Thanks to those people who have been harassing me for not writing in this for so long, I’m not sure whether I would have ever gotten around to it. So obviously a lot has happened since the last time I wrote…about a month and a weeks worth of stuff. So unfortunately I think I will only write about bigger things I’ve done.
Birthday and Puno
The weekend of my birthday was ridiculous. It was my birthday as well as Zach’s (another volunteer) on the 7th of February. So we celebrated it by going out everyday that weekend. The nightlife in Cusco is fun; there are some really great bars here as well as some very local and western clubs. On my actual birthday we were all suffering the after effects of the past 2 days but the house was looking forward to Superbowl Sunday… I, however, actually had a reason to be excited since I was leaving for Puno. I left the house that night to meet up with a friend of mine who is also a volunteer, Alex, at the bus terminal. The bus ride was 7 hours (which unfortunately I couldn’t fall asleep on). So needless to say, when we arrived at 5 o’clock in the morning the next day I was a little out of it and very much sleep deprived. We took a bike taxi into town to look for some breakfast. It was hilarious, I felt really bad for the guy on the bike, since it was 2 people with 2 bags… pretty hard for the guy. We had a good laugh watching people walking beside us going faster than we were. Anyway we ended up getting into the town center. There were chairs being set up all along the sides of the road for Carnival. After eating breakfast we went to the port, got boat tickets, and then headed off to Los Uros, the famous floating islands of Peru. It was amazing to see. We were given a presentation on how they created the islands. We were told that they have to add to the island every 15 days because it slowly gets washed away. After that we were off to Amantani, the island we were staying on. The place was beautiful, and the house we were staying was a lot nicer than we expected. In the end we stayed one night extra on Amantani, which I’m happy about because on the second night we got to witness one of the most amazing lightning storms I’ve ever seen. Anyway on the second day we walked to the top of Amantani, because once you get there there are two separate mountain tops, and on each there’s an archeological site. Pachatata and Pachamama. There were some spectacular views at the top, and on the way up there were these amazing stone archways. All of which were built by the Incas. The next morning we were off the Taquile, probably my favourite island out of the three. It was BEAUTIFUL! We had to walk up this long, long walkway to get to the Plaza at the top of the island. When there I had an amazing lunch, in one of the only places to eat (with only one meal on the menu). We saw more of the island and then had to walk down the opposite side of the island to get back to the boat. To get down to the boat there was this ridiculous set of stairs that went on forever. By the time I was down my legs were shaking like crazy!! We were then on the boat for about 3 or 4 hours to get back to Puno. Our bus ride back to Cusco was not until much later that night so we had a lot of time to kill. We sat in this popular square where all the young people around were spraying each other with this foam stuff to celebrate Carnival. After a guy tried to steal my stuff we decided to move locations and we ended up watching the Carnival parade for a while. It was fabulous, the costumes and outfits were spectacular! Sadly we had to tear ourselves away from the parade to get on the bus back home.
Carnival
The 14th of February here is not a lame Hallmark holiday like it is back home, here it is Carnival, Where there are so many celebrations going on all over Cusco with music, fireworks, drinking, dancing…and did I mention drinking? I was invited to go up to Huayllarccocha (where I volunteer) for a very traditional version of Carnival. Unfortunately I was VERY sick, and any kind of illness here is multiplied by 100% because of the altitude. So I had been sick for 3 weeks already by that time…not fun. Anyway, as planned, in the morning I went up to Huayllarccocha. Carnival up there was probably one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. Everyone was dressed in very traditional clothing, men in colourful ponchos and women in amazingly colourful dresses. Before actually starting the festivities they have a tradition of painting each other’s faces with one colour of powder paint. (It was pinky purple, I don’t know whether it’s always that colour) Usually someone from the opposite sex will put the paint on you. So after that was done we were ready to start walking. So let me try and describe what it looked like. Many people were wearing hats with blown up balloons on them (that is also a very important traditional part of the outfits…I don’t know why though). Many people were carrying flags, the Peruvian flag and the Cusco flag and some men were carrying shovels. Everyone in the community partook (and as extras there were a couple of us gringos). Now the cherry on the cake was that there was a band that came along as well, men carrying huge instruments. So we all set off walking, flags were waving and the band was playing. Eventually after walking along the road for a couple minutes they turned off the road and everyone started running down the side of a mountain. I mean everyone, men, women, old, young, the band with their instruments, and us gringos. When we got to flat land everyone was still running, but now there were streams that they were jumping over. When we got to the first stop the band started playing again and these 5 men in skirts holding white flags started doing a dance. And within a minute or two the walking continued. We started walking up the mountains, with different stopping points. At these points different things would happen, the men would dance, the band would play, people would eat and drink and at a few spots men that were carrying shovels would dig around stone piles. It was amazing to experience, even though I only got to experience it for a short while since I was so sick. So after a couple hours I turned back, walked back down the mountain and went home. The group continued running over many, many mountains I learned later, and ended in one spot where everyone drank and danced. It was cut a little short, however, because there was huge rainstorm. That night there were some amazing fireworks going off all over the city. It was a pretty spectacular day!
Ica and Lima trip
I left for Ica and Huacachina to do something different for Alex’s last week in Peru. We went there by bus, which on the way there was 22 hours on two different busses. NOT FUN. I’m usually pretty good with busses, but this one was swerving all the time and made me feel very sick. Which also meant that I didn’t really eat anything for the 22 hours because I was scared I was going to throw up. Fun times. Anyway we got to Ica and took a cab to Huacachina (which takes all of about 5 minutes). When there we found a cheap hostel that was actually really nice. They had hammocks!!! :) Huacachina is a TINY town…I’m not sure whether you can even call it a town it’s that small. So you are in the middle of a dessert, with crazy big sand dunes everywhere. And in the middle of these sand dunes there is a natural oasis. That’s what Huacachina is, some restaurants and hostels surrounding the oasis. It takes less than 10 minutes to walk around the whole of it. People swim in the oasis and during the day they use paddleboats and things like it. Apparently at one point there were 7 of these oases all over that area, but now there is only the one left. It’s a really lovely place, very surreal. At night it’s just as pretty because there are lamps around the oasis that are lit up. That night we had dinner and drank some wine by the water, which meant I was hung-over in the morning. What did we decide was the best cure for the hangover? To go to three wineries in one afternoon! It was actually a lot of fun. The first we went to is the biggest wine producers in Peru, Tamaca. We were given a tour of the grounds and got to see the original instrument that they used to crush the grapes. It was this huge wooden effort. The wine was really good; however, they also make Pisco, a very common Peruvian drink, which I don’t like on its own. After Tamaca there were two other smaller wineries, and then we went to this weird museum and a sacred Incan site. The site was cool to see because it consisted of these trees where their trunks grew along the ground and were very long and twisty. Ha- that’s the only way I can describe them. But it was scared to the Incans because they believed that they made the shape of a monkey and butterfly. That night when it was really dark we decided to climb up the sand dunes. We climbed up high enough that we could see both Huacachina and Ica and the same time. The best part was running back down though. It was ridiculous how much speed you worked up without really doing anything…and stopping was the hard part. The next afternoon we went sand boarding, the reason that most people go to Huacachina. You drive on to the dunes in these crazy sand buggies. The driving around was really fun in itself, there are a lot of times where you are going straight and then suddenly you are going down a really steep dune. Because the colour of the sand is all the same you cant see when there is a drop coming up. It was hilarious, there was a group of women behind us and they were screaming all the time. And I found out that they use the word Wednesday as a swear word. So at some points you could hear one woman behind us screaming “Miercoles!” We started on the boards on smaller dunes; I went down on my stomach…there was no way I was going to try standing up. Horrible balance+ watching others try and wipe-out really badly= Not in my lifetime. But it was so much fun, you went faster on your stomach but you had more control. After everyone got to practice on the smaller dunes they took us to these MASSIVE ones. I don’t know how tall they were, but the people at the bottom looked like little dolls. Not good when you are afraid of heights!! I started freaking out, but the guide we were with wouldn’t let me not go down, so down I went. It was crazy fun. After going down the first huge one there were 2 others for us to walk to and go down. The next one wasn’t as large… but big enough for me to get scared. And the final one was a monster. There were many people at the top just sitting there looking at what they were about to do. Alex threw himself off the top almost right away, and I don’t think I saw anyone else go that fast. There was a guy there with me watching Alex go down as well. He was the next to go, once at the bottom they just sat there waiting for me to come down. I could NOT convince myself to go down, I think, all in all, I was up there for at least 20-25 minutes. Then a friend of the guy who was with Alex and I came and convinced me to walk even higher up the dune. Which meant the trip down would be longer but not as steep. So eventually I was at the very top of the dune and went down. Fantastic and fantastically scary! After going down the third and final dune everyone had to walk back to the cars. On our way back it was even better in the buggie because by this time it was dark and so you really couldn’t see what lay ahead of you. So there were a lot more sudden drops and a lot more screams from the back.
The next day we traveled to Lima and stayed in the historical district in this wonderful hotel. It was beautiful and strange. It was filled with a large collection of completely different things. It had sculptures and paintings everywhere. Every morning the people that worked there would bring out two parrots that would just hang out on some sculptures and eat sunflower seeds. As well as they had two tortoises that roamed freely. We didn’t do all that much in Lima roamed around a bunch and saw a movie in Spanish. Lima is really, really busy! The streets are a little intimidating when trying to cross the roads. No one walks across the roads in Lima, everyone runs, otherwise you get run down. On the bus ride back to Cusco I was by myself since Alex was getting his flight to Columbia from Lima. The ride was very beautiful because they were taking the back roads because of all the rain Peru has received the regular route had been destroyed. It was very beautiful, but very long. It ended up being 23.5 hours on the bus and 3 hours waiting for it to come in the first place. But eventually I was back home.
