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.