A gringo dad in Cajabamba

About halfway through my 2+ year Peace Corps experience, I had the privilege to welcome a visitor to my humble Peruvian home. After an odyssey of nearly-missed connections and midnight layovers, Dad arrived in Cajamarca! It was of course great to reunite with family after so long, and it was fun to show him the ins and outs of my life here. 

Looking out over Cajamarca from the Santa Apolonia hilltop

We started off in my regional capital of Cajamarca, seeing the sights and meeting 99% of my volunteer family. Dad enjoyed putting faces to the names he'd heard so often, and we spent some quality time walking the streets and sitting in the plaza taking in the scenery. Then it was off to Cajabamba. My visitor spent the entire three-hour bus ride taking pictures out the window (it is a beautiful drive) and marveling at what a rural environment we were in - apparently my parents were deceived (by their Skype window into my cozy bubble of a bedroom) into believing Cajabamba to be a bit more developed/urban/accessible than it actually is. 

Cajabamba plaza

The day we arrived was Sunday - market day! So Javi and I took Dad to experience the crowded chaos of our weekly open-air market, while also tasting and/or buying all the Peruvian fruits that don't exist in the States.

Explaining how to eat aguaymanto

Then it was time for the most important taste-test of all: cuy! Conveniently, one of the women's groups I work with was participating in a church fundraising luncheon that day, and they were very excited to hear I'd be bringing my gringo dad to lunch with me. Dad was a great sport in meeting a lot of enthusiastic ladies and in trying his very own plate of cuy :)

Definitely one of the greatest parts of Dad's visit was getting to have my two (or 1.5 - missing one mom) sets of parents in the same place. I think both sides really loved meeting each other and experiencing firsthand what the others were like. I also learned that my host dad speaks English pretty well, which made my life as a translator easier since he and Dad could have a pretty good conversation on their own.

So Dad had a great visit to Cajabamba, but the universe decided that staying in my house and eating cuy was not quite a sufficient Peace Corps experience for Dad - he needed to learn what life was really like here. Accordingly, on our way back to Cajamarca, our bus ran into a line of cars waiting for an under-repair bridge to open. Instead of calmly settling in to wait, our bus abruptly veered off the main road onto a dirt path that sloped down to the river. Mildly horrified, but not really surprised, I realized we were about to ford the river. I clutched the armrest as our bus wobbled and crunched its way across the gravel streambed, relieved when we emerged un-drowned on the other side. But then things went south: the bus wheels started to spin, and we were soon irreversibly stuck in the sandy ground.

Attempting to get the bus out

Three hours of digging, pushing, rock-placing, and tire-jacking later, the bus hadn't moved, and the sun had set; it was time for plan B. For those of you asking, "why didn't they call a tow-truck?" or "why didn't the bus company send another bus?" you clearly have never been to Peru - things just don't work that way. So Dad and I grabbed our packs and climbed up the hill to the main road. We sat down to wait, and an hour later were able to jump on a coast-bound bus that agreed to drop us in Cajamarca. As if the bus incident wasn't a sufficient "welcome to Peru" experience for my visitor, the next day he came down with a serious stomach bug. But Dad was an incredible trooper through it all, and can now proudly say that he had the true Peace Corps experience during his trip to Peru.