I don’t know what any Peace Corps volunteer would do without the occasional visit from home. We need the much needed payload of good chocolate, spices, hair ties, and other amazing things from home just to keep our mental health in stable condition. Not to mention the much needed reminder of all things American and a good dose of State side culture.
For instance, my college friend Casie came to spread all good things American (chocolate and culture) for a weeklong trip to my site and then Chachapoyas. I found out a many good thing about life back home: the “that’s what she said” has been replaced with “that’s what he said,” the awkward turtle isn’t that funny, and that the world is still falling apart faster than it should be (thanks to reading a Time and Newsweek). I was also lucky enough to restock my chocolate supply and to get a few sawmill gravy sauce packets (yeah think what you might, but I’m going to have an awesome biscuit and gravy breakfast soon!). Now before you think I was only happy to see the food I must inform that I practically tackled Casie in the Lima airport while holding my homemade sign that read “MEXICAN.” That inside joke got me called a racist about 4 times and got a handful of dirty looks…come on people it’s a joke.
The vacation started off with a day in Lima, doing the only thing there really is to do in Lima during the day: go to the market and eat Peruvian food. We lucked out (in my opinion) and were able to watch a few of the world cup games while we ate (what the heck Brazil, really? You’re gonna throw punches in the Wolrd Cup?) at a menu. Then a most astonishing thing happened (well by Peace Corps standards) I got on an AIRPLANE to get back to Chiclayo. For those of you who know firsthand how much I hate flying you can imagine what Casie had to deal with. I used to be okay with flying, when I was a naive little girl who thought that planes should fly, I mean if Snoopy can do it, then anyone can, right? Now that I’ve had enough physics classes under my belt to know that a plane in the air is NOTHING natural and requires an unbelievable amount of power to stay in the air and to not send me plummeting to a fiery death that will probably end at the bottom of the sea, I’m not so okay with the idea.
After arriving firmly on the ground in Chiclayo with a few white knuckles (and having resisted the urge to kiss the ground) I gave Caise the grand tour of Chiclayo-which isn’t much more than Lima. We went to our favorite morning sandwich place and then to the market to try a few fruits that they don’t have State side. We then went around our arm to get to our elbow, aka through Oyotun to get to Nanchoc. This trip I usually avoid because it involves taking a cruddier (than my town’s) combi and then an hour long Mototaxi ride. I think the new gringa in town was happy enough to be seeing my site and having the new experience of riding in a Mototaxi that she ignored how badly her butt hurt upon arrival. We were only able to stay for the night to make our bus to Chachapoyas, but I had the chance to show her most of my projects, the library, the garden, and the family I bake with, we made a cake to celebrate my best friend in site’s birthday and Casie’s arrival.
The next day Casie got to experience the bright and early (well before bright and early) wake up time of 3:30am to make the 4:00am bus to Chiclayo. She got the full (quite literally) experience of the ride—we filled every seat plus all the aisle room in the bus and gave Casie an eyelevel view of a drunk guy from my site’s zipper…so lucky! Once safely in Chiclayo we met up with my Peace Corps friend Ryan (who lives in Piura) and his 2 friends who were visiting from home, Scott and Stephan, to get on the bus to Chachapoyas.
How to describe Chachapoyas? It is one of my new favorite places in Peru. The air is so clean it is unbelievable, and the views literally take your breath away (although part of that may be partly due to the altitude). We signed up to do a 4 day trek through and around Chachapoyas. The first day took us to el Pueble de los Muertos, the town of the dead, where there are mountain side (like in the mountain) grave sites built into the cliffs. It was very impressive that the people of the time were able to carry such heavy material up half a mountain and build these circle gravesites. WE also got to see a few “tiki men” that were places in front of a burial site of a…I think the guide said it was a king. Okay, so they weren’t real tiki men, but you take a look at them and give me a better word to describe them.
After having spent most of the better half of the day walking down the mountain to the pueblo de los muertos and then back up it again we traveled in a car to the Valle of Belen. The Valley is now my favorite place in all of Peru. It is a wide green valley with one of calmest winding rivers I’ve ever seen. It’s not home to much, we only counted 5 houses and we lost count of how many horses and cows, but when you wake up in the morning you are submersed in a cloud until about 7am, then the sun peaks over one of the ridges and gives a spectacular show. Of course Ryan and I were the only ones who were up to see the sunrise (we’re used to waking up at 5 due to crowing roosters) so we killed time building card houses (mine was way better) and playing UNO. After breakfast we started our walk to the next stop, a house where we would stay the night before the horseback riding day.
Oh the horse riding day. The worst day of the trip for my poor butt’s sake. I am by no means the type of person who is meant to be on a horse for a long period of time. But I’m just going to fast forward through the stories of all the times I almost died and get to the “YAY WE MADE IT TO THE TOP” celebration scene. A good…oh 8 hours after starting the day out on a horse, and a good few near death experiences to be had by all, we made it to the top of the mountains. We had a great view of the valley on the other side and could even see Kuelap from the top. We then rallied and headed down the mountain. Which I can personally say KILLED my knee, but it was a good walk down. Casie and I found along the way some blackberry bushes and a Sauco bush (a Peruvian blueberry like fruit) that provided some snack food for the journey down hill.
Once we arrived in the town at the bottom of the hill we all fought to get in line for our much needed cold shower before dinner. While the others showered Ryan and I took off in search of a phone so we could reserve seats on a bus back to Chiclayo for the following day. We were successful; we only had to wait for about an hour in line for the only telephone of the village!
The next day we started early. WE had to get two big sites in in one day so that we could all make it back to Chiclayo in time to get Casie back to the United States and Ryan and his friends in a plane to Cusco…the pressure was on. We arrived in Kuelap Fortress and were pleasantly surprised when we realized we were the only ones there! I have never been ANYWHERE in this country that’s even remotely touristy without encountering 100 other gringos with cameras destroying my pictures. Lucky us! The fortress is huge and divided into 3 levels; where the general Joe-Shmo lives, the religious sector, and the military barracks. All the houses are built as cylinders to hold up during the occasional earthquake and have a cone shaped roof with a built in water filter. The view from the watch tower on the third (military) level was unbelievable. And what my mother would have found even more unbelievable was the booby trap that had been set up to keep out intruders: A narrow walkway on the side of the cliff (where if one were to fall it would be a good 100 yards before you hit the next rock and another 500 yards before you found the next one, and so on down a mile high mountain) had been artificially constructed wider. Not bad your thinking? Well this walkway had been constructed with the sole purpose of getting people to walk on it then fall to their deaths…AND all this without a barrier to keep the stupid gringo tourist from falling off the mountain. The only warning was a piece of yellow caution tape that had been tied between 2 sticks….yes mom, its true.
We stayed at Kuelap until around 10 and then got back in the car to head to the Gotca Waterfall, the third highest waterfall in the world. We ate lunch then started walking all the way down a mountain…which to me seemed rather counterintuitive to be walking DOWNHILL to the worlds third HIGEST waterfall…but that just tells you how high up we were to start with! The majority of the group (that would be everyone but Jeff and Ryan) didn’t make it to the actual waterfall due to our legs killing us and the time crunch we were on to make it back to Chachapoyas for the 7:30 bus to Chiclayo. Needless to say Ryan and Jeff pulled out a Superman like endurance and made it to the base of the waterfall and back in roughly the same amount of time the rest of us just made it back…go figure.
We celebrated with trembling knees that we had survived a boot camp’s worth of mountain climbing on our vacation and made it back to Chachapoyas to put on clean clothes and get on the bus. Other than a snoring passage that we all wished to kill, we made it back unscathed. Once in Chiclayo Casie and I got back on a plane to get her to Lima and Ryan and the boys stayed in Chiclayo to make up the sleep they missed on the bus due to said snoring guy. It was a sad departure with Casie at the airport, but then again, I will see her in 3 more months! And in comparison with the 2 years that had gone by, that’s nothing.
Side Note: The internet stopped letting me post photos, sorry people, I'll try again later
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