Day 13 - The lake that looks like the sea

Saturday July Eleventh

    I woke up FREEZING! My nose was ice cold! And getting changed was actually the most terrible experience, I had to take off my nice warm clothes and expose my skin to the icy air before putting on equally cold clothes that just sucked any warmth I had managed to keep in me, out. I was an actual icicle by the end. It was about 20 degrees farehinet inside since there was no internal heating, and colder outside. I put on two pairs of pants and leg warmers, and then on top I put on four layers, two being incredible warm alpaca jerseys, then big socks, hat, gloves, and scarf, but I was none to warm! I also felt like a giant pillow! 

      After we finally finished getting dressed we headed of for our lake Titikaca tour.

      Lake Titikaca: at 12,507 feet above sea level lake Titikaca is the highest navigable lake in the world, and also the largest lake in South America. In fact parts of the lake is actually in Bolivia. Nestled in amongest the Andes, many of the mountain range's peaks have become barren, grassy islands in the middle of the lake. Grassy as most trees can't grow this high.

It's easy to forget it's not the ocean when it goes on past the horizon. 

Those snow capped mountains are actually in Bolivia!

A picture I found on the Internet of the mountains!

     Then the two day one night tour of lake Titikaca began with a long boat ride

Me freezing on a boat :)

    Our first stop was a floating island, made from nothing other than grass roots and straw!

How crazy would it be to live on one of these things!

The whole village only consisted of five families, and four buildings.

Sometimes if you stood in one place for to long it would sink and fill with lake water and you the locals had to come over and covered it up with a pile of new straw! How do they sleep?

Little replicas of their houses, they have to cook on a stone so that their whole island doesn't burn down!

    It was super fun playing volleyball with this local boy, but one time the ball rolled down into an area of the island that had sunk and filled with lake water, and when Hunter went to get it she got soaked! I laughed a little but then karma came when I too got wet going after the ball!

     I felt a little weird though, these people were living like this because foreign tourists wanted to come see them, I felt bad, like I was responsible for their tiny houses and isolated location, is this how they really want to live? And they were just begging me to buy their goods...

      However they could also be very happy people getting to preserve their ancestor's way of life, language and religion. They believed the lake was sacred and would always offer it some of their drink and food before eating it themselves! Their location was also stunning, and they could probably make good money from their goods so I can't really speak to their happiness.

    Our next stop was an actual island called Amantani where we would stay the night

A map of the lake, our journey had thus far taken us from Puni to Amantani.

Amantani: Rural, freezing cold, and very steep

My host grandmother Juana, I also stayed with her husband Jorge and their grandson Oliver. She took us up this incredibly steep hill to her house, and the cobblestone roads were beautiful. I was struggling and out of breath the entire way up, she lived on one of the highest outskirts of the tiny town, but she was just walking ahead, knitting as she went!

    Our host house was also extremely rustic and beautiful.

The entrance 

The courtyard where all the rooms meet.

Our tiny room with everyone bundled up

The view from our room

Me on the balcony

One of the few light bulbs in the house, there was barely electricity (no outlets) and the only source of running water was a hose outside the house! Luckily I had brought a battery to charge my iPhone from as it had run out of battery by the end of the day because I took so many photos! 

      We ate lunch in their tiny kitchen where their stove was a camping stove on the ground. There were tons of flies buzzing around too but Jorge could kill them with a rubber band! How cool is that!

       The kitchen and dinning room 

The meal was so huge! Delicious but huge! We had homemade quinoa soup for the first course, and when I say homemade I think Jorge grew the quinoa himself! And then we had three giant potatoes each, lettuce and cucumbers, and an omelet sized piece of squeaky cheese. When you ate it it squeaked against your teeth so loudly you could hear it in other people's mouths! And the texture was so unsettling, like rubber! I had such a hard time finishing it all but I didn't want to be rude and leave food they prepared so carefully for me! Especially when it was pretty obvious they didn't have much. With the three giant potatoes left I was already stuffed full, by the time I finished the last one I was not sure if I could move, or if I was going to throw up. It was worse than last Thanksgiving!
      In the afternoon we went for a hike up pachapapa the mountain in the center of the island which was just beautiful! It was also incredibly hard hiking uphill at 13,000 feet, as their is just no air! We were panting and panting and had to stop a few times. There were two mountains, papacha and mamacha, the mother and father of the island.

Me hiking up the brown grassy mountain that kind of reminded me of the brown grassy prairies of my home state of Colorado! However I never forgot how far I really was from home.

These street vendors are everywhere! Even at the top of this mountain! Trying to sell tourists hats, scarfs, knick knacks, brackets, and anything else you could want! Even our host family had tried to sell us some of their goods which was actually very rude, and a pretty awkward situation for everyone involved.

Hunter, me, and then German Caroline at the top of the mountain at sunset!

Me, appreciating this adventure to lake Titikaca at sunset. 

     After sunset it got very, very cold I was already wearing three or four layers in that picture but I was freezing on the way down and my fingers were numb by the end of it. Those street vendors selling warm alpaca clothes on the way down were on to something!

      Dinner was another fricking massive meal, and I was still stuffed from lunch! It was miserable at the end trying to finish all those potatoes while simultaneously trying to smile and look like I'm enjoying it for the host family. 

       Then after dinner they had a surprise for us, traditional clothing that we could wear to go to a traditional dance down in the town. So me and Hunter got dressed up, while Caroline decided it was too much of a tacky tourist thing for her. 

Hunter, our host grandson Oliver, and me at the 'local' dance. Which turned out to be as Caroline had thought, the most tacky tourist thing ever. About fifty or so tourists pretending to be Peruvian natives while trying to dance to the traditional dances, but actually just looking like they were having a seizure. By about the third dance we had all given up actually trying to do the dances and just formed a giant Congo line. The reason Oliver doesn't look so happy in that picture is because he had to sit through all of it waiting for us. Poor guy! Although tacky the giant Congo lines were actually a lot of fun! 

      

Day 12 - I didn't think it was possible but it got colder

Friday July Tenth

     Three days of consecutively going out to salsa dance and staying late night be a little too much. I learnt this at five o'clock this morning when I had to get up and get ready for my trip to Lake Titikaca. Our weird tourist agency agent, Fransisco, came to pick us up at six. 

      His catch phrase is My Dear Friends which is always accompanied by one of his extremely plastic smiles. However the more times he says that the less like a dear friend you feel, and the more you think he actually hates you.

       He took us to the bus station where we were the first ones there, and he just looked so proud of himself for getting us there first, and we were just looking at him like you terrible person why didn't you let us sleep more! 

      The bus started and I immediately went back to sleep but was rudely awakened all too soon for one of the many, incredibly lame stops that got worse each time.

Stop number one, this random church that looked like the hundreds of others in the very Catholic Peru.

Stop number two: A crumbling wall 

Stop number three: the side of the road, which was actually the best stop. Hunter bought some amazingly warm fluffy alpaca slippers! 

Stop number four: a museum that was so lame I didn't even bother taking a picture of it so here's a picture of some llamas on top of a car instead. 

    In Puno we got picked up by taxi drivers with our names on pieces of paper. I get my first name Adrianne spelled a lot of different ways but this was a first.

    Then we went to our hostel, and ate dinner with some friends of German Caroline, there was this one dude who was the most stereotypical Eastern European guy I'd ever seen, a brick layer by profession, he was a large, solid guy with a big jaw and short blond hair. On his left fingers he had the word STAY tattooed, and on the right, DOWN. Let's just say I would stay down if he told me to. 

    Then back to the hostel which had no heating, and Puno is the coldest place! It must have been in the low twenties, and we were all freezing!

Here is Hunter ready to get to bed in five layers of clothes, plus the three blankets we had on our beds!

     

Day 11 - Where did everyone go?

Thursday July Ninth

     Will these mornings ever get easier? After about only six hours of sleep I had to drag myself up yet again to go to work. At least I'm on the top bunk so I have to actually get all the way off and down from my bed to turn my alarm off which usually makes me less inclined to hit the snooze button, especially because I have to climb all the way back up to get back to bed. Oh the benefits of not being lazy! 

       We were late again, or really as usual, and I was feeling pretty guilty as we walked up to the front gates of our work. They were already locked and closed so we rung the doorbell, but no one came. We waited and waited and eventually after about five minutes a woman who I can only presume is the groundskeeper eventually opened the door. 

      The courtyard was empty and silent, which it never is, and so I went over to my classroom and knocked on the closed door, Hunter did the same with her classroom, but we both received no answer. Confused I climbed on a bench and looked inside but the classroom was empty! The whole school was completely desolate! It was like the zombie apocalypse had finally happened, all over the town things just seemed quieter...
     We finally learned that the school was closed for protests that we're going on down in the city center, but I felt annoyed that none of the teachers had bothered to tell us! 

      On the way home we stopped to withdraw money from the bank, but my account was acting weird at the ATM saying it couldn't receive word from my bank. I was worried but thought maybe it would be okay if I tried a different ATM later. We also ran into Matt at the ATM! This is the second time we've run into him out on the streets, even though both places were far away from both of our home stays, the other place being in the Plaza de Arnas the night we tried beef heart (yuck)! Anyway it would have been crazy if it had been the first time, but the second was just so improbable, is he stalking us?! Who knows with Matt! However I'm still the only one that doesn't like him so maybe I'm wrong, maybe.

     Neither me or Hunter had ever been to a protest before so we decided to go check out the one going on in plaza de armas. I'm getting used to the city and even navigated us on foot there perfectly! Yes! It's so easy to get lost in these narrow twisting streets and never come out!

These are some serious riot police! 

Hundreds and hundreds of people turned out to demand more work, how crazy! It's really interesting to see the attitudes of people here, you would think that living in poverty would be really demoralizing but people here form very, very tight communities that come together as one in times of need, like for this giant protest. It really is inspiring to see the level of love and caring, because in the end that's even more important than being rich.

On the street Hunter and I also saw this awesome street artist who did spray paint paintings.

And we found this beautiful market!

    In the evening me and German Caroline went to go see some museums, but they turned out to be the worst museums I've ever been too!

This is a display case of Oreos and plastic toys in a museum that was supposed to be about the history of the Incas, without explanation.

     In the evening we went salsa dancing where I danced a little bit with the hobbit, and a little with this guy from Israel who we nicknamed hat guy. Hat guy was not fun to dance with. So overall not a good day, between the school being closed, the ATM, the terrible museums, and salsa. Hoping tomorrow is better

Day 10 - I ate a Guinea Pig

Wednesday July Eighth

     'Hola hola coca cola!' -one of my Kindergarten kids when I arrived at work this morning, haha! 

      We were pretty late this morning, maybe half an hour, as Hunter hates mornings, and I'm just incredibly slow! Apparently Matt of all people was mad at us for being late, I'm sorry you're 42 you can be at work by yourself! 

       The lack of sleep is really starting to affect me though. It was another late night salsa dancing last night. It seemed hard to do the simplest things, talk to the kids, grade their homework. I was even exhausted, just sitting there at my desk. Then things got worse, I drank some milk and rice at snack time with all the kids, but it did not sit well with my stomach. So then I was exhausted and feeling sick!

    I remember sitting on a bench in the courtyard just watching all the kids run around and scream at play time, and being like 'nope this isn't happening' Hunter came over and was feeling just as tired, and we agreed to go home in half an hour, an hour and a half early. 

     While I was sitting there totally out of it a little girl came over to me in tears, and was like I miss my parents! It made me think of last night, and I was like me too chica, me too.

      We left, and the ride home never seemed so long, we got home and I fell asleep almost instantly.

       I awoke an hour later to María knocking on the door. I was a little disoriented at first because I had had a dream where I was back in the U.S. 

    I had been dreaming my trip had already ended and I was so sad and confused and wanted to go back, and mum kept telling me all the amazing things I hadn't done. It was a relief, when I awoke to see that I was still in my little Peruvian bedroom. Then María called again through the door 'everyone is waiting for you two!' And I realized I'd completely forgotten we had all planned out to go out with Caroline's parents to try a local delicacy, Quoi.  

    I scrambled to get ready, but actually since I'm always scrambling to get ready here that's no surprise. And in truth, if we're being honest, I'm always scrambling to get ready even at home in the U.S. so that's really not that weird, and then I joined the others and we went out.

     We had do take two taxis there,where ours was to follow the other one, but we lost them after a bus hit us. 

      It finally happened, after all the close misses and centimeter gaps between vehicles, we crashed. It was nothing too serious, a bus just pulled into our land trying to go into the spot we were occupying, which of course wasn't going to end well. Our taxi slammed on the breaks but the back of the bus clipped the front of our taxi and we were all jolted sideways. It wasn't that big of a jolt, it was just awkward because I was lying across German Caroline in the back, yet again, that seems to happen so much! So I was jolted into the door at an odd angle. 

    The two vehicles then proceeded to pull over and I got to witness the Perunvian insurance system, they got out and yelled at each other. After a few minutes and with no sign that the yelling had accomplished anything, our taxi driver got back in and we continued.

     I was more scared than ever before of the dangerous roads! Before I had thought that maybe the roads were so dangerous that they heightened everyone's collision avoidance, and road awareness so that crashes were actually pretty uncommon, but I was under no illusions now! 

     Then the taxi driver turned around and asked us where we were going and I realized That we had no clue as we were supposed to be following the other cab. However after a few minutes of deciphering María's, as per usual, cryptic directions over text we managed to ended up at the right restaurant. It's always a nightmare trying to get directions from her.

     The restaurant was a small local one and the service was horrendously slow even though we were the only ones there. But eventually the Quoi, or guniea pig, arrived.

     And it was horrifying! It came out as the whole animal, and I couldn't look at its face, the open mouth with it's sharp teeth, and it's staring eyes! I was impressed with German Caroline though who just went right at it, hacking of it's head without hesitation!

U.S. Caroline wasn't as impressed

       The whole animal came out
       Hunter and I shared one, but there was hardly any meat on it, and you had to hack through an enormous amount of skin, bones, and internal organs to get to it. I felt like I was in science class dissecting something, yuck! It tasted okay, but it was hard to get over the fact that it had once been such a cute little animal!

Identical horrified expressions!

      After we finished, we were given a shot that helps you digest the tough fat. It was my first shot, and I was actually nervous about taking it, no one ever seems to really enjoy them, do they? They make that terrible face afterwards! However when in Rome! Down it went and it was actually not that bad! Very strong yes, but not unmanagable, and although it tasted of black liquorish, which I've never been a fan off, it didn't taste terrible! 

     Then in the afternoon, Me, Germany, Aton, Jorge, and Ana, went to see still more Incan ruins, just for a change! The bus ride there was about an hour long, and thankfully without any crashes! Phew! 

     The further we got from Cuzco, the more impoverished it became. I saw people on the side of the road making Adobe bricks out of the dirt they found around them, and I tried to imagine what it would be like to live like that, to not go to college, to not travel, to not have an iPhone, or a car, or so many of the tiny comforts we take for granted. Good shoes, new toothbrushes, ect. But I couldn't.

The rural village of Tipon, where this farmer was herding his animals right through the main square

      We took a taxi up the narrow winding path to the ruins, and around one bend a bunch of cows suprised us and the taxi had to swerve out of the way, so I almost got in a cow crash as well as a car crash!

      The ruins at Tipon were awesome, it was basically more terraced Incan farm land but it had this awesomely intricate irrigation system of small canals and waterfalls.

The Incas were such amazing engineers! And everything they did was so beautiful!

The Andes are always so stunning! 

What awesome people :) (Caroline took this photo)

I'm on top of the world! (Caroline took these photos)

Sunset on some beautiful ruins

These terraces put Moray to shame! (Another Caroline photo)

Aton looking off into the sunset!

     Back at our house we had planned a birthday party for three of the volunteers who have birthdays around the next week. U.S. Caroline and Ana who are both turning twenty three and Colleen who is turning 27.

      María had decorated the house and we played some fun games like blindfolded darts and a did a piñata. Although the piñata turned out to impossible to open, everyone took a swing at it including the guys, Aton, Tommy, and Matt but no one could bust it! They all walked up to it like it was going to be trivial but then had to walk away again and hand the bat over to someone else! In the end María just pried it open! There were a few sets of jacks in the piñata and so María taught us all how to play, she's really good! 

So much sugary food! Sugar overdose!

Party hats!

María is the one with light brown hair front and center

Hunter throwing a dart from behind the piñata!

    After dinner the music was turned on and María got her salsa on! First jacks and now salsa she keeps surprising us tonight! We all decided to go out and salsa dance afterwards as well.

     I am terrible at makeup, have only put it on about twice in my entire life, so before we went out U.S. Caroline and Hunter helped me which was really nice :). U.S. Caroline trimmed my eyebrows and gave me some concealer, and Hunter helped me with my eyeshadow and we were ready to go!

Feeling good!

    In the end only me, Hunter, U.S. Caroline, and Matt went, but Matt was so weird, just like in the kindergarten instead of jumping in and doing stuff, he just sat at the back drinking, and watching us..how weird! To clarify he does not drink at the kindergarten. So then it turned into a really fun girls night! I danced with this one guy who was really good but quite a bit shorter than me, we nicknamed him the hobbit, which was really fun except it was a little awkward when he tried to spin me as I would have to duck down! After about midnight we all decided to go home, but Matt said he wanted to stay, what?! He wasn't even doing anything！I think I'm in the minority in this but I think he's a little strange, and don't like him.

    

Day 9 - Dealing with criminals

Tuesday July Seventh

     I woke up but still felt like I was in a dream, was I really about to do a deal with criminals? Me who had never so much as skipped class? Well except to do other homework but I don't think that counts. Was I crazy?

      I must have checked my money a hundred times that morning, before me and María headed off for the overpass. María was a little mad at me for texting the criminals and giving them our phone number, (I just texted please give this back!), and so we made our way in silence to the bridge. My hopes were few as I could still taste the disappointment in my mouth.

     Up the stairs we went, and across the bridge. Me wearing my brown shirt and green hat that he was to identify us by. About halfway across the bridge a voice from behind me said 'Señora' I turned around, 'I have your phone.' He said in Spanish. María did the talking again, he handed me my phone, the case was the same but it was dead so I couldn't be sure. I was kicking myself for not writing down the production number so I could have been sure, but I payed him anyway, and just like that off we went in our separate directions hopefully to never see each other again. Just to be sure María and I took a taxi in the opposite direction from our house.

       On our way back I plugged my phone into a portable battery I brought, and it was mine! I was overjoyed and couldn't believe how lucky I was! Now that it has all turned out good I can laugh about it, and say that was one of the most exciting things I've ever done! Oh what a relief! What a story to tell, doing an deal with criminals in Peru!

         After such an exciting morning I kind of forgot I still had a regular day ahead of me! We went straight from the bridge to an unfamiliar apartment which turned out to be the home stay of a new volunteer. We were going to take him to work at the Kindergarten today to show him the way.

          Matt: A 42 year old ex-military, Air Force, married, father of three. Definitely not the typical volunteer. Especially once you consider that he doesn't speak any Spanish! I wonder if he is having a mid life crisis. Weirder still he doesn't seem to be that good with kids even though he's a father. 

      He was stationed in my classroom, but he mainly hung back and didn't really do anything the whole day. It could just be the language barrier though so well have to wait and see. I also find him to be a kind of odd person, his aviator sunglasses, long hair, and arm tattoos make him look like he's trying to be a rock star, but his personality is shy and a little awkward, I don't get it!

      Work is going well for me as my class is always busy, but Hunter said her class only does stuff if the teacher is not there, which is not how it's supposed to work! Her class also sounds crazy, the other day one of the kids was pinning others down and cutting their hair! I'm so thankful I only have a few trouble kids! 

Hunter and one of her adorable girls!

   In the afternoon I went shopping in San Blas, the old neighborhood, with Germany (our nickname for the Caroline from Germany) and got so much stuff! Everything is so cheap here it's hard to resist! Two pairs of earrings for $2, leg warmers and gloves for $10 an amazing knotted top for $16 and two scarves for $10! 

     As we shopped Germany told me that María had gotten very mad at Tommy for not saying anything about how he was displeased with his work at a local Medical Clinic (It sounds like the same thing as me, he just didn't feel useful) and then writing a bad review of the company. They were both a little in the wrong, Tommy for not saying anything, and María for getting mad about his personal opinion, but all this just makes me really nervous to tell María I'm not happy in my work either! 

     In the evening we went to dinner at a traditional Peruvian restaurant with the parents of U.S. Caroline. Who is actually a lot more fun than I originally thought! The coolest part about going to restaurants here is that you can have a glass of wine with your dinner, as there really isn't a strict drinking age! 

This is the face of betrayal. 

       We ordered a traditional appetizer of cow heart on a stick, and Hunter was the first to try it. She ate it and said it was really good, so I took a big bite, then she started laughing. It was disgusting! Oh god, and the texture was miserable, chewy, and terrifyingly squishy! It took me forever to swallow it. Once I did though I laughed too, I don't know how she managed to keep a straight face while eating that!

     Watching Caroline with her parents, I started to feel a little lonely for the first time. I think I've been to busy to be homesick before, but now seeing the familiarity and love between them three really made me aware of the unsure relationships I have with the other volunteers, I mean everyone is super nice and funny, and supportive, but it's just not the same, is it. We went Salsa dancing afterwards but I still felt lonely dancing with all those strangers.