ayacucho continued

pretty soon most peole had taken seats on the benches that lined the walls of the courtyard and rosa was presented with the first bowl of soup. now it´s important to understand a few things to really apprectiate this situation. firstly, peruvians love meat, chicken is especially popular and 99.9% of restuarants outside of cusco don´t have an actuall meal thats vegetarian. secondly, rosa has been a vegan for fifteen years, that means no meat of any kind or any dairy and here she is holding a big bowl of soup with chunks of beef in it. to make things worse, she had been a little sick for a couple of days and hadn´t been eating much at all. we were both feeling very gratefull for being brought into this home and offered food. there was simply no respectful way to not eat was given us and although i knew it was going to be hard for rosa, i found myself suppressing laughter as she swallowed her first few spoonfulls. i was soon given a bowl and dug in with gusto as everyone else was served and started hungrily in. more and more people trinkled in as we ate and the women that had cooked were hurriedly serving everyone. while this was going on we found a moment of distraction and rosa slyly spooned all the meat from her bowl into mine. it wasn´t long before the pig leg pot was dipped into (which a lady had been stirring the whole time with a big bamboo stick) and the second course was served. a giant helping of rice and a regional favorite called puca picante was given to all. puca picante is a potato, beef (and apparently pig leg) stew with a spicy peanut sauce. there was no avoiding the meat in this one and i was very impressed with rosa´s ability to choke it all down with a smile on her face. i remember taking my first bite, saying "oh man, this is good." and looking over to see rosa determinedly shoveling it in. she didn´t respond. we were also given a delicious glass of chicha to wash it all down and after eating as much as our bodies would allow we excused ourselves and stepped outside to smoke. (chicha is a fermented, alcoholic corn beverage that has been a favorite in the andean highlands since pre-inca times. it is supposedly made, in some places at least, by chewing corn and spitting it into a big jug which is capped and sometimes buried until it´s ready to go. it may sound a little unappealing but it´s actually really tasty.) when we got out of the courtyard we passed a door that was open to the house and we saw, just for a flash, what looked liked a body draped in white cloth and placed on a table with flowers and candles all around. there were four or five people sitting around the table eating their puca picante. we were at a funeral! before this could really sink in we were found and surrounded by the children again. that interaction was in turn cut short by the hotel owner who found us and said that now would be a good time to go and drop of our things if we were ready. we went back in and gave our thanks to all the people involved in giving us such an unexpected welcome and were told by all to come back later that evening. when i thanked one particularly maternal lady, she said loudly, "thats how we are in peru! you can do the same for us when we come to the u.s.!" and i certainly would. the hotel was only around the corner and as we made the short walk i asked if we were indeed at a funeral. the answer at this point was an unsurprising yes, a woman of 77 years had died and apparently folks had been coming from all over to pay their respects and visit with the community. we were shown to our modest lodging for the evening, charged the average price and left to settle in. rosa and i just sat for awhile taking in the events of the day and when i told her how impressed i was with her performance at dinner she admitted that she was focusing as best she could the entire time on not vomiting. incidently, she wasnt able to keep that up and over the next 12 hours or so her stomach did a good job of reminding her that it didnt know how to handle these foriegn substances that she had consumed in such quantity.
as the sun finished setting the rain came on like clockwork and in no time was coming down in sheets, clattering loudly on the many tin roofs of the neighborhood. before too long we were paid a visit by a young man we had met briefly at dinner. he was very interested in getting to know us and was easy to talk to. one thing i always tell myself while in a spanish speaking country is to take advantage of every opportunity to converse with patient people who are excited to talk with me. its really the best way for me to learn. this guy had a name that i was never able to pronounce correctly so it was soon forgotten but we ended up sitting around telling each other about our countries for quite some time. we even each took a turn singing a song in or respective langauges which was really neat. i bet some of you can guess what song i sang. eventually a group of younger kids came to join us and a chaotic, impromptu english lesson ensued with them shouting over each other words they wanted to know followed by everyone trying the english pronunciation in unison. they also really wanted us to sing 90s pop songs from the u.s. which are quite popular here but we both drew dissapointing blanks in that category. they were able to sing us a few though, substituting the lyrics for the general sound of the words. priceless.
the rain kept coming down and eventually rosa and i got worn out by all the excitement and decided to call it a night without going back to the funeral house. i really hope that decision wasnt terribly disrepectful since so many folks had invited us back but we were both tired and rosas belly was wanting to take its revenge. the rain kept on heavily all night but had settled into a steady misting when we got up in the morning. no one else was around the place so we popped into the restaraunt across the street and i had a very popular breakfast around these parts of a fried egg, rice and a fried platano. rosa kept it simple with just a platano and coffee. after breakfast we walked the one block to the plaza to wait for a minibus to ayacucho and were soon waved over to a little store by a nice man how said he was heading to ayacucho in a few hours and would take us along if nothing else came before. we sat in the store out of the rain and talked with his wife and mother for awhile who owned the store and were awfully nice folks. at one point the wife hand squeezed to big glasses of orange juice for us and refused to accept any payment. after a while a minibus showed up with two empty seats so we piled in and started off on the bumby, twisty, cliff hugging, super muddy road to ayacucho.

jan. 19 ayacucho

the last few days have been really amazing. after spending two days in the beautiful little mountain town of huancavelica we decided to head for ayacucho. unfortunatley, i got an email from the orphanage in ayacucho the afternoon before we left saying that they wouldn´t have room for any volunteers until september. unfortunate because we were both very excited about the place but nice to hear that they have all the help they need for the time being. we decided to come to ayacucho anyway and have a look around and then most likely cruise on to cuzco.
we woke up at dawn in huancavelica and took a trip to mineral spring on the edge of town. it was a pretty cool place with the water coming from mountain seeps and piped into two pretty big public pools and quite a few private bathing rooms with pools big enough for at least five people inside. i was a little dissapointed because it was a chilly morning and although all the water was staeming it turned out to only be room temperature, not even warm. now, this water supposedly has curative properties but i still couldn´t get into the idea of taking a cold bath so i´ll be cured up to my shins i guess. rosa thought i was reall wimp and maybe i´ll kick myself later when she´s all cured up (from what i don´t know) and i´ll be left with only healthy feet.
later that morning we took a collectivo taxi to lircay and while we waited for it to fill up i had an amusing interaction with an indigenous campesino to the great pleasure of all the taxi drivers hanging around. it will be hard to do this gentleman justice with a description but he was quite a site and i´m sure he though the same of me. he was somewhere in his sixties i guess, and had the traditional qechua farmer outfit with a tattered brimmed hat worn over a colorful knit scull cap, a black button up shirt, black pants and some amazing homemade shoes. the shoes were thick wool sock like things woven to leather soles. they were falling apart and incorporated a pink plastic bag in some fashion that i couldn´t quite understand. the man´s face was really what stuck in the mind though, wrinkly as can be with scrappy, haphazard whiskers strewn about in a wily manner. he had a big smile that showed a mouthfull of nubby little gap filled teeth. these gnarly little chompers were absolutely swimming in a soup of saliva turned green by the coca leafs he was habitually transferring from a little bag into his cheeks. it was this guy´s great pleasure to come up and shake my hand and ask if i wanted to trade shoes. it took a couple of trys for me to understand his slurry speech but i eventually did and told him that although his shoes were very nice, i´d have to pass. if it were only later in the trip he would have had a deal! he thought that was hillarious and so did the taxi drivers. he then went through the same thing for my pants and jacket. i did offer to trade hats but he wouldn´t hear of that. right before our car filled up with passengers i rolled him a cigarette since i saw him smoking earlier and after i smoked a little he took it with a little fear and we hopped in the taxi, bidding farewell to the old man and the most beautiful little town we have yet to visit.
that morning´s ride from huancavelica to lircay took about three hours and was a constant flow of absolutely amazing scenery. up and down we cruised through the andes popping in and out of lush green valleys filled with huge herds of llamas and sheep grazing freely with no fence in site. they all had different colored cloth hanging from there ears, sometimes with little pom-pom like tassels on the end, presumably denoting ownership. every now and then you would see someone, old lady sitting in a field with no other signs of humans in sight, knitting and keeping an eye on a herd. a small group of children, maybe three, walking along the road trailing a mess of pigs, sheeps and llamas back toward a little group of four or five stone houses with thatched roofs way off in the distance. rosa and i agreed that all in all it was one of the most beautiful landscapes we had ever seen.
the only downside to the trip was the ever impatient driver who would always drive up close behind people adn their animals if they were walking on the road and lay on the horn until the peole got the animals out of the way. it came to a head when, as we approached a couple of people walkinf with a few cows, three dogs jumped out of nowhere and started running with the car and barking their heads off. this guy just mashed the horn and floored the accelerator, nailing one of the dogs with the right side of the front bumper. the car hit the dog really hard and it rolled off squeeling as we just kept right on. i´m sure that dog is dead by know but i know if someone didn´t put it out of it´s misery that it took a while. luckily, that was toward the end of our time with that jerk and we soon found ourselves in lircay, the halfway point to ayacucho.
lircay is a small town and we were dropped off at the bus station although there are no busses to ayacucho and the only way to get there is by collectivo taxi. there were plenty of taxis hanging around but when we asked a group of drivers about getting to ayacucho they all agreed that it would cost a whopping 300 soles! that´s about 100 dollars and we were only three or four hours away. the other option was 150 soles to get to julcamarca wich is less than half way. this was obviously the special gringo rate but these folks wouldn´t budge even after we made it quite clear that we wouldn´t pay anywhere near that much. ahter asking around a bit we found a different place where taxis going to julcamarca wait for passengers and within an hour we were off for 15 soles a piece. i was glad we found a reasonable price and although i totally understand trying to squeeze more money out of tourists, that was enough to make me mad. they were so insistent that it was a fair price and were so clearly trying to rip us off that i was harboring a little resentment as we left the town.
luckily, our new driver was patient with both pedestrians and livestock alike and we had more amazing scenery to take in. right before we left lircay the driver said something about julcamarca and getting to ayacucho from there. i couldn´t understand him well at all but gathered that he didn´t really want to go all the way to julcamarca and perhaps thought that we wouldn´t be able to get to ayacucho that day anyway. we couldn´t really care as long as he was going to take us to julcamarca which he had already said he would. well, about three quarters into the trip he spotted a van bouncing along up ahead and got really excited, saying that was going to ayacucho. he slammed on the gas, started honking and waving a blue rag out the window in an attempt to get them to stop. they eventually did and when we pulled up beside them the driver of the packed van said they were only going to julcamarca but our driver talked him into taking us the rest of the way. when we climbed into the van and took the last two empty seats in the very back we could tell that everyone was pretty interested in these two random, scruffy looking gringos with heavy packs. they all seemed to know each other well and after getting past the "where are you from?" "where are you going?" "how do you like peru?" questions with those right beside us, they all started talking over each other excitedly in qechua. of course we couldn´t understand one single word of what they were saying but whatever it was was extremely funny and as they kept looking back at us and going on, we got the impression they were making fun of us but in good way. just really getting a kick out of us. they seemed like genuinly kind and happy people and we couldn´t help but shrug, get infected by the mood and laugh along. when we arrived to the tiny town of julcamarca one of the men closest to us said that there would be no rides to ayacucho until the morning but that there was a hotel where we could stay (that he owned) but first we were going to "eat with the family". we weren´t exactly sure what that meant but it sounded cool and the events that ensued were some of the most amazing of my life.
the driver pulled the van up to two giant wooden doors that opened to a dirt floored courtyard behind someone´s house. everyone piled out and we were ushered into the courtyard where three or four older women greeted us as if they had known us from birth, offered us seats on a bench and went back to preparing the meal. we now sat back and watched as everyone flowed in and greeted eachother with warm affection and the women that were already there tended three of the biggest pots i´ve ever seen. i could easily climb into the biggest two and they were full of mysterious food that we could see clearly from where we sat and they had open fires burning under each one. a couple of groups of children materialized in no time and surrounded and bombarded us with questions saying a word or two they knew in english until they were shoed away by an old man. this old man was on the van with us and after whispering something about his mother told us to sit down. i couldn´t understand much of what he said but rosa was pretty sure that his mother had died and this was a feast for that occasion. it made sense in one way since apparently something of importance was going on but a funeral? why were we there if it was a funeral? and everyone seemed so cheerful. when we had first arrived i saw a woman walk by with two raw pig legs in her hand, whole legs, hooves and all, and as we sat talking about this funeral theory, rosa saw the lady plop the legs into one of the big pots ............................................
TO BE CONTINUED.................................................................................................................................

jan 14

our plans changed. no big surprise there really. we left san mateo after one night and took a packed collectivo taxi for an hour or so up, up, up to a tiny town in the misty mountains called casapalca where we transfered into another, even more packed taxi that took us up, up, up to la oroya. we had decided to just go ahead and make haste for a place called jauja which is the first of several small towns way up in the andes in the mantaro river valley. from la oroya we got a super cheap bus that went straight to and then past jauja before we had a chance to finish the snacks we had bought and relize where we were. the thing about busses like this is that gringos very rarely travel on them so when we do we´re obviously the only ones that aren´t familiar with the surroundings. people are hopping on and off all the time and the driver´s main intention is to get to the final destination as soon as possible so he can turn around and go back again and again. there was no clear sign for jauja so we ride on through the farming villages tucked between green corn field, herds of sheep and llamas until we reached the city huancayo. all theses busses and taxis over the last few days hace totalled up to about 8 bucks a piece. pretty cheap. we found a really cheap (my new favorite word) hotel room right off the bat and have been here for two nights enjoying the town, chatting with people in the plaza and brainstorming about how to move forward. we found a really cool seeming orphanage in the town of ayacucho which is probably about a two day journey from here and emailed them about coming to volunteer. we are both really interested in the place based on it´s website and are going to head toward it in the morning since it´s on the way to cuzco anyway. our first step will be to take a train from here to huancavelica. about five hours of amazing train ride for two dollars. cheap. so much for the mega hike i suppose, at least for now. the passive observer/tourist feeling is setting in and we both want to be doing something beneficial with our time very soon.

jan. 11

well, we finally left Mira Floresand struck out for the highlands. good decision. we took a one hour bus for 1 dollar a piece to chosica and started walking along the train tracks which parallel the highway all the way to la oroya which is the first town on the map we have and about seven hours by car from chosica. of course thats way too far to walk but i was certain that we would encounter some smaller, perhaps non-map worthy towns along the way. we made camp the first night pretty early. the hike and heat of the day took a strong toll pretty early on and we decided that there is absolutely no reason to be in anything even resembling a hurry. we found a nice little spot by a river and set up our little tarp system which, unfortunatley, will need some improvement if it is to stand the test of time. we got a nice rain shower that started as the sun went down and lasted through half the night. this is the rainy season in peru and although it didn´t really rain at all in lima, and rarely does, we were prepared to keep ourselves and things as dry as possible. nevertheless, i woke in a puddle and was pretty well soaked in parts. it wasn´t cold so it wasn´t too bad and we just tipped all the water off the tarp and slept on. in the morning we snacked on a mango, had some almonds and set off. we still have about two pounds of almonds that we brought to peru with us, way, way too many but we´re carrying them around with us anyway and talking each other into eating more whenever possible. we walked for a few hours and came across a little town with a restaurant that had rice and beans which is surprisingly hard to find in this country. after eating we decided to flag down a minibus and ride for awhile. in an hour we got here, to san mateo, a really cool, rainy, lazy town and got a room for the night. this is when i really love this country, being able to flag down a mini-van turned bus and pop into a cool little town and get a room for 7 bucks. in the morning i think we´ll get some grub and take another bus for a little ways.

jan. 9

ok, so steph says that the old bloggaroonie has been gathering dust. true, true. the thing is, there hasn´t been too much exciting to write about for awhile but, tomorrow morning we´re taking off to the highlands to start our mega hike. it may or may not turn out to really be a mega hike but that´s the idea. we´re both really excited to get out of lima which is beginning to feel too much like home. so, off to the unknown. we´ll be climbing pretty qiuckly in elevation to easily over ten thousand feet so it should get chilly pretty quick which is hard to imagine since it´s been so nice and warm here the whole time. hopefully it won´t be too extremely rainy but it is that season so we´re ready for it. llamas, potatos, yucca, roasted guinie pig........... the real peruvian flavor awaits!

dec. 21

When travelling in a foriegn country there are few things more important to keep track of than your passport. whatever you do, don´t lose your stinkin passport. you´d have to go to the u.s. embassy, fill out a ton of paperwork, pay an enormous amount of money and feel like a complete moron.
yesterday we went to the beach for the first time which is pretty amazing since we´ve been here for over a week and are staying only a few blocks from the giant staircase that leads down to it. well, we went down there and went a little north of where all the people were and found a spot where a peruvian family was enjoying the day as well as a couple of beet red european guys. the water was a wonderfull cool temperature as it usually is here and the beach consisted of tiny little pebbles that made a loud hissing sound as they were sucked back into the ocean by the waves. it was quite pleasant all around and after getting thoroughly roasted by the sun without realizing it, we strolled on back to our place.
that´s when i realized that my passport wasn´t in my pocket. my passport has spent every second of every day in my front left pocket since we´ve been here and i knew perfectly well, could visualize clearly, that it was now sitting amongst the pebbles on the beach. that is, of course, if it hadn´t been found and kept for some nefarious action to be carried out in my name, or washed out to sea, or at the very best, picked up by the europeans who would have had to walk past it and turned over to some authorities in which case who knows if i´d be able to track it down. these and all other possibilities were running through my mind as fast as i was running through the street, down the stairs, up the beach, nooooooooo! It was nowhere to be seen, the europeans were gone, the family was gone, all hope was lost. crap! what a dumbass! i lumbered back up the beach, up the stairs, and back toward home grumbling to myself and halfheartedly looking along the ground as i went. i made it back to our street and when i turned the corner, i swear my eyes popped out of my sockets like in the cartoons and my head spun around a couple of times and i had to keep myself from hugging the cop that was standing outside the hostal next to our front gate holding my passport in his hand. serendipity! he didn´t know that i lived next door and was checking to see if i was staying at the hostal. i walked up right before he left. apparently the europeans came through for me afterall. needless to say, i was thrilled and now have a copy of my passport to carry around and lose at will.

dec 18

we took a microbus to central lima today and walked around for ever. i really wanted to find this black market that i heard about but was unable to, i´m sure we´ll try again. cenatral lima is a much didn´t place than miraflores although it´s only a ten minute bus ride awaqy. tons and tons of peole, traffic like crazy, loud stinky. i really like though, lots of awesome food all over and tasty drinks and snacks galore. interesting place. i got an email from mookie just now saying that he´s in peru. he was supposed to be in bolivia but maybe we´ll get to meet up with him sooner than we thought.