700 and something days later...

And I am officially done with Peace Corps. As of about a month ago, on November 10th, I finished my last little bit of paperwork and officially became a "returned" Peace Corps volunteer. The end was mostly surreal, and I still can't really believe that it is over, or even that it really happened at all. The last year especially, seems to have just been a blur, where I went from having one year left last November, then 6 months, then 2, than a few weeks and somehow before I really noticed it I was only days away from leaving Yanamito for good.

I have tried writing this out in a few different ways, but every time I try, the writing just kind of gets away from me and I wind up just rambling and contradicting myself a bunch. Overall, it was a really great experience. I was really lucky to have landed in Peru, and on top of that I was really lucky to have been placed in the rural Andes. I got to live in a stunningly beautiful place, go on mountain treks, go on beach vacations, jungle vacations, visit Machu Picchu, eat great food, experience living with an indigenous traditional culture, learn Spanish and REALLY get to know what it is like to live in a different country. I had two amazing host families, both who refer to me as another child, and somehow I now have more parents, siblings, cousins and aunts and uncles than I have ever had before. Work was sometimes, if not always, frustrating (but I am mostly gonna stay away from that to avoid the rambling), but I did all I could, some people learned things (they must have right?) and I definitely learned a ton. There are some things I would do differently, but overall, I would do it all again in a heartbeat and I can't think of anything else I could have done to better take advantage of two post college years in my 20s.

So that was Peace Corps. I am now at the end of the world, in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. We are in Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. So far, since leaving Peru (for the 1st time since September 2009 by the way), we have seen Santiago, Valparaiso, Vina del Mar and Patagonia of Southern Chile. This part of South America is just hitting summer time so it is light out till 830 and beautiful weather.

We have gone to the beach, toured poet Pablo Neruda's house, gone to a whaling museum, gone on a 5 day trek in Patagonia, seen a real live glacier and experienced a bit of Chilean culture.

Chile was slightly confusing because Chileans talk really mumbly, sing-songy Spanish and their peso is valued at about 500 to the dollar, but for some reason they also use the $ sign. So you walk into a sandwich shop to get lunch and you see "cheese sandwich--$750." Very confusing. Patagonia and where we are now is incredible...it just feels crazy to know you are at the southernmost part of the world. Also, because we are so far south now, it doesn't get fully dark until 11 pm and it gets light at 5 am. My watch battery died and I was just constantly confused, thinking it was about 4 in the afternoon about 6 hours a day. More Pictures will be forthcoming, but since I didn't take my laptop with me, I can't transfer them from my camera and I just have to steal Pete's.

That's about it for now. I have my return ticket to NY booked for January 17th. From here we go to Buenos Aires, then I strike out on my own for about 2 more weeks in Argentina, including the Igazu Falls, and a week or two in Bolivia before I make my triumphant (is living at home and being afraid to go outside considered triumphant?) return to the USA...

I am officially one quarter of a century old...

and I have two weeks left as a Peace Corps volunteer, but don't any of you worry, my plans for my immediate future are still pretty vague and fun

I am officially done here on November 10th. I am gonna spend a few days at the beach up north to unwind and say goodbye to Peru then I'm gonna meet up with my friends Pete and Will in Lima. The plan is to go south through Chile to Patagonia, cross over to Argentina and eventually wind up in Buenos Aires. From there, they go home for a nice x-mas, but given my religious persuasions, I plan on skipping x-mas in the states and striking out on my own for a trip through Uruguay and Bolivia before heading back to Lima to fly out sometime around the middle of January. I will spend a few months at home, feeling confused and maybe out of place and then with the same guys we will strike out for the Appalachian trail for a good chunk of 2012. my philosophy on all of this is that I will see if the world is really gonna end or not in 2012 and if it does I will have had a hell of a lot of fun right before hand and not have had a lot of useless money sitting in a bank somewhere and if it doesn't I will have had a lot of fun anyway and convince myself I am ready to do something like go back to school or get a job (and for the sake of those hopeful future plans I took the GRE last month, so I have that in my pocket).
Anyway, expect a lot of pictures like this:


So i am obviously very excited for all of that and additionally, most of the people around time like to remind me that I am gonna be leaving very soon, all of which is making me kind of antsy... but in the mean time I do need to close things out in Yanamito, which is going well. I took my whole school on a trip to the famous Llanganuco lakes

and I have also been working on giving the town's adults classes on garbage management and organic fertilizers. On both counts, thank you to everybody who donated money that supported both projects (more formal thanks forthcoming...I am in the process of getting my act together on that).
So that's the story for the moment...when I have some time to reflect in site I will try and put together some highlights and perspectives on the 2 years and what I will and will not miss about this crazy country.
Hope all is well with everyone in the states and I look forward to reconnecting in a few months.

mostly pictures...I am getting lazy

english words seem harder to come by as I spend more and more time in this spanish speaking country. but I have been up to some cool shenanigans, including 3 overnight hikes, some ruins and a bullfight and hey, pictures are worth 1000 words anyway. So here it is:

Pete and I standing face to face with the cabeza clava, one of the central artifacts at the chavin ruins dating back to 1200 bce

After visiting the ruins, we got to camp at 615 at probably about 4500 meters. It was COLD.

I may or may not have a mullet these days

Camping our for Pete's birthday in the national park

Bullfights in front of the tallest mountain in Peru

Midget bullfighting...

Pretty lake...but really cold

and that's most of the exciting stuff. time is getting short and I will provide a fuller update soon, but until then enjoy the pictures, especially you mom

the jungle!

About a year ago, my parents came to visit and we went on a jungle adventure in the southern rainforest of Peru. We had a great time and I got to enjoy a few days of first class treatment (at least by my standards), including English speaking guides, , beautiful accommodations, good food and having everything booked by someone else.
This year, a bunch of us volunteers decided to go visit the northern rainforest as our last big blowout vacation. We were setting a much lower standard of quality, going as backpackers and having done some guide book research, but mostly just setting out and seeing where we got to. I’ll set out the basic itinerary and travel times and then hit the highlights. I left my capitol city, Huaraz, on a 9:30 pm bus which arrived in the northern coastal city of Trujillo at about 8 am the next day. That afternoon we left Trujillo on another bus at 3 and got to Tarapoto, the biggest city in the department of San Martin the next day at about 10 am (that’s right…it was a 20 hour bus ride). We spent a day exploring the city and after lunch the next day (days of the week quickly became meaningless) we took a 3 hour van ride to the town of Yurimaguas, the last town on our itinerary reachable by road. After a night in a riverside hostel, we got to the docks at 7:30 am to catch a ten hour boat ride to the town of Lagunas. In Lagunas we met up with a pre-booked guide who took us on a 3 day, 2 night canoe tour of the huge nature reserve called Pacaya-Samiria. When we returned, we showered, ate something and trudged down to the port at 1 am to catch a boat that took us 30 hours downstream to the town of Iquitos, the biggest city (in the world?) not accessible by road. We spent a few days there being tourists, and then it was a flight back to Lima and a bus to Huaraz (estimated return travel time—about 10 hours).
That’s the rundown of where we were and how we got there. It was a lot of travel, but since the biggest chunks of it were by boat, we were amongst friends and we were in novel surroundings, most of it was enjoyable. The boat rides were like nothing I have ever experienced. These boats take a long time and serve town that have no road access. So in addition to carrying human cargo, they also transport everything, and I mean everything, that you would need to supply a population. The first boat we were on was relatively small, but still held crates of fresh produce, sacks of rice and crates of live chickens. The human cargo meanwhile, had strung up hammocks in every available nook, and although quarters were a bit tight, it wasn’t a bad day to while away the day, with occasional naps thrown in.

The second, larger boat to Iquitos had a corral with about 20 cows on the front deck and more crates of tomatoes, carrots and other produce than I could even begin to count.

And when we finally arrived in Iquitos, we pulled up to port next to a huge barge that was being loaded full of nothing else but empty cases of beer getting ready to be sent upriver and refilled. By our best estimate there were well over 300,000 empties on that boat.

And that’s one of the things that made Iquitos really cool—everything you saw had gotten there by boat. But I am getting ahead of myself.
First was Tarapoto, where our group of 13 spent the afternoon taking a short hike to a waterfall. It was a beautiful stroll, about 15 minutes up a clean path through dense greenery to get to a waterfall with a pretty nice swimming hole at the base and a rock about 15 or 20 feet up to jump off.

We spent an hour or two splashing around and got back to the van just in time to avoid a massive jungle downpour.
The next two days were spent in transit to get to our canoe trip. We had a fleet of 4 canoes, hand made out of tree trunks and relaxing in those was a pretty good way to spend a dew days. We spent the days floating downriver looking for wildlife and cool plants and the two nights were spent in a huge riverside bungalow where we swam and fished and tried not to get bit by mosquitoes.

We saw sloths, monkeys, a small anaconda, piranhas, crocodiles, frogs, lizards and we just missed a river dolphin. And swimming was extra exciting because you knew all of those things were in the water and you just had to hope not to get eaten… (nobody got eaten).
The long boat ride to Iquitos was…long. But also a really pretty trip and between the scenery, the fact that we were floating down the Amazon, naps, my i-pod, a Stephen King book, friends and snacks, I mostly managed to stave off boredom. Iquitos was a cool city and it felt extra good to get to our final destination and stay in the same place for a few days straight. The city is a big sprawling place, with fleets of moto-taxis and motorcycles roaming the streets in addition to really cool wooden buses. There are also some residual signs of when Iquitos was a super rich rubber town, including a building built by the dude who designed the Eifel tower

and shipped there by boat and various buildings covered in painted tiles shipped from Portugal. We spent our days roaming the traditional and handicraft markets, checking out a zoo, going to a nearby town known for its mask making and generally just wandering the city. It is a bit of a hippy haven, so we were not the only non-Peruvians there and the gringo attractions include some nice coffee shops and a sports bar that Sports Illustrated once called the best in Peru. I even got to eat onion rings that were almost diner quality, something I have not found here at all in my two years…
A side note on the sports bar and sports here in general. We were eating a late lunch in the sports bar and there were some limeñens upstairs eating and cheering. Pete’s brother asked why. It turns out that Peru was playing an international tennis match. That’s the kind of national pride Peruvians have—probably nobody knew the dude who was playing name, but they were cheering at the telecast. Fast forward 5 hours. We are in a bodega, crammed in with about 50 people, a mix of hippy dreaded ex-pats and general Peruvians, watching Peru play Chile in a Copa America (like the world cup but for Mexico and south) qualifier on a 20 inch TV. And if you closed your eyes you would think they were watching it live in the stadium. Every almost goal was met with huge gasps and groans. A teenager brought in a bass drum to rile up the room. And Peru pulled it out 1-0 on a goal in extra time, which was met with raucous applause and hugging all around. It was pretty awesome.
Back on topic. The coolest thing in Iquitos was probably the market. It had all the things a normal Peruvian market has (vegetables, fruits, cooked food) but also a crazy “natural healing” section and a ridiculous fish section. The natural products aisle had stall after stall of herbs, salves and potions to cure whatever ailment you might have. The fish section, in addition to having such delicacies as turtle and crocodile meat, had butchered fish that were bigger then me and fish pulled out of the Amazon that looked so strange you had to look twice to make sure they were real.

It was pretty gross, but I had never seen anything like it.
And overall, the jungle was a really cool place to see and hang out. In a lot of ways it felt like a completely different country. The food is different, the people act differently, they speak Spanish with a different accent and I barely had to eat any potatoes all week. On the whole, the people we interacted with were super friendly, out going and welcoming. Because of the heat they spend a lot of time outdoors and as a result they seemed to be much more social and outgoing than the people of the Sierra. The food was delicious, including tons of fresh fish, bananas, popsicles and roasted grubs (which I declined to try). And although I am glad to be back in the mountains, where there are no mosquitoes and I can move without sweating, it was a really great trip and I can understand how there are gringos who go there for a week and wind up staying for months.

Huaywash

I spent my Passover/Easter break doing an 8 day trekking circuit here in Ancash called Huayhuash, one of the awesomest hikes in the world as judged by people who I assume are qualified to judge these things. Here are some quick numbers:

8 Number of days
7 Number of nights
5 Number of us who went
115 Length of the trek in kilometers (according to Lonely Planet)
5000 The highest pass we crossed (in meters)
7 or 9 The total number of mountain passes we crossed
10 Number of cans of tuna I ate over the 8 days
4 Number of glacial bodies of water I jumped in to
100000 Lakes and mountains and rivers and sheep and cows we saw

That’s a quick overview of the hike. Of all the experiences I have had in this country, this might be the one that is hardest to put into words. It was a spectacular 8 days of walking, with snow capped peaks always in sight, rivers and streams and glacial lakes everywhere and more stars at night than I have ever seen in my life. The valleys and mountains and paths seemed to go on forever and it was almost hard to believe that we were only spending 8 days walking around.
But despite the fact that the 8 days flew by, they were long days, with us setting out each morning at 7:30 and usually going until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. We got pretty lucky with the weather as it only rained a few days late in the afternoon, but we did walk through snow, rain, sun and clouds. There were two other groups that left the same day as us, and those 8 or 10 people were the majority of humans we saw for the week. There are VERY few people who live in that part of the mountains, and the “villages” we did pass through consisted of only about 5 stone houses with grass roofs at the base of a mountain or the side of a lake. But of course, as soon as we got back to civilization and were on a bus back to Huaraz, we were reminded by a lady who carried her baby cow onto our bus of how charming rural Peruvians can be…
Those were the words, here, in no particular chronological sequence, are the photos:

Us with our guide at the 5000m pass

The aforementioned lady and baby cow



8 days of that…



3 lakes and so many mountains




We spent a whole day staring at this


Welcome to town

My favorite campsite



I swam in there...



I took this right after slipping and falling in mud. This made it mostly better…




Last pass. All downhill from there.

running on coffee

I get asked sometimes how I manage to stay sane with what I’m doing—don’t I get bored, antsy, miss home or things from the states etc—and the truth is there are definitely moments when the answer is either: a. I have no idea. I think I have become exceptionally good at shutting off my brain. Or b. There are times when I come pretty close to losing my mind. Of course, I have some tricks up my sleeves. Headphones and an i-pod or a DVD in English are great ways to tune out the world. And I have also managed to turn my room into a lair/cave/sanctuary where only happiness exists. But there are also two practices that I have brought with me from my previous life that, on normal days, help me stay sane.
1. Running. I started running when I was 15 mostly as a way to stay in shape. Almost 10 years later, it is still something I do almost every single day. When I was in high school and in my early years of college, it was mostly a time when I blasted music, turned off my mind, and shed excess energy. But at some point in my sophomore year I stopped running with music and my runs became a time to think and de-stress (even if I wasn’t particularly stressed).
And that seems to suit me perfectly here. Even though running at a hilly 10,000 is still challenging a year and a half later, I still haven’t found a better way to chill out than my almost daily run. Granted, running here brings a whole slew of different experiences than it does in the states; avoiding cows, donkeys, sheep and pigs (and their ropes) is always an exciting challenge and I almost always keep a rock in my hand to scare off dogs who look and act like they want to bite me. Even though I have been doing this for as long as I have, I still get tons of surprised reactions, in Spanish and Quechua, that, wow, I am in fact running. It’s not uncommon for primary school kids to drop what they’re doing and try to keep up with me for a few hundred meters and then make up an excuse as to why they can’t keep going. And there are the few justified stops, like when someone asks me to send their cow in the opposite direction or help lift a bag of potatoes. But at the end of the day, a run is a run is a run and there is no better way to forget the frustrations of a long meeting, or someone not showing up or just about anything.
2. Coffee. Actually, now that I think about it, I think I started drinking coffee at right about the same time I started running—maybe I don’t have as much excess energy as I thought. But ever since junior year of high school, pretty much interrupted, I have enjoyed 1 to 2 to 4 cups of coffee a day. Actually, my first year in Peace Corps I had pretty much kicked the habit. See, despite the fact that Peru produces some of the best coffee in the world, they don’t drink it. What do they drink? At best, pretty diluted drip coffee, at worst/normal, really watered down, really sweet Nescafe. So until October of 2010, I kept a package of instant on hand for emergencies (meetings, early morning, days when I hadn’t slept well etc.) and wasn’t even drinking coffee every day. Then on my 24th birthday, it all changed.
My friend Rabbit gave me a 1 cup French press coffee maker. I had always been a drip guy myself, but this was the best thing available, so I went with it. And within weeks, Pete had told me which coffees were actually not half bad and I was back to a cup after breakfast and one more after lunch on most days. AND I LOVE IT. My napping rates have gone way down and leaving the house in the morning is definitely easier. And most of all, it’s something I can hold on to from a mas o menos normal semi-adult American life. I have my routine down right now where I can eat breakfast at 7, shut myself in my room for about twenty minutes while I have a cup of coffee and read something and still be at the school by 8. It was the kind of thing I didn’t fully appreciate it until I started embracing. And since Peruvians generally do not like drinking coffee the way we do, it’s kind of like a cool secret Gringo club. A cup of coffee is usually the first thing I will offer another volunteer who comes over, and it is usually one of the main enticements when someone wants your help in something (i.e. dude can you come help me give this class—I’ll make us coffee beforehand). So while I may have a “habit”, I honestly could not care less…

Why my life makes no sense, 27/2/2011 edition

Sunday was one of those days. Nothing bad happened, but things were off. I had gotten home from Huaraz around midday and I didn’t really wanna be back in Yanamito. There were a bunch of contributing factors—I had probably stayed up a bit too late the night before, I didn’t really want to be bugged by the mayor and I have to go back to town in two days to go to Lima for a meeting, and short trips home always make me a bit antsy. Also sometimes you want Sunday to feel like Sunday—a pot of coffee, a couch, the times, a TV with cable and English—and that doesn’t really happen here. In short, things were…cranky. So I did what I always do in this situation—I went for a run.
About 5 minutes into my run, I came across two 3rd graders staring at their donkey and the sack of potatoes that had fallen off its back. I was the only “adult” around so they asked me to help. In all reality, I am probably the last person in Yanamito you want to encounter in this situation. The normal rule is, Alex is not allowed anywhere near full sacks of potatoes. Despite the fact that I am the biggest person in town, these things weigh 70 kilos and working on my upper body strength is something I have never done. But here I was, being cajoled by 2 little kids into giving it a shot. We (mostly me) rolled the bag up the embankment so they could push it onto my back. So there I am, standing there, hearing these two little kids basically put odds on me (“do you think he can do it?” “I don’t know, probably not”) and wondering what the sound of my spine breaking will be like, and I just did it. I only had to carry it like 10 feet, and I almost fell over, and I almost missed the donkey when lowering the bag down, but I did it. The 2 kids kinda cheered and their grandma came over and helped us put it in place and thanked me profusely, and I went running on my way, with a big old dumb grin spreading across my face.

failtrek

The weather is a very popular topic of conversation here. I am often asked: does it rain in the US? Is it hotter or colder? It snows there? Well here there are really only two seasons—rainy season and dry season, February just happens to be the height of rainy season. It might not rain for a week at a time, but it also could rain all day, ever day. Despite the fact that as seasoned volunteers we all knew this, a group of 6 of us decided to try and go on five day hike to a town on the other side of the Andes right in the middle of February.
We were going under the auspices of work—we wanted to try out a wildlife surveying protocol in the national park and we wanted to see a massive reforestation project at the end. The first two days went smoothly enough, no rain but a constant heavy fog that limited what should have been a beautiful view to whatever was no more than 15 feet in front of us. We were making good progress, despite not being able to find any donkeys/guides to help us carry our stuff, resulting in bags slightly heavier than we expected, and the second day we crossed two 4800 meter passes and we all felt pretty good. Then things went downhill, literally and metaphorically.
We descended for about an hour an a half to a river valley, but we couldn’t find our intended campsite. A man came over from his fields to enlighten us that we had taken a wrong fork, but we were only about an hour from where we wanted to be and we could camp in one of his fields. That didn’t sound too bad, and he even said he would maybe rent us his donkeys for the rest of the trek. We went to bed dry and excited, but woke up with rain pooling in each of our tents. This wasn’t good. The man came back over with a big bowl of potatoes for us and explained that a. he had no donkeys for us and b. when it rains down there it means heavy snow and winds “strong enough to knock over a donkey”. Maybe we should have taken the hint when no one wanted to take our money to come with us in the first place…

We had a team meeting and decided to turn around, with the aim for day 3 being to re-cross the two passes we had crossed the day before and arrive at Cullicocha, a lake we had passed the day before that had some sheds nearby we were convinced we could break into to sleep. The first uphill and pass were fine—the rain quickly turned to snow, which was kind of cool and Pete and I passed the time by discussing religion and the cinema (really mostly just comparing various characters from Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Harry Potter. Please don’t make fun). We were soaked and every time we stopped for five minutes or more, the shivering started, but at least we were making good progress. The second part of the day just kind of sucked. The snow had lost its novelty and was just cold, my boots were squishy with mud and water, and I was trying to cross my 4th pass in two days and we were completing over a mile of altitude changes in one day. But we did make it up, and on the way down the second hill we were walking through streams of snow melt toward a glacial lake, and we realized that that is how these lakes form and it was an interesting nature moment.
Then as we approached the shacks we intended to squat in, the most incredible thing happened. A man named Victor, who works for Duke Energy at the hydro-power station at the lake and lives up there for a few weeks at a time, came out of his cement complex/house/hut and said (and I’m paraphrasing here) “hey dumb gringos, what are you doing? Come in and drink tea and sleep on my floor.” A cement shack with a 3 ring gas burner has never looked more inviting. And our host, as affable and jolly a man as you could ever expect to meet on top of a mountain, invited us to everything he had. I guess he is used to weeks of isolation and solitude and getting to hang out and laugh with a bunch of relieved, Spanish speaking Americans might have made his day. And at about 6:30, as we were bundled up in anything dry we still had and devouring the rest of our pasta, the snow stopped and we were treated to a spectacular sunset projected onto the clouds below us.

And of course we woke up the next morning and the sun was out and visibility was better than it had been all week and it has not rained since. Who knows these things? So well rested, and definitely feeling more positive, we set off on the last 4 hours downhill back to our starting point. Of course when we got there, there was only one taxi and so we fit all of us and our things in/on one car to go back to Huaraz. And while we were all a bit frustrated and disappointed, had we been successful we would have had a bad 12 hour bus ride back to Huaraz, and at least this way, we had some good stories and we got to enjoy all that Huaraz has to offer (thermal baths, hot showers, American style cafes etc.). So all in all, no one got hurt, we had a good experience and at least I learned an important lesson (I won’t speak for my friends), which is that you don’t mess with the rainy season/mother nature.
The two things that impacted me most from the trek were the village in the river valley and the continued kindness of Peruvians. The “village” near which we camped the second night consisted of 5 houses and 8 families. It lies between two almost 5000 meter passes, and therefore at least a good 10 hours or more from a bigger town. The only things there are the houses and one, two room school. It appeared that they had animals and fields and potatoes like every other family in this region, but oh man, I have no idea how they live like that. And of course, when we got there, someone came out to meet us and despite the fact that the combined value of our gear and our stuff was probably greater than everything he owned, he offered us advice and a bowl of freshly boiled potatoes, asking nothing in return. And of course later, our buddy Victor had no reason to concern himself with a group of dumb trekkers, but he was almost as warm as my dry fleece and long underwear and he saved us from a terrible night of shivering in cold, wet tents. All he asked us for was our e-mail addresses and that we send him the group pictures we took with him in them. And of course the cabbie, who didn’t hike up his rates, despite the fact that we could attract unwanted police attention with that many people in his car, or destroy his undercarriage cuz we weighed so much. Incredible people in this country.




The 8 official rules of a Huascaran National Park campsite (from left to right, row by row)
1. Walking in circles strongly encouraged
2. No pterodactyls
3. No biathletes allowed
4. No fires
5. No waving at trash
6. No effervescents
7. No CRASH-BANGS
8. No fishing in the middle of the big grassy campsite

Feliz Año Nuevo

How do they celebrate New Year’s in Peru? Great question, and after having spent new year’s eve 2010 in site, where there were a few beers and not too much else, I decided to head to the city of Huaraz (my regional capitol) this year and find out.



By far the most visible and hilarious tradition here is the color yellow, which you are supposed to wear for good luck. But the emphasis is not on yellow t-shirts or hats (which are present but not overwhelmingly so) but on yellow underwear, which the week before new years could be found being sold from street side stands lining the five blocks of the main street and the entire market of Huaraz. And the selection!! We’re not talking just your plain old fashioned conservative style. I won’t go into excessive detail, but glittery, sparkly, short, long, carton characters, “happy new year”—you name it is was there. And yellow. And on top of all that, the two high quality brands of yellow underwear available are Boston and Stripper (too good to make up…).

So on the last day of 2010 we ventured into market town, looking for yellow underwear. This lead to the numerous hilarious interactions of women and men, ranging from teenagers to people old enough to be our grandmothers, trying to sell us underwear street side. The general conversations were a mix of English (mostly the word “mister”), Spanish and Quechua, them telling us to buy yellow underwear, us either saying no or keeping on walking, and them insisting we needed it to impress the pretty girls, and everybody cracking up.

Later that evening, having donned our yellow underwear, we made our way over to Café California, a Huaraz gringo haven that had agreed to shut its doors to the general public and let the Peace Corps volunteers have a potluck/party. Luckily, both the owner and the barista like us a lot, which I guess makes sense when you are a group of 20 gringos who come every two weeks and drink copious amounts of coffee and eat lots of food. So we threw up a ton of yellow streamers and put out a bunch of what I can only describe as other yellow crap (2011 glasses, yellow Styrofoam hats, leis etc) and enjoyed the food our friends cooked, company and beverages through the last hours of 2010.

And at midnight, Peru and Huaraz really showed why they are so awesome. It started with grapes. As soon as we were done wishing each other “happy new years!” and giving hugs and such, bowls of grapes were passed around and everyone ate 12 as quickly as they could, one for each upcoming month for good luck. Then we went outside where fireworks and firecrackers were going off everywhere (for the past week, any stand that had not been selling yellow underwear was selling fireworks). And on top of that, a few other friends and I had brought in our old clothes to make into a big doll that gets burned (this is supposed to bring financial good luck for the New Year. Or at least finally make you get rid of that ratty old shirt). And despite the fact that it was about half filled with my DISGUSTING old socks, it burned well and we all enjoyed taking part in the custom (although as Pete pointed out—how quickly would you get arrested in the US for burning a pile of clothes in the middle of the street?). So at around 12:15, with champagne being passed around ( I do not recommend the 10 sol vintage), socks and shirts still smoldering, the sky still lighting up with fireworks, and occasional flashes of yellow underwear, it was very clear that the city scene takes the cake on New Years. And although the night continued, I will leave the story there for the sake of my mother and potential future employers…Happy 2011 everybody.

mines, roadblocks and a loooong weekend in Huaraz

As some of you may have noticed last week, I was responding to e-mails with record speed. That was because I was stuck in Huaraz, my regional capitol for four days. On Saturday night I was supposed to head to Lima for my mid-service medical/dental checkups, but on Thursday, I got an e-mail from the “volunteer leader” living in Huaraz that there was a huge strike going on, and going in that night might be my only chance to get to Lima. A big mining company was planning to open a mine about an hour out of Huaraz, near a big lake, and the local farmers were trying to shut down all transport in protest. I threw my stuff in a bag and made it to Huaraz, where everything seemed normal, and I went to bed thinking “just another big deal about nothing.”
But waking up Friday was a much different story. Before we even had the chance to get out of bed, we were getting phone calls saying “don’t go outside, don’t leave your hostel.” That sounded a bit extreme, so we edged out of the hostel, on a quest for orange juice and the truth. After passing the government tax office and seeing their huge picture windows shattered, we knew it was the real deal, and after seeing a rush of people sprint up the street away from the main plaza, we hightailed it to a friend’s apartment. We found the local news on TV and saw tear gas being thrown, burning tires, rioters throwing rocks and riot police throwing them right back. Word was there were no cars on the road and no transportation going anywhere…we were stuck. Although Saturday morning I went to the plaza early to see the damage, and while it was mostly empty there was a small group of municipal garbage men playing pickup soccer in front of the municipality, using rocks that were brought in to block off the street as goal markers.
Long story short, the strike continued for 2 more days. All of the stores, were shuttered, no cars passed through town and farmers came from all over, some allegedly walking as far as 40 kilometers to join the protest. Bank windows were smashed, as were any windows of government building and most of the city’s ATMs. I felt safe enough, but it was weird to think of the city that I usually see as so friendly and safe falling down around us. Finally on Sunday afternoon, we heard that the government gave in and told the mine it had to go, and here I am Monday afternoon sitting on a bus on my way to Lima. But we have passed knocked down roadblocks, piles of soot that were recently tires and painted signs saying “support the strike” and “the water belongs to the people, not to the mine”.
We have also passed numerous schools, health posts and public projects supported by various mines. Even the school in my town, which is not really near any mines, has desks donated by the mines. It’s another one of the paradoxes that make life in Peru just as confusing as always.

so it has been a year

Well, while all of you folks in the Northeastern US of A, get to experience a beautiful and cozy fall, with leaves changing and sweaters and thanksgiving, here our only seasonal transition is rain. And more rain. After not having seen a legitimate rain shower since August, it has come down hard and steady every day for the past week, changing the dust to mud, and preventing dedicated Peace Corps volunteers from leaving their houses after mid-day. But this transition also means that I have made it full circle, through one rotation of the Earth around the sun—I have been in Yanamito for one year, which is very, very hard to believe.
Before I reflect a little on the first half of the strangeness that is my life in Peru, I’ll update everyone on the goings on of the past month or so. Probably the most exciting thing I have done recently was my first trek in Peru.

Wanting to get in one good outdoor adventure before the rain struck, Pete, our friend Will and I decided to set off on the Santa Cruz trek at the end of October. The Santa Cruz trek starts about 3 hours away from us, goes for about 50km (that’s right I’m on the metric system now…it sounds more impressive) and end on the other side of the Andes. It is the most popular trek in Ancash, with over 5000 trekkers per year and it starts and ends in Peace Corps sites. It usually takes 4 days, but since we are all acclimatized to altitude, and we wanted to prove that Peace Corps volunteers are better than normal tourists, we did it in 3 fueled mostly on oatmeal, tuna fish and ramen. It was absolutely beautiful, and I understand why it is such a popular destination. We were constantly surrounded by immense snow covered peaks, we passed through awesome forests of native queñal trees and we got to hike through a 4700m mountain pass in the snow. The worst part was the ride home—5 hours in a miniature bus, about 20 different body parts falling asleep, with Peruvians staring at the gringos all the way down harrowing switchbacks. Overall, a very satisfying and enjoyable experience.

Next up on the fun calendar was Halloween. Proving that every Peace Corps volunteer has a little bit of kid and/or a little bit of college kid in them, we all went into the regional capitol, got dressed up and Halloween party. Pete, Kaitlyn and I dressed up as the dashing trio of Robin Hood, Maid Marion and Little John respectively. This presented awesome opportunities for us to where tights and funny hats and also to go to the market, buy fabric and drop it off at a lady with a sowing machine with a vague description of what we wanted done. I would say it turned out surprisingly well and I had fun struggling to hack the business end off of a broom with a Leatherman for my Little John stick.

While the party was fun, it was also a little melancholy because it served as a going away party as well, for the 7 Ancash volunteers who had finished their two years here. It was tough to say goodbye, and it also made it really hit home, that yes, I have been here a year. I remember meeting those kids for the first time on a training trip last Halloween, and thinking “wow, they’ve been here forever. They must have everything figured out.” Well, now I’m at that point and I don’t know if they had everything figured out or not, but I sure as hell don’t, although I’m a lot less confused than I used to be.
The day after Halloween here marks the day of the dead. We celebrated by making break, some of it in funny shapes (I made a tree, a turtle and the Yankees interlocking NY)

and going up to visit the cemetery, where flowers are put on graves and for some reason everyone eats ice cream. It was actually a really nice day. Mostly everyone in the community was at the cemetery together, and they were laid back, enjoying each others company, not hurrying to do anything or stressing about crops and animals. It was nice to spend time with everybody, and I learned a lot more about my host family and their deceased relatives (including the fact that my paternal grandfather’s bones are in a box in our store room. Don’t ask).
Lest anyone should think that Peace Corps is all treks and costume parties and ice cream in cemeteries, I have been getting some work done as well. The departing of old friends means that new ones arrive, and at the beginning of November the 6 environmental nubes came to Ancash to visit our sites and then theirs’. They came up to Yanamito for a day and we put everyone to work at the nursery school, with the PTA and an Engineer from the National Park office, building a small queñal tree nursery. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, and some of us got some blisters, but it now exists and looks really good (if I do say so myself).

It is also visible to the community, which is good, because that way they know that yes, sometimes I do do work and it gives me and excuse to talk about native specie reforestation anytime anyone mentions it. And talking to the new kids around different sites and in Huaraz made feel old and wise. Ok, not really either of those things, but it did make me realize that I have come a long way in the last year, and I know a lot more and feel a lot more comfortable than I did a year ago.
The rest of the big work I’ve been up has been in the school, as usual. The school year here goes from March/April (depending on the motivation levels of the teachers) to December, and so things are beginning to wind down. Inspired by the success and nice lookingness of the world map mural we did in August, I had the bright idea to draw and paint an environmental mural with the graduating 6th graders. I solicited submissions, and made the other teachers pick which one we should actually put up, so as to avoid any dirty looks or disparaging comments from the students whose work wasn’t chosen. We’re making progress on a nice mountain scene with a rainbow and some native animals, and knock on wood, it should be finished and look nice long before graduation.

And the national park people came back and we finally finished the puppet show that drove me to the drink last month. Hooray.
Which brings us to Thanksgiving 2010. Of course it’s a bummer not to be with family, but Peace Corps gives us a long weekend of vacation, so next best thing. I am on my way to Arequipa (southern part of the country, supposed to be stunning) with some good friends. It should be a lot of fun. And with that, I will finish up and check to see if it has stopped raining and I can go running. Happy thanksgiving to everyone.

A Day in the Life

I often get asked “what’s your typical day like?” While I will stay away from the cliché of “well, there is no typical day”, my days tend to vary widely and even after a year, each day brings its surprises, both good and bad. But this past Tuesday, September 28th, encompassed a lot of the elements that encompass my everyday life here, both on a work and social basis, and it’s relatively fresh in my memory, so I’ll run through it.

6:40 am: My alarm goes off. Today is the rare day when I actually sleep until my alarm, as we have had no early morning, loud guests (my host grandma is half deaf, an early riser, and constant visitor—this is not good for my beauty sleep) and my parents left early to go work in the field, so there is no whyno (Peruvian folk music of questionable quality) blasting. I rolled out of bed, went through the morning routine—there wasn’t supposed to be any water, but there was, which was a pleasant surprise—and ate my breakfast of a cheese sandwich, a bowl of potato, noodle soup and a cup of very hot, very sugary, very diluted tea. From there I got dressed (it’s easy here, I only change my clothes once or twice a week), chugged a cup of instant coffee in my room and since I had an extra ten minutes, I decided to trim my mustache. This took longer than I expected and cutting it a bit close (timing wise) I walked up to the school. State of mind: maybe a bit tired, but a promising day.

8:00 am: Arrived at the school. Today is a very exciting day. Pete and I arranged for SERNANP, the national park administration, to come up to Pete’s site (Huashcao) and give an informative puppet show and class to all of our primary school students. Our schools agreed and I was really excited for the kids to learn something about this unique and beautiful area they live in and I was excited that I had arranged it. With about 40 kids, including the 1 and a half year old son of a professor and 1 preschooler and 4 teachers, we set off for the 30 minute walk uphill to Pete’s site. State of mind: hopeful and psyched.

9:00 am: Arrive, unscathed if a bit sweaty (OK dripping sweat) at the Huaschcao municipality. The park staff, with the assistance of Pete and my Peace Corps friend Sophie, is busy setting up their stage. Renee, the park’s director of education tells me that we will be participating in some sort of costume pageant/dance before the puppet show and that I will be playing the part of the “evil gringo” who litters and illegally hunts in the park. I was still recovering from the walk up and he’s awesome but also old and a little bit perpetually confused, so I only caught about 40% of what he said, but that was enough. State of mind: hot, slightly confused, still positive.

9:45 am: We finally are ready to go. I introduce Rene to the crowd, in Spanish, and having made no major grammatical mistakes nor forgotten any words, I am feeling good. He says a few words and the music starts. It turns out that my “costume” consists of a redhead mask with boils all over its face. I come out and the pre-schooler and baby both start to cry, the older kids know it’s me and my big dramatic scene is “shooting” the 6th grade professor who is dressed up as a deer. The dancing went on too long but overall, it was fine. Sate of mind: so far so good.

10:15 am: Time for the puppet show. But, somewhere between the end of the dancing and the beginning of the puppeteer, the power has gone out. This is very, very bad. Why? Because it is not a spoken puppet show, but a puppet show dictated by an audio track. Crap. Pete runs off to look for 3 C batteries. Rene tries to stall and tries to give the kids a bit of a class about the park, but attention quickly flees and kids (mostly from Pete’s town start to wander off and/or play marbles, while the teachers sit and stare and do nothing. This is going downhill fast. Rene salvages the scene by at least introducing the puppets, which the kids really liked, and promising to come back when there is power.

10:45 am: Students and teachers depart. One 4 letter word to sum up the morning: F…ail.

11:00 am: Pete returns, out of breath with batteries after running 20 minutes uphill to his house and back. We help clean up all the costumes and set and SERNANP departs. State of mind: somewhere between angry, frustrated and wanting to scream.

12:30 pm: Pete and I, two twenty somethings, frustrated, annoyed by circumstances out of our control and straddling the lines of American and Peruvian culture, decide to do what anyone in our situation would do—we go to the nearest tienda (small store—and this one was really small. It sells crackers, cookies, soda, beer and not much else), buy some beers and drink Peruvian style while venting and laughing about our jobs and our lives in English (note: Drinking Peruvian style entails, filling a glass, drinking it and then passing it to the next/other person. It’s fun). Another note, for the sake of my parents, Pete’s mom, and the handful of other adults who may read this: understand that this is not a cause for concern, it was just our first English conversation, and drink, in about 10 days. Think of it like having a beer at a business lunch, we’re just in a different line of business. State of mind: improving.

1:15 pm: Power returns. Pass the beer.

2:00 pm: The clock strikes 2. I told my family I would be home by 11:30. Whoops, I depart to trek back down to Yanamito. State of mind: daytime beers are always a questionable decision, but definitely improved.

2:30 pm: Arrive home to a big plate of potatoes, rice and ¼ of a roasted guinea pig and a big bowl of wheat and potato soup to celebrate my host brother’s birthday. The perfect lunch. State of mind: stuffing my face and full, aka very content.

3:00 pm: A district mayoral candidate is having his close-of-campaign rally on our soccer field. The entire town is there, and so wanting the face time but not wanting to violate the Peace Corps “no political involvement” rule, I go outside, say hi to a bunch of people and do what I would do at any political event, namely lie down a bit away from the crowd in the sun and close my eyes. State of mind: drowsy…

3:20 pm: I wake up to a 1st grader, a pre-schooler and his 2 year old brother jumping on my chest and laughing. I played with the kids for a bit and then sat down and talked to some teenagers about the usual (weather, how do you vote in the US, this is how you say “good people” in Quechua). State of mind: groggy, but amicably social.

4:00 pm: The rally has finished up, some people have cleared out and I get invited to play some volleyball. I dominate three games (being the tallest person in town definitely has its advantages) and I sit back to watch the upcoming soccer game. State of mind: huh, somehow today wound up being a good day.

5:15 pm: See the garbage pail near the soccer field. It is full, and whoever cleaned up the rally decided that it would be a good idea to just dump used Styrofoam plates next to the trash. Somebody says to me “Alex, looks like you have some work to do.” I almost lost it, and kind of snapped back that it was the candidates work and that my job is not to clean up after everybody. Moved to a spot where I could no longer see the garbage pail. Sate of mind: Pissed off, frustration take two.

6:15 pm: Now cold, unhappily make my way back home, only to see that in the interim someone has in fact collected the plates that overflowed from the garbage can and put them in a big sack. Lift my head and walk home with a skip in my step. State of mind: OK, so things turned out OK. Faith in mankind resurrected.

6:25 pm: 2 weeks ago, the garbage truck accidently took down someone’s power line, leaving them powerless. Of course this was not my fault, nor should it have been my responsibility to fix, but due to political apathy, it fell to me to coordinate with the provincial municipality to come up and fix. Today was the day they were supposed to come, which I remembered and went to check if everything was fixed. On my way, I encountered three 2nd graders elbow deep in another garbage pail collecting soda bottle caps having spilled out another 40 Styrofoam plates. If I didn’t hate Styrofoam as a semi-hippy on a liberal college campus, boy do I ever hate it now. I take a deep breath and ask them what they are doing. They show me their bottle caps. I tell them to wait there, I am going to get a bag and they are going to clean up the mess the made. As I turn back towards home to go get a back, one kid says “let’s make a break for it.” My response:
“I know your names, I know where you live, I know your parents and I know your teacher. You can either wait 5 minutes and do this with my help, or you can be dragged back here tomorrow morning by your ears”, and I turn to go. State of mind: REALLY? I think my head might explode.

6:30 pm: Returning to the scene of the crime, I ready myself for the possibility that these kids might have succumbed to poor judgment and ran off. Thankfully, they all stayed and we cleaned up the mess in about 5 minutes, with very little complaining. Plus, the electricity got fixed and the family thanked me. State of mind: Well that could have been worse. I need to go home and not leave the house again until tomorrow.

6:40 pm: Dinner in front of Madagascar 2. Leftover rice and potatoes, more wheat and potato soup, bread and another cup of dentist-offendingly-sweet tea. State of mind: numbed by television.

8:05 pm: Power goes out.

8:10 pm: Power comes back.

8:12 pm: Power goes out. State of mind: for the umpteenth time today, “really?”

8:15 pm: My mom declares, “Well with no power, we may as well go to bed.” I am not yet sleepy, so I pull out my secret weapon—a fully charged laptop and season 2 of Weeds on DVD. Two episodes and I am ready for bed. State of mind: again, numbed by TV, sleepy.

9:20 pm: Time for bed. Go to bed content, pretty happy and trying not to think what tomorrow may bring (which, P.S., included: a 5:30 wakeup from my mom telling me that they were going to plant potatoes, which I already knew; a pretty good English class; a close but heartbreaking volleyball loss with the teachers—I blame everyone on my team but me; dogs having gotten into the garbage bags and strewing plates everywhere—I looked the other way; two hours later, to my amazement, seeing that plates have been cleaned up; carrying a half full bag of synthetic fertilizer back from the field to prove that I am not useless; a woman from a neighboring town telling me that there are lots of pretty, single girls in her town and that I need to come visit; and of course, 2 more power outages).

some mountains some coast, some peru

To start off, this is my dog carrying firewood. My host dad thinks this is the most awesome thing in the world, so here it:

Well it’s September again, which means I have been here just about a year. But not quite—my next blog will be a special one year in Peru edition, for the 8 of you still reading this thing, don’t miss it. Anyway, things here are kind of, well, normal. I have been in Yanamito long enough that I really feel comfortable and not out of place, which is pretty big. The garbage truck is coming every week, which is a huge relief. And we are about 2/3 through the school year so even that feels pretty much routine. Basically this is my life now and a lot of the newness and weirdness has just become the everyday. Don’t get me wrong, weird stuff happens every day. Yesterday on my run, for example, and old lady told me her pig was up ahead walking in the wrong direction and could I get it to turn around and walk back to her. I obliged. Just one example.
This is not to say that life here is boring—it isn’t. And so I move onto what jumps out at me as extraordinary in the past 4 or 5 weeks. Work wise—ummm, not too much. Like I said, the garbage truck comes regularly now, and that had been taking up a lot of my time and energy, so I just have to ensure that that keeps happening. This week I started a trash management curriculum in the school, focusing on separating organics and inorganics and making organic fertilizer (compost, vermiculture etc) that I hope to spread to the community at large so that they use their animal waste and don’t burn stuff as much as they do now. But that’s idealistic future talk, which I’ll stay away from. The really cool thing I did at the beginning of August was a world map project. This is a Peace Corps world wide project, where volunteers, with helpers from their communities, draw mural sized world maps. I was really scared to start it, given my general atrocity in the fields of both art and geography, but Peace Corps gave us a really good manual and with the help of anywhere from 2-7 kids a day for the 2 weeks of their mid-school year vacation there is now an awesome, 2 meter by 4 meter map on the wall of my school. WE may have left off Suriname and a bunch of island nations, but overall, I still think it looks pretty darn good. Now I finally have a tool to help me explain that no, the US in not near Spain, and yes, you need to fly to get from Peru to New York, among other geography related FAQs.


Kind of work related was I had another environment training conference. This time the 17 of us who started last September got together in Huanchaco, a small beach and surfer town about 9 hours north of me. Cons: a lot of what we did was focused on the coast, which no matter how hard I try, I cannot apply to the mountains (marine ecology? Uhhhhh…). Pros: I got to spend a week in a beach town, which included really good fish, my first ever try at surfing (I did it I think kind of), some cool ruins (called Chan Chan, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chan_Chan) it’s like the oldest sand castle in the world)

paddling a traditional reed fishing boat called a caballito del mar with my best buddies in Peace Corps and of course, running along the coast and swimming every day. Overall, it was pretty sweet. Also, and this might make us seem creepy, but it’s too good a story not to tell, we found a dead sea lion on the beach and 5 of us (and by 5 of us I really just mean my friend Mark who’s way tougher than me) cut out its teeth, which are like four inches long and are really cool. So yea, fun trip, with a good souvenir to take home as well.
I also have done some cool touring around Ancash. I climbed Huascaran up to the snow again, this time with my host brother and one of his friends and Pete and his host brother. We did it up and down in one day, leaving Yanamito at 5:30 am. I didn’t want to move for the next 3 or 4 days after, but it was a beautiful hike and it was nice to go on an outing with my host brother—I think my host mom was pretty happy about it.

We (and by this I mean my host brother, both to not incriminate myself and cuz he carried it the whole way) also brought back down a chunk of ice from the mountain because that’s what everyone does when they go up there. My host dad then used his wood shaver to make shaved ice, which my mom then served us as snow cones. I asked what flavor they were, to which she responded “sugar”. I can’t say I’m shocked that she’s missing her 2 front teeth.
I also checked out a place about 2 hours away called Hatumachay, which is a rock forest. According to our guide, there was a volcanic explosion millions of years ago which sent a lot of gasses up into the atmosphere and then when it cooled down these gigantic rocks just came crashing down on top of this mountain. I don’t know if the science is right, but it sounded super cool. So anyway, people have been living and hunting up there forever, so we saw some cool cave paintings and then a bunch of people went rock climbing and the lazier of us just walked around, mouths hung kind of dumbly open cuz it was just really really cool and beautiful.


On the sports front, my soccer game is improving (I think this and people have told me, so it must be at least a little bit true), which makes it a lot more fun to play and feel like one of the guys. My parents also brought me a bunch of American sports equipment when they visited—football, mitts and a ball, Frisbees—and I’m having a lot of fun taking those out and trying to teach people how to use them. I have never been an athletic star—my high points are camp softball in high school and maybe running in general—but throw a spiral twenty yards in front of a bunch of people who have never handled an American football before and jaws drop. It’s a lot of fun for me. I have also been going to a bunch of school anniversary celebrations with the teachers from my school and kicking butt in volleyball, but I always feel like I’m cheating. But it’s not my fault that I’m tall right?
And that’s life in the Andes of Peru. It’s hard to believe that in America it’s back to school and almost fall and 2011 and all that, but I think I’ll feel that more when the rainy season arrives and I realize that time is actually passing and not static. Hope you are all well and shannah tovah to everyone whom that applies to.

a marathon, machu picchu and a garbage truck (in other words, Peace Corps Peru)

I don’t even know where to start…July has been a show to say the least. To start with I ran a marathon. It was in a beach town on the northern coast called Pacasmayo that has been a Peace Corps site for a while and 3 years ago a volunteer organized this marathon for July 4th as a way to raise money for his community. So it’s not just a marathon it’s also a big Peace Corps party. So yea I finished in 3:51, which isn’t outstanding, but it’s under 4 hours and I jumped into the ocean right afterwards and now I never have to run a marathon ever again unless I really, really want to. And I got to hang out with a bunch of Peace Corps friends, and I won a framed race poster and I got a cool medal. Overall, I knew I was gonna run a marathon one day and I think this was a cool way to do it.
Work has also been progressing, in that Yanamito kind of manages its trash now. So basically with the support of our mayors, Pete and I have been running between 4 municipalities trying to get trash cans and the commitment of a garbage truck to come up. I managed to wrangle 4 big metal cylinders out of the municipality and up the hill, which to my surprise were still sealed oil drums. So after a day of using a hammer and chisel as a huge can opener and some fun with spray paint, I came out with these:

We also managed to get the municipality to say they would send up the truck on a weekly basis every Thursday, starting July 8—4 days after the marathon and the day my parents would be up in Yanamito getting to see my life. We also found this out on June 25th. Needless to say, I had to scramble a bit, but I managed to explain what was happening to the town in a community meeting (that’s right…I gave a 5 minute speech to everybody in Spanish. There was only a little confusion I think) and I got a promise from my mayor that the Saturday before there would be a community cleanup and everything would be fine. So I went to the race, slightly nervous that my work life would fall apart while I was gone, but to my pleasant surprise I came back with my parents the day before the truck was supposed to come and the pails were out and there was a neat mound of garbage waiting for the truck to come. Just when I began to have faith in the system, I went out on Thursday morning to meet the truck with my parents, and we waited. And waited. So I called the guy in charge who said whoops the truck got 2 flat tires, it can’t come, we will try again next week. I’m pretty sure he was lying, but what could I do. So again I departed Yanamito, this time on a jaunt with my parents, nervous that while I was gone the streets would pile high with trash until someone just decided to burn it. But what could I do—I was on vacation. More on the trip to come, but after 5 days in the jungle with no cell phone service I called Pete on Thursday evening to hear that…the garbage truck came and everything went swimmingly. We were on a bus full of somewhat annoyed and wet tourists, but I fist pumped the air and my parents cheered. And two days ago I was actually in town when the truck came. I got to ride in the front while we drove around town emptying the barrels and waiting while mostly ladies ran out with full bags to dump in the truck. It was awesome. Hooray trash management.
One more garbage story and then I move onto other things I promise. So every Sunday for the past two months there has been a soccer tournament in my town. Teams come from a bunch of towns within walking distance and they play each other, and most of my town spends the day outside watching, eating ice cream and generally relaxing. Ice cream here is sold in little Styrofoam cups for 50 centimos a pop (the equivalent of about $.15). What happens to all those little cups you ask? They get thrown everywhere. Every Monday the town is a mess. So before the last Sunday in June I got the mayor to agree to put one of our garbage pails there. I brought it down at 7:30, had it all set to go, and when I got to the tournament later in the day I bought myself an ice cream as a pat on the back. I threw out my cup, and the pail was mostly empty, but it was early. I came back after lunch to check on it—still empty with garbage just about everywhere but in the pail—I could still differentiate my cup. Huge fail. So I went to go sit down, pretty dejected, to watch the game. One of my little buddies from first grade, Noel, sits down beside me and starts talking to me about ice cream (what else?). He says he wants some ice cream but his mom won’t buy it. My wheels start turning, and I told him if that if he filled up one little shopping bag with garbage I would buy him some. He got really excited, agreed, and five minutes later (with some help from me…he’s just a little guy) his bag was filled and we went to deposit it in the pail and buy ice cream. A few other kids and there parents saw this transaction and soon I had a good chunk of the elementary school lining up to wait for a shopping bag. Within 20 minutes the whole drum was filled to overflowing and the area was a whole bunch cleaner. Sustainable? Probably not. Effective? Definitely. And the kids enjoyed it and a bunch of moms saw it too and encouraged their kids to throw out their garbage. It was fun. And encouraging. Ok no more garbage.
My parents came to visit. I hadn’t seen them for the 10 months I’ve been here, by far the longest we’d gone without seeing each other, so I was pacing up and down the bus station incessantly by the time their bus finally came in at 9:30 pm, but as long as the ride from Lima was they made it. We spent a day in Huaraz, where we went for a hike and I showed them around town. Then 2 days and 1 night in Yanamito, where there just happened to be a town soccer tournament that day, so they met everybody.

Then we spent 6 days in the Manu jungle and a few days in Cusco, including Machu Picchu. I had to do a lot of translating, but I think it was really great that they got to see my town and where I live and work. Everyone was really glad to meet them and now all they ask is “when are your parents coming back?”
The jungle was awesome. First of all, as I learned in India, it’s good to travel with your parents, especially when you’re used to backpackers standards. Hotels were nice, food was good, to say nothing of the company. But the back to the jungle. We saw a ton. About a million different birds (we stayed at a hotel with some serious birders who were keeping a log book and all that and in the morning we were out looking at birds with them and they said they saw 40 different species before breakfast), including a ton of hummingbirds and macaws, which are like huge parrots and according to our guide (who was the man) are as smart as 5 year olds, and some hoatzins, which I’m pretty sure are dinosaurs:

We also saw few different mammals, including the world’s largest rodent (basically a pig sized guinea pig) and the largest jungle mammal, a tapir:

which kind of looks like, according to my dad, a combination of hippo, horse and pig. The mammal list also included 5 different kinds of monkeys, giant river otters and some chinchillas. We also saw some caimans, which are like crocodiles/alligators (I don’t really remember the difference). And one almost ate us. For real. We were on a catamaran taking a wildlife viewing boat ride around a small lake, and I spotted a big (according to our guide 4 meters from nose to tail) caiman on the bank. We got a little bit closer and our guide told us it was full and resting, but our two boat drivers contended that it was dead. We got closer still and we saw that its stomach, nose and tail were all chewed up, so we all thought it was dead. So one of the boat drivers gets the boat real close and says he wants to go grab its tail. He hops off the boat and the caiman rears up its head, splashes the water and full on snaps its jaws. Our guy ran back to the boat and we booked it out of there. It was pretty exciting—my heart was pounding for a few hours, no joke.

That was probably the most exciting thing that happened, but in general the jungle was just really cool. We got to ride down a river in a boat, I saw a million cool trees and plants and it was just really different from anything else I’ve ever seen, and I think my parents would say the same. There’s a lot more to write about, but I feel like I’m rambling a bit, so if anyone wants to hear more or see more pictures just let me know.

Side story for the jungle trip. We stayed at 3 different lodges, only one of them had electricity and we happened to be on this part of the trip over the world cup final. Watching the world cup here has been another cool experience, cuz people here actually like soccer and get really into it. Like one morning when Pete and I had just got back form our last training conference and Portugal was playing Brazil (I think). We had work to do, but we passed a small store where the game was on, and so we decided to have a soda and watch the game, where we talked international soccer with the shopkeeper and whoever else entered the store and stuck around to watch the game. So meanwhile, we get to our lodge at about 2 the day of the final, and there is power, but no TV in the room. But walking around I heard the game coming out of the kitchen, with the 6 workers huddles around.

So, despite our hike that was supposed to start at 3, me, my parents, our guide and the staff crowded around a 10 inch TV in the middle of the jungle to watch Spain take down the Netherlands, then we went on our hike. It was a lot cooler than watching in a sports bar somewhere.
So that was the jungle. And of course, you can’t come to Peru without seeing Machu Picchu. So we went to Machu Picchu. We took a car from Cusco city, through the Sacred Valley and eventually up to the famous mountain. Along the way we saw an Alpaca farm, some other Inca ruins and a cool town called Ollantaytambo, where there is a modern town that still lives in and uses the Inca infrastructure and houses. We took a train to Machu Picchu, which was a beautiful ride and they also served sushi as a snack, which blew me away. And Machu Picchu was cool—it’s really old and beautiful and our guide explained a lot of cool cultural and mystical stories. And yea here we are—the classic photo:

And for all of us, having visited the Taj Mahal, this was the second wonder of the world we could cross off our lists, so 2 down 5 to go.
And yea after that it was a little more souvenir shopping and back to the airport so that my parents could head back to the states and I could go home and see if I can get some work done after 3 solid weeks of distraction. It was a great trip and a good marathon, but I am ready for a few calm, normal weeks in site (I hope).