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."