Mountain living

Cajabamba sits right on the side of a mountain, and that geography is an integral fact about the town. Most of the important places - the plaza, the market, the main street of shops, the high schools, etc. - sit along the same horizontal plane. Lucky for me, this means I don't often have to walk too far uphill, so I don't often think about how steep the up/down streets are. 

Looking downhill from my house - we're in the middle, so there's a whole other half of the town further uphill

But every so often something happens that reminds me. For instance, when it rains, those downhill streets turn into full-on rivers, rushing headlong towards the valley below, carrying rocks, trash, sticks, and the occasional small animal with it. Or take yesterday, when walking back to my house, I heard a ruckus coming up behind me. I turned to see two five year-olds careening at high speed down my street on their plastic cars. Thankfully there's not much traffic in Cajabamba, because those crazy boys were a) totally unable to brake, and b) giggling and squealing at the top of their lungs with the fun of it. It's too bad it never snows here, because you'd never be at loss for an awesome sledding hill. Our mountainside location also removes the need to use the words "right" and "left" when giving directions - instructions typically sound something like "from the plaza two blocks más arriba (up)" or "on the main street one block further out from the bus station, then half a block para abajo (down) there's a big brown door." 

Eight-legged escape

Today our tarantula escaped her cage - I'm sure she just wanted to strut her stuff in an early celebration of Halloween. Nevertheless, it was an extremely alarming event, because I was previously under the impression that the tarantula was 100% incapable of leaving its cage - this was the sole reason the two of us have been able to live in peace together these past 14 months. Today was a game-changer. Luckily, the enterprising young son of our housekeeper was on the scene to sound the alarm before the oversized spider could make it past the patio. However, the situation begged the obvious question, "what if Matthew hadn't spotted the escaper?" Or, getting more to the point, "what if the tarantula had gotten into my room?"

I informed my host parents in no uncertain terms that it was horrifying and frightening that the spider had the ability to leave its cage - they laughed at me. My host mom explained that it had only gotten out because - she thinks - she accidentally left the lid a tiny bit open after feeding the tarantula. The "she thinks" in that sentence will be the subject of my nightmares for the next week - what if it really just opened the lid on its own?? But at least Lourdes was trying to ease my fears. The same cannot be said for Javi, who came by my room later on to tell me that he's going to make a leash and start taking the tarantula out on walks around the house. Admittedly the thought of man walking spider was amusing to contemplate, but it was also an utterly terrible idea for the exponential increase in escape opportunities said strolls would provide. So, blog readers, if you don't hear from me after this, it's because I've been eaten by a giant spider - don't say I didn't warn you.

A Cajamarcan scavenger hunt

Last weekend, as part of the goodbye party we threw for the soon-departing Cajamarca 18er volunteers, we decided to have a scavenger hunt. The volunteers divided up into three teams, and we set off on a very strange quest across Cajamarca city. We were allotted one hour to secure photographical evidence of our team completing the hunt's six challenges, and I'm proud to say my team achieved all six... although we didn't end up winning the competition. But the resulting laughs and pictures were prize enough for us :)

#1: get a campo man/woman to let you wear their traditional hat

#2: find an example of a strange/funny English translation

#3: find an all-white cuy... we couldn't find a live one, but these ready-to-cook cuys were pretty white

#4: eat a chicken foot - luckily Gabe was willing to take one for the team here

#5: find a man-dressed-as-woman selling candy (this is a weird but common thing in Peru) - since we didn't find one of the real ones, Gabe again stepped up to the plate, with the help of some balloons

#6: make a human pyramid on the top of Santa Apolonia (a really big hill with lots of steps leading up it)

Ode to airplanes

In my pre-Peace Corps life, I was guilty of seriously under-appreciating airplanes. Those big metal birds were just a means to an end; an airborne capsule that, if I spent five hours sitting in it, would get me where I needed to go. But 16 months as a Peace Corps volunteer has inspired in me a new and sincere love for planes.

I now fully appreciate airplanes for what they are not: buses. A one-hour airplane ride can take the place of a 15-hour overnight bus trip. Airplanes always have armrests that draw a de facto line between you and your fellow passengers, so that you never have to put on your fierce face and explain to the Peruvian man sitting next to you the concept of a personal space. The sentence, "I paid 10 soles for this seat, so your stretching your knees and elbows into one third of it is not going to work for me," will likely never need to be uttered on an airplane. Planes have assigned seat numbers that are always respected, and it would be considered inappropriate to attempt to pack several live chickens, cuys, and children between the ages of zero and seven all into one seat with you. Airplanes that claim they are climate-controlled (i.e., all of them) do indeed maintain one comfortable temperature throughout the journey. Almost all Peruvian buses claim to have air conditioning, and almost none of them actually do. The climates-on-wheels that do possess functioning air vents seem to not understand that we passengers would prefer to travel in a comfortably cool environment, rather than a slightly sticky block of stale air, so they often turn off said AC for long periods of time. If an airplane unexpectedly delays three hours past its departure time, you get a free dinner voucher. If a bus is five hours late, or even if it decides not to leave at all, you get the character-building experience of scrambling to find another means of transportation. Airplanes enable passengers to maintain their freedom of choice by allowing those who wish to watch the in-flight movie to plug headphones into the sound system. Buses play outdated and/or overly action-filled movies at obscene volumes, so that even if you'd rather listen to your iPod, you can't hear the music from your earbuds over all the noise emanating from the bus speakers. Airplanes always have functioning bathrooms.

The above paragraph is by no means an exhaustive catalogue of the beautiful benefits of airplanes, but I think you get the idea. And I'm sure it's easy to see why, after uncountable hours spent on Peruvian buses, an airplane now seems like a positively blissful place.

Ecuador

My friend Lindsay and I recently returned from an awesome adventure to Ecuador, where we were constantly in awe of two things: 

1) How short the bus rides were - Ecuador, like Peru, is a country that pretty much has it all: beaches, mountains, and jungles. The difference is that Peru is enormous, while Ecuador is a nice small-sized ball of a country where our average intercity trip length was around two hours. 

2) How much more developed Ecuador is, compared to Peru. I'd been told beforehand that Ecuador was a step up the development scale, but I didn't think the two countries could really be that different, given the extent of their geographical and historical similarities. I was wrong: the roads, even in rural areas, are well-paved; people actually drive within the lanes on the road; campo farmhouses are made of brick or cement (not adobe) and are outfitted with sprinkler systems; throwing litter out the car window is not a socially acceptable practice; there are public bathrooms everywhere, and they are somewhat clean; bus terminals are so organized they feel like airports... I could go on, but you get the idea. These seemingly small differences add up to an overall environment that felt significantly different than Peru - I can only begin to imagine the constant state of awe I'll be in when I get back to America in December haha. But I also wonder how my experience of Ecuador would've been different if I wasn't seeing it through that Peru-comparative lens.

Anyway, I'll try to share some of the highlights of our trip with you here. First up: the capital of Quito. Lindsay and I both really liked Quito, because although it's a sprawling (51km long!) city, the central historic district is walkable and full of character. The city's beautiful sierra setting doesn't hurt either, as you're surrounded by mountains on all sides, and on clear days can see multiple snow-capped volcanic peaks looming majestically in the background.

Overlooking old town Quito from our hostel roof

Plaza San Blas in the centro histórico - you can see the typical style of building on the right

The Notre Dame-esque Basilica - you can climb rickety ladders to the top of the bell towers

View from the top of the teleferiqo (a.k.a. Quito's glorified ski gondola)

Just outside of Quito is the "Mitad del Mundo" - the equator line

At the equator you can do cool things like balance a non-boiled egg on a nail

Also near Quito is Otavalo, which claims to have the largest outdoor crafts market in S. America... it definitely seemed to have the world's largest collection of these Ecuadorian hats

Our next stop was the volcano Cotopaxi, one of the highest active volcanoes in the world, and a near-perfect example of the classic volcanic conical peak. At over 19,300 feet, Cotopaxi looms over the nearby countryside like Rainier does over Seattle - in both cases, on clear days it's hard to look away from its snow-capped beauty. On Cotopaxi, you can drive up to about 13,400ft (I know, crazy), and then hike up to the edge of the glacier at 16,400ft. Even midway through the drive up, when we got out to walk around a small laguna, there were the strongest winds I've ever experienced. By the time we were hiking higher up, it was a constant fight to remain standing - such intense wind gusts! The clouds racing by overhead were a visual confirmation of the strength of that high-altitude wind. We were walking along on a combination of ashy gravel and red volcanic rock, and it was awesome to be able to get so high and see the glacier up close.

Another highlight of the trip was hiking to crater lake Quilotoa, whose brilliant teal waters are hidden by the perfect bowl shape of the mountains around it.

For a small country, Ecuador was definitely chock-full of fun and of amazing outdoor places to explore. Hopefully I'll be able to go back some day, and with enough time and $ to include the Galápagos!

"Feel Like a Mountain"

A Peruvian filmmaker recently won the United Nations Forests Film Festival with this inspiring five-minute film, "Feel Like a Mountain." Its message about the complex relationship between development and the environment is relevant not only to Peru, but to many other countries whose wealth of indigenous cultures and natural resources are too often taken for granted.

Peanut beans

These are nuñas:

The nuña is a native Andean legume that looks (and tastes) somewhere between a bean and a peanut. In raw form, they look almost exactly like beans, and can come in all sorts of colors - red, white, black, brown, speckled, etc.

But when you heat them on the stovetop, the skin/shell of the nuñas loosens, and they "pop" into a delicious edible snack (the first photo shows cooked nuñas) - just throw a little salt on them!

Fiesta time

It's that time of year again: town fiesta! The fiesta posters are up (see above), the musical entertainers have been announced, the agricultural fair has been planned, and the liquor stores have been overstocked with beer: Cajabamba is ready. I am also ready... for a trip to Ecuador! While I'm a little sad to be missing the majority of the fiesta, my sorrow is more than compensated for by my excitement to explore a new country. Fun fact: Ecuador uses the American dollar as it's currency. So I'll be re-acquainting myself with dollars and cents - and probably calling them soles by mistake - in preparation for my next international excursion: America in December!