. One of the other people on the tour saw a snake hanging out in a tree, took a picture of it and ran, unsure of the potential danger he might have been in. Turns out it was a viper, the most venomous of all the snakes found within the park.

7 October:

We once again got up very early, this time to hike to a lake to see the giant otters that live there. (This is the same lake where they shot the footage for Planet Earth, and our very own guide was the one who for six months helped BBC with the footage.) There was a baby otter, so we couldn’t get very close (if mothers get stressed, they stop producing milk, and the babies die), but after we got back to the dock, the otters followed us, and we got to see them really close up as they ate the fish they had just caught. We also saw monkeys, parrots, and other animals while on the lake but the otters were definitely the highlight. In the afternoon, we went to the lodge owned by the government where they sell goods made by local inhabitants and teach about their customs. As it so happens, both the captain and the boat hand are of that (thoroughly modernized) tribe, and they were able to fill in the blanks about the uses of the arrows and spears that were on display. We then hiked back to our lodge from there, seeing various plants and animals along the way.

8 October:

This morning we travelled out of the reserve zone to get to a posh touristy lodge at which we’d be staying for the remaining two nights. At the suggestion of the chef, we left especially early to increase our chances of seeing animals along the river. It paid off. We saw a jaguar casually strolling along the beach. After a brief rest in the early afternoon, we headed out to an observation point built 140 feet high, on top of the first branches of a massive Ceiba tree. We had previously on the tour seen the largest known Ceiba tree in the world, but this one was still not small in comparison. We climbed a tower to get onto the platform and then spent the remainder of the evening spotting animals and waiting for the sunset. We hiked back in the dark, keeping an eye out for animals, and boated back to our camp. After dinner, we saw an injured baby tapir just hanging out on the grounds. A lady who worked there said it comes and visits every now and then.

9 October:

We got up especially early once again so we could beat the other tourists to the Macaw Claylick, the attraction around which the lodge was built. Various animals in the rainforest eat clay for a variety of theorized reasons, probably to offset the acidity of their diet or to supplement it with more minerals. This particular claylick is frequented by several species of birds, especially red and green macaws (just think parrot, and the first image that pops into your head will be this one). Around fifty or sixty gather every morning to eat clay or just to socialize with the other birds. We took an excessive amount of photos while at the claylick and with difficulty narrowed it down to 10 or so to show you all. We also have a video taken by our guide with our camera through his telescope of a toucan attacking a tree full of nests, eventually grabbing a baby bird and eating it. Menda afterward was left with a deep desire for Fruit Loops. In the afternoon we headed to a lake at which we saw some more giant otters, kept our eyes peeled for sloths (to no avail), and saw a bunch more birds.

10 October:

Thirteen hours of travel: three hours in boat, one hour in car, 15 minutes in boat, then the remainder in car. The car broke down briefly, and as we were hanging out in a small town waiting for it to be fixed Menda reminded me it was her birthday. Whoops. To be fair, I don’t think I’d fully awaken yet, having been up since 4 and dozing on and off throughout the preceding hours. I bought her chocolate cake to make up for it. During those 13 hours we got more of an opportunity to talk with the other five people who made up our group. There was an Australian couple in their thirties, a Dutch couple in their fifties, and a Swiss woman in her forties. We got back to Cuzco about six and we went out to celebrate Menda’s birthday properly. We shopped around for a good restaurant, but most everything was so... Peruvian. We like Peruvian food, but that’s what we eat at home, so we ended up going back to Greens. The second time around was just as good, and though it’s perhaps a little lame that in our brief time in Cuzco we ate at the same place twice, it was, after all, Menda’s birthday, and that’s what she wanted. And I gotta say, after eating, I didn’t care one bit that we didn’t branch out. That food was incredible.

11 October:

We finally got the opportunity to explore Cuzco a bit. Although entering the cathedrals was not permitted at that hour (they were either closed or in the middle of a service), we walked around and took pictures of as many of them as we could. We also stopped by the local market to buy some of the famed bread of Cuzco and a manta (brightly colored blanket used to carry babies, groceries, and to keep warm) as gifts for our family. Then we grabbed a cab to the airport (from check-in to boarding gate must have been under five minutes this time), we flew into Lima, went to Miraflores and spent the rest of our day just enjoying ourselves. We got falafel, went to a chocolate museum – where we somehow walked away with a bag of chocolate tea, mango chocolate jam, and a bar of dark chocolate weighing in at over a pound, and met up with our host brother (who is currently working in Lima). He saw us off at the bus station, and we began the final leg of our travels.

12 October:

Throughout the whole vacation, everything had been on time, well organized, professional, and incredibly satisfactory. It’s funny that it took coming back to Huaraz for something to screw up. The bus never pulled into the terminal; it just stopped on the street outside because they couldn’t easily back in and expected us to figure out on our own that we were supposed to get out and grab our luggage from beneath the bus. Not to mention it was 5:30 in the morning and we might easily have slept through the whole thing anyway. Well, we finally figured out something was up, stopped the bus on the highway, got out, grabbed a cab to our bus stop, and made it home by around 6:15. Our host family was really excited to see us. Ma ran to the door to greet us and promptly offered to wash our dirty clothes from the trip. We politely declined, ate some fried egg sandwiches, and then we slept.

[Cuzco, Machu Picchu and Manu]

[Manu Fauna]
[Manu Flora]