Day 18 - Even more ruins!

Thursday July Sixteenth

     The Virgin Carmen festivities are still going on and so I actually got the whole day off today! It's amazing how strong the catholic culture is here!

      Anyway it was soooo nice to get to sleep in! I think I actually forgot what that felt like! 

      But after a relaxing morning me and German Caroline were ready to go do something so we decided to go explore yet more Incan ruins! Just for a change 😐

      However the ruins turned out not to be the most exciting part! The small town of Pisac where the Pisac ruins are accessible from was having this awesome celebration for the Virgin Carmen. We couldn't even get into the town on our bus because the streets were so full! However we were all to happy to get out and walk as the twisty narrow mountain roads we had taken to get there were quite sickening for poor Caroline!

   

Saw this crazy guy in a parade they were having. That mask though!

You can see the huge shrine they had to the virgin in the back of this shot (side note: do you have to capitalize virgin?!)

     

Seriously what's up with all the masks and beer!

Another tradition seemed to be to hang dead baby alpacas from your belt, which was very shocking.

    Anyway so then we had lunch and I got a sandwich. I don't know when I last ate a sandwich but it had been far, far too long! Certainly not since I've been here, no, I've really only eaten potatos, so many potatos! They are in everything here! I've completely gone off them as I just want to taste something else! Oh I will never again under appreciate two slices of bread with cheese and meat. It's the simple things. 

     While we were there Caroline saw a scarf she really liked and I then witnessed the best bartering I've ever seen. It was truly amazing.

    Caroline: "how much for this?"

    Seller: "80 soles"

    Caroline: looks unimpressed, "50"

    Seller: "70"

    Caroline: "55"

    Seller: "60"

    Caroline: with a forceful tone "55"

    Seller: "60"

    Caroline: with a very forceful tone "55"

    Seller: "Deal."

    I couldn't believe it, she halved the price! If that's not a prime example of German efficiency I don't know what is!

Caroline in her awesome scarf!

    Then instead of taking a taxi up to the ruins we decided to hike! I am so glad we decided to hike up! We got to use the ancient Incan paths that led up through their ancient farming terraces which were spectacular!

 Wow!

And the view! Those amazing Ande mountains!

You can see the festivities still going on down in the town square! We were so high up!

Those mountains though!

A place that is so amazing it really affects you!

Some of the ruins which were far less impressive than the terraces and the surrounding mountains, I didn't even get any really good pictures of them so found this one online.

So many stones!

Me watching the sun set over the golden valley. Wow, so, so beautiful! 

Day 17 - El Dia del Virgin Carmen Fiesta

Wednesday July Fifteenth

      The first thing I noticed this morning was that I had titled all the previous posts with the wrong month, June instead of July! Haha! It's so hard to keep track of time in the summer! I think I fixed them all know though.

         Today was a very exciting day at work because we were celebrating the day of Virgin Mary, or as she is known here virgin Carmen, and being a very catholic country the celebration was huge!

Here the teacher's assistant in my classroom Mary is doing my hair, and they also gave us the traditional clothes I am wearing!

The final result! Pretty cool ecspecially the hat ☺️

Me and the shrine for the virgin.

Just when you thought the kids couldn't get any cuter!

Not that they cared too much for the historical significance of the clothes as it hindered their ability to play!

Hunter with Christian who appropriately chose devil horns as he is a trouble maker! But too cute not to overlook that :)

Hunter with some more kids :)

Coincidence! Me and the other girl in the class called Adrianna happened to be wearing the same thing! Haha!

Finally found a picture of Matt...in traditional clothing.

     After a service by a priest who came specially for the occasion, a band started playing and unexpectedly, for me anyway, we all started marching out onto the busy streets with 80 three, four and five year old's, are we crazy?!

The first road we marched on which was relatively quiet, that is relative to the next one.

Then we went right out onto the main road, six lanes across with a median in the middle! What the heck?! Who planned this?! How insane?!

No one had told the traffic control or anything like that and being at the back of the parade I was constantly trying to make sure my kids weren't getting run over by the ominous mass of annoyed cars following us! Literally one of the craziest things I've done!

It was a little to far for Avril!

    I got home tired but very happy, what an experience! 

    When I got home we celebrated U.S. Caroline's birthday with some delicious cupcakes! She's one of the funest people! I hope she has an awesome year being twenty three!

     Then Colleen one of the other volunteers came over with some other big news, her boyfriend had proposed at Macchu Picchu! Isn't that the most romantic thing! What an awesome place to be proposed to, at the top of the world! If I ever get proposed to that would be the perfect way! 

     It was also Collen's last day so we took her last minute gift shopping and out to dinner.

Hunter, Collen, German Caroline, U.S. Caroline, and me at dinner! And yes that table is a fish tank

Here are the fish to prove it!

Actually it was just a really cool restaurant in general!

Pillows!

Bye Collen! I'm really going to miss you! Your so much fun, but also really smart! Thanks for sharing your experiences from running! Love this picture of you, 😜

Day 15 - We met Bambi and ate Starfruit

The Monday July Thirteenth

    I was the only one who decided to go to work this morning, with German Caroline's and Hunter's terrible bus ride experience, and U.S. Caroline still being sick (since she volunteers at a hospital it isn't the best idea to go to work sick). So I got ready and ate breakfast by myself trying to not wake up anyone else.

    I was really busy at the kindergarten which was good, I think I'm starting to find my place! But the language barrier is making it pretty hard to get to know the teachers well, my Spanish is still pretty bad.

Corali the little monkey climbing all over me! Aww :)

Guiliana found my sunglasses 

Edceline (isn't that the prettiest name) and Ariana photobombing :)

    After the lunch me and German Caroline went out to the mall and a zoo in the University across the street

And Caroline

At the mall! My face is so sun burnt from Lake Titicaca it's as red as the sign behind me! To bad it's so cold that's the only part of me that's going to be at all tan, the rest being shocking white from having been covered up the whole time!

At the zoo! Me and a deer we dubbed Bambi who followed us around the whole time!

A condor, which was cool to see as it is an extremely important animal in the Incan culture, having been thought to be the messengers to the gods. The Incan culture has three really important animals, the condor, the puma, and the snake. The snake represents the underworld like it does in most cultures.

The Zoo's Puma, they're literally the most terrifying animals! In traditional Inca culture the Puma is the lord of the earth, a sacred creature. 

And the most awesome talking parrot ever! He could say Hola so well me and Caroline thought it was a child for the longest time! And he could whistle, imitate our laughs, and say Aurrora! It was crazy!

    In the evening me and German Caroline decided that we had eaten too much carbs, rice/potatoes/bread/so much bread! It was time for something fresh, so we decided to go to the supermarket and buy every fruit we didn't know. This was the result

We also bought a jar of Nutella and made it a fondue night, just in case any of the fruit were too terrible to eat by themselves! Thank god we did!

We had papaya, pineapple, plantain, passion fruit, granadia, some orange berries, some weird lemony thing, that I was not expecting to be so sour!, a fruit that tasted like a clean bathroom, star fruit which was sooo sour, a fruit that tasted like apple but with a cardboardy texture, and cactus fruit! Phew that was a lot of fruit, but I didn't like any of it really it didn't even look like we'd eaten anything when we finished! 

Day 14 - Food poisoning round one

Sunday July Twelfth

      I just couldn't face eating another enormous meal the family had made for breakfast, I thought my stomach might explode, so while they weren't looking I slipped one of the two giant loaves of bread we were given into my pocket.

      I was sad to leave Amantani, it was such a picturesque rustic town, I wish I could volunteer there instead!

Me with an adorable lamb we found!

The horizon from the island in Hunter's glasses.

     We said goodbye to Juana and it was all going well, until the boat ride, and then I just started feeling bad, really, really bad. I wasn't the only one though, Hunter was also having terrible stomach problems, and we soon realized it was something we ate. Eventually we figured out that it was the cucumbers that we had had yesterday for lunch, as Caroline was the only one who didn't eat them and also the only one who wasn't having stomach problems. Food poisoning! 

      The boat stopped at an island called Taquillo next (nothing to do with tequila) but neither Hunter nor I could really enjoy it.

It was another rural island, and it is interesting because they still uphold many of their ancient ancestors traditions and their religion. One such tradition is to wear a super long stocking hat and put the tail on one side if they are unmarried and the other if they are married.

A sign post in the main square, telling me just how isolated we really are.

Entrance into the main square. Once there our tour guide pointed to some random guy and said he was single if I was interested, he then explained about the stocking hats they wear. I went over to a bench to curl up and lie down in misery.

An old clock tower. I really don't have that many good photos due to how bad I was feeling. Food poisoning really sucks!

A cool tree we saw at lunch, where you can see those Bolivian mountains in the background again. I barely had any lunch, and poor Hunter couldn't keep the little she had down. I at least just had to wait for it to pass through my system. 

    On the boat ride back to Puno I slept almost the whole time, and woke up feeling a thousand times better! Just in time to enjoy the seven hours we had to kill before our bus ride to Cuzco! Great... Why couldn't this have been the time I was feeling bad instead of the island!

Me in a restaurant, trying both the deserts we got, where we spent four of the seven hours, very slowly eating our meals and getting dessert, so that we could enjoy they're free wifi (or as it is pronounced here we fee!) and warmth, as it was freezing cold again, to maximize the time before they got annoyed with us.

Some of the taxi's here are just tiny!

     We seemed to be waiting forever at the bus station, but when the bus finally arrived and we went to board we were told we needed to buy a sticker from the bus station for $1.50 soles for some unexplained reason. We then ironically whished we had more time as we ran through the dirty station trying to find where you buy the stupid sticker. We finally found the tiny stand, only to discover the line must of been at least half an hour long, and we knew we only had about ten before our bus left. So we were forced to cut in line, which I felt bad about, but as we ran back to our bus we made it on, so it was worth it. 

     Hunter and Caroline just had the worst time on the bus, it was so ridiculously hot, and there was hardly any oxygen! The ride was both bumpy and loud, but it is one of my special talents to be able to fall asleep pretty much anywhere or anytime so I slept almost the whole way. We got home at four in the morning and as I climbed up to my top bunk, the sunlight was just begging to stream through our window, and the birds were just starting to chirp, I fell asleep again.