A trip north

Since about half of Cajamarca's volunteers are clustered around a small northern city called Chota, we occasionally have our regional meetings there instead. So last weekend I made the 7.5-hour trip from my site to Chota, and aside from all the transport hours, it was a really nice time. We got to eat a lunch of homemade veggie burgers, courtesy of Chota volunteer Andrea, and later we enjoyed a dinner of the city's specialty: cecina. Cecina is cured pork meat - a similar concept to jerky - and Chota is famous among Peace Corps volunteers for having the best cecina restaurant in all of Peru. I'm not big on dried meat, but even so the restaurant lived up to its reputation (luckily, since pork was literally all they served!) 

During the day, after we'd taken care of the meeting business, Andrea took us to an orphanage she works at on the edge of town to hang out with the kids for a couple hours. On a beautiful hillside overlooking the city, we got to play soccer, put up Michelle's slackline, and relax on the grass. 

Juancito, acrobat in training, loving life on the slackline