Tambomachay, Puka-Pukara, Q’enko, and Saqsayhuaman

Posted on March 27, 2017July 9, 2020 by Lark

After visiting Qorikancha, my adventure really began. I wanted to see the four major ruins outside of the city. They’re all within about 16 km of the city center (road distance, not direct distance), so it’s not crazy far but definitely enough to not want to walk it both ways (plus it’s uphill). I heard through the grapevine that it’s possible to take a bus there, even though the ruins aren’t an official stop. (I don’t even know why they bother having official stops because you can usually get off wherever you want.)

I considered this my first true Spanish test, and I was determined to pass. The girl at the desk in my hostel said I should just rent a cab for the day, but why should I when there’s another perfectly good way of getting there? Plus I would feel rushed if I knew a cab was waiting for me, and I like to take my sweet time wandering around.

I found my way to what looked like a bus stop after a taxi man tried to convince me to hire him and I told him I was fine taking the bus. I tried to look like I knew what I was doing, but apparently the bus stop isn’t at the little hut with a bench and is actually like 50 feet away. Silly me. The taxi man sassily filled me in while trying to use that as proof that I should really just take a cab. Thankfully, after about 8 minutes of waiting at the random piece of sidewalk he pointed me to, a woman asked me if I was going to Pisac (the bus I needed to get to the first ruin), I nodded, and she directed me onto a bus that didn’t say Pisac anywhere on it. How is anyone supposed to figure these things out??

Well, luckily for me, it all worked out. I told the driver as I got on that I wanted to get off at Tambomachay and headed to the front of the bus when we got close. He let me off right in front, and I only had to pay 2 soles (about 60 cents)!

Tambomachay

Let me start off by saying that when it comes to Incan ruins, everything is pure speculation. 95% of the time, no one knows for certain what something is, why it’s there, what it was used for, etc. For example, Tambomachay. All that’s certain is that there are aqueducts and canals that feed water into a pile of rocks that looks like a fountain. Maybe it’s an ancient bath, maybe it’s a water temple. The name is Quechua and means “resting place”.

Cool trees on the way up to the fountains

The fountains. You can see water still running in the bottom left of the picture

The ruins were fine, but I was more interested in the scenery. I’m a fan of taking random paths and seeing where they lead. There was one that went up behind the fountain, and I followed it up into some terraced gardens and around the mountain (hill?) to a secret view of the valley. I say secret because I didn’t see another person ANYWHERE, and at a tourist-filled site, that’s an extra special treat. For a few moments, it was just me, peaceful green-ness, and a herd of alpacas grazing in the far distance.

Once I managed to drag myself away from the view, I headed across the street to ruin #2…

Puka-Pukara

One guess is that this was a military base, but maybe it was a hunting lodge, guard post, and stop for travelers. The name means “red fort” because the stones look red in some lighting. It’s another “the ruins are kind of cool but the thing that makes the stop worth it is the view” situation. Some people had guides who I assume told them more information than that, but like I said, it’s probably 95% made up. I’m more than happy to just embrace the mystery and be impressed by the Incas’ site selection skills. They sure knew how to pick a site with a view.

There’s an almost 5 km walk between Puka-Pukara and the next ruin, and I was not interested in walking if it could be avoided. Lucky me, a colectivo (mini-bus) was driving by right as I left the site, and I flagged it down and hopped in for a 1 sol ride to…

Q’enqo (ken-koh)

Q’enqo means “labyrinth”, and they think (“they” being whoever it is that comes up with these theories) that it was a religious something. It’s a huge rock with passageways and channels carved into it. I wish I could have gotten a bird’s eye view because it’s way more interesting from the top.

Q’enqo is that giant rock in the upper right with the rounded top

I used my same “follow whatever random path you see” strategy and ended up on a huge rock overlooking the town of Qenqo. I could also see Cusco in the distance, and no matter how many times I do, I still am amazed by the view. This and my other detour were probably my two favorite parts of the day. Hooray for exploration!

I walked from Qenqo to the next ruin, passing through “Qenqo Chico” (small Qenqo), which I didn’t even know existed. This was my third favorite part of the day… another unplanned detour. There’s another overlook of the city and plenty of big rocks to sit on. I stopped for a minute to eat a snack and soak in the view.

Saqsayhuaman

The pronunciation guide for this ruin is that it sounds a bit like “sexy woman” (sack-sai-WHA-man). It means “satisfied falcon” and was a big military fort. It was one of the last Incan strongholds during the Spanish invasions. After the Spaniards conquered the fort, they took many of the stones build houses for themselves. The biggest stones are still left.

There are alpacas grazing all over the place

A wall. Check out that awesome Inca stonework

Fun fact: there’s a big zig-zag wall on the fort because the ninth Inca ruler saw Cusco as having the shape of a puma with the zig-zag walls as its teeth. Also, there’s a rock slide there. As in, smooth rock that can function as a slide… and people are allowed to slide down it. I think it’s hilarious. I also apparently have very good slide pants because I flew down with literally no way of slowing myself. My hands did nothing and my sneakers were worthless.

After wandering Saqsayhuaman for a couple hours, I was wiped and ready to get back to my hostel. I walked down the path to Cusco (which they say that you can walk up to the ruins if you want… only if you’re crazy, in my opinion) and felt like I teleported into the middle of a forest. The walk was beautiful, but if I was going up, my thoughts would have been focused on not passing out.

By the time I reached the bottom, my head was pounding. I’m not sure if it was an altitude-related problem or just a dehydration problem, but I downed some electrolytes and painkillers and flopped on my bed until I felt functional again. Altitude sickness can be a big problem for people going to Cusco from lower altitudes. Cusco is at 11,152 feet of elevation. For comparison’s sake, Denver is at 5,690 feet. People all react to the altitude differently and can range from no symptoms to headaches, dizziness, and vomiting. I thought I was superhuman because I felt fine on my first day. I guess this means there’s a chance that I am only human.

Qorikancha

Posted on March 26, 2017July 6, 2020 by Lark

My plan for Cusco day #2 was ambitious, to say the least. I always make a massive list of things that I’m going to do and then manage to get through MAYBE half of them. I don’t like to rush though. I take as much time as I feel like I need to get a good sense of the place I’m visiting, and if that means I go to less things, so be it.

I was behind schedule from the very beginning, leaving around 9:30AM instead of the 8AM I had planned for. I’ve decided that sticking to morning departure times is the hardest discipline of solo travel. I don’t think I’ve managed to do so successfully yet. If you’re with someone else, at least there’s some motivation to get a move on.

Anyway, I wanted to visit the ruins outside of Cusco. There are four different ruin areas that are all within like 10 km of the city, but there’s not a well-advertised easy way to get to them. My guidebook mentioned that you could take a bus to the farthest one and then walk back, but that’s still a ton of walking. I decided to give that a try, with the hope that I’d be able to flag down a bus on my way back as well. When I asked at the front desk, the girl seemed skeptical about my plan. That’s fine. I was determined to prove her wrong.

Here’s a bonus… Some Inca skulls. Notice their elongated shape. This resulted from a long process of head binding and shaping that started very young, before the skull was fully developed. It was an indicator of class/social standing.

On my way to the bus stop, I detoured at Qorikancha (kohr-ee-KAHN-cha), a former Inca temple that was converted into a colonial church and convent. Oh yeah, a note about all of these names… they’re all Quechua names, which in my opinion means that they’re even harder to pronounce than Spanish names, plus there are far too many letters. There are also about 500 different spellings that you’ll find, depending on the intended audience of whatever you’re looking at.

In the old days, the entire temple was covered in gold! There were hundreds of gold sheets covering the walls, and those were all taken and melted down during the Spanish conquests. The temple includes rooms dedicated to the moon, stars, thunder, and rainbows. They had straw roofs originally, so those are obviously gone, but the whole area has been enclosed to make it a building within a building.

A view of the grounds that used to be filled with golden animals and golden corn. Yes, corn.

The stonework here was amazing as well. Forget the 12-sided stone outside the religious art museum, here there’s a 14-angled stone! It wraps around a couple corners, into a double door jamb, and out on the other side as part of the wall. I should have taken a picture, but honestly it’s impossible to capture in 2-dimensions. Just remember, we have this gigantic stone that’s been cut every which way and then it fits in PERFECTLY with all of the other stones. How did they do it???

The building is a weird mix of architectural styles, with the Inca foundation, the church add-on, and the glass-walled, metal-roofed enclosure over the temple area. There’s also a beautiful garden outside that is, predictably, terraced. The Incas were experts in terracing because so much of their land was in the mountains which means very little level ground for farming. There are terraces EVERYWHERE. The gardens have been kept beautifully, complete with grass so green it might not be real, flowers everywhere, and a bird etched into the grass.

The interior courtyard. I. Love. Interior. Courtyards.

This just screams “secret garden” to me. How pretty!

From the second floor, looking into the courtyard

It’s cool how they put the walkways in, and you can see the metal roof addition too

Okay, that’s all for part 1 of day 2… I’m currently in the town at the base of the mountain where Machu Picchu is located, and I’m going there tomorrow! I’ve obviously planned far too much to accomplish in one day, which means I need to get some good sleep tonight. Luckily, my hostel is right next to a raging river that results in some aggressive all-natural white noise. It sounds like a combination of pouring rain, an air conditioning system running, and wind that might blow the building over.
To be continued!

Bienvenidos a Cuzco!

Posted on March 26, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

I know I’ve been silent over the last few days, but no need to worry! I didn’t fall off a cliff or anything. The problem is with the way that I do “vacation”. If I’m somewhere new and am only going to be there for a short time, I jam in as much as possible. It doesn’t matter if I completely wear myself out… I can recover once I’m home, but I can only see these things while I’m here. As you might imagine, that has resulted in two days of run, run, running and then collapse, collapse, collapsing into bed at night.

Last time we talked, it was Thursday night, and I was attempting to stay awake in the Lima airport. I… mostly succeeded. By the time my flight started boarding, I was trying to force my eyes to stay open. I only realized that I fell asleep when I opened my eyes from a “blink” and my kindle was on my lap instead of in my hand. And then that happened about five times.

I don’t even know what happened once we got on the plane because I was asleep the instant I sat down until about 1 minute before landing. I think the flight ended up being longer than scheduled, but for once that was a blessing because it gave me more time to sleep. Total night’s sleep for Thursday-Friday = 2 hours of plane sleep.

You can see Lima to the north on the coast. You can drive from Lima to Cusco, but it takes about a day!

I had some time to collect myself once I got to my hostel, but I knew that I had to keep moving if I wanted to stay awake until a reasonable hour (goal: 7PM). I headed out with the plan of doing a self-guided walking tour to get my bearings. That lasted about 3 blocks until I was persuaded into an inexpensive group tour that was covering a bunch of the places I wanted to go anyway. I figured that it couldn’t hurt to have someone else leading me around for a few hours.

The interior courtyard of the religious museum

Oh yeah… another thing. The tour was in Spanish. Luckily, the guide spoke clearly, and since he knew I wasn’t fluent, he translated some words into English when it was clear that I didn’t know them. I’m generally not a tour person, but the people on the tour were a lot of fun. There were a couple Chileans, a guy from Mexico, one from El Salvador, and a few others. I felt like I was in a cool Spanish-speaking club, and they welcomed me with open arms and extra-slow speaking so that I could understand better.
The whole thing was a whirlwind, so I don’t even know that I can remember everything we did. We went to a religious art museum first which was probably the lowlight of the trip, besides the building itself which was originally “the palace of the sixth inca, Roca” (literally the sixth ruler of the Incas). There were a lot of paintings of the Virgin Mary shaped like a mountain because mountains were important to the indigenous people, so it was like a fusion of Christianity and things that the local people were already familiar with. At least I think that’s what the guide said. Keep in mind that you can maybe only 70% trust any of the information I got from this tour.

Check out those 12 sides! Actually super cool though if you think about trying to fit all of those stones together so precisely

Outside of the museum, there’s a famous 12-sided stone. One of the big things that the Incas are famous for is building structures with huge stones that are perfectly fitted together and have no mortar between them. There are plenty of stories of earthquakes that destroyed tons of buildings in Cusco, but the Incan buildings remained standing because of how the stones are fitted together and the fact that there’s some resistance to horizontal forces, plus they can shift around and just settle back into place afterwards because they’re so perfectly shaped.

Doesn’t it look like something out of a storybook?

The places we visited during the rest of the tour are irrelevant because the view is all I remember. We drove to a church that’s perched up above Cusco and then kept driving past some ruins until we reached Cristo Blanco, a huge Jesus statue that overlooks the city. For the entire drive, we were winding around and around, up and up and getting incredible views of the city and the ruins and the mountains along the way.

We also stopped at an alpaca store where they sell everything from fake hamsters covered in alpaca fur to scarves and rugs. The lady taught us about the differences in how synthetic alpaca, grown up alpaca, and baby alpaca fur feel, so now I’m practically an expert in alpaca-wares. Baby alpaca is the softest and hence the most expensive. Shopkeepers beware… I can’t be fooled into thinking that grown-up alpaca sweater dress is baby alpaca. Ha!

Cristo Blanco was our last stop. I’m beginning to think that every big South American city has a giant, white statue of Jesus overlooking the city, and he’s doing approximately the same pose. This observation is based on 1.) Cristo Blanco in Cusco, 2.) Cristo del Pacífico in Lima, and 3.) Cristo Redentor in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. BUT if there are three, there must be more. I will now add to my bucket list a goal to visit as many giant Jesus statues as possible.

The courtyard at the Inca museum. I am all about interior courtyards.

After the tour, I forced myself to go to one museum on my list (an Inca museum… interesting, but probably not the best choice for keeping myself awake) before allowing myself to return to the hostel, take a hot shower, and collapse into bed at 7PM. The end, Cusco day 1.

Pucusana, Pizza, and Picarones

Posted on March 5, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

I’ve been loving our little weekend adventures! For the last few Saturdays, we’ve been sleeping in, taking some free time in the morning, and then going somewhere and doing something together in the afternoon/evening. It’s the perfect combination of relaxation and adventure so you don’t feel like the whole day was wasted.

Yesterday morning was especially good for me because I finally put my foot down and forced myself to finish the planning for my trip to Machu Picchu. I had been mulling over the train times and other options for days at that point and just needed to decide. My biggest choice was whether I wanted to do an organized trek with a company or just go on my own, and I ultimately decided that it would be better on my own because I’ll be able to go at my pace and do all of the things I want without worrying about a group. After I decided that, I had to pick train times, and that’s complicated because you have to get to the train station in a town that’s about an hour away from Cuzco. I was originally thinking that I would hike Machu Picchu and take a train back that same night, but then I was worried about having to figure out transport back to Cuzco in the dark and by myself. All that worrying finally led me to the conclusion that I should just stay over two nights in the town by Machu Picchu because if the thought of doing it in a day was stressing me out that much, it probably wasn’t right.

In summary, I got my train tickets and Machu Picchu tickets and hostel booking all finished, and I feel a million times more relaxed as a result. Why didn’t I just do it earlier? That’s always the question after you procrastinate something, and somehow, I still haven’t learned my lesson. The answer is, yeah, I probably should have. Now it’s finished though, so we can put that behind us!

Our afternoon adventure was a trip to Pucusana, the same fishing village that we went to when the team was here. The car was being used, so we took public transportation there instead. There is a very similar system here to what they have in Ghana with tro tros. Here they’re called combis (cohm-bee) and the fare collector is a cobrador, rather than a “mate” like in Ghana. Conceptually though, they’re completely the same. Super packed and super cheap. We got a ride to Pucusana for 1 sol (1 USD = about 3.25 soles). It’s usually maybe a 10-15 minute ride, but we hit some traffic because there was a “huaico” (mudslide) last week, and the street is still underwater.

Yeah, there’s a street somewhere under there…

This is the second time in the last few weeks that there’s been a huaico there, and we learned that the problem started because of some bad decisions. There’s a river bed that had been dry “for a while” (I know no specifics), so recently, the land there was developed. Good idea, right? Except there’s been more rain than usual in the highlands this year, and all of that water needs to go somewhere. Instead of just flowing down the river as it would have in the past, it’s been flooding the new developments and overflowing because there’s no path for it to follow anymore. Who knows what is going to be done about it, but it seems clear that something has to change. It’s all politics though, so it could take forever.

Looking towards Pucusana from the top of the hill

Anyway, we eventually made it into town and hiked up a hill to watch the sunset over the ocean. I love the mountains here… the sunset made the sky glow orange in all directions, and the mountains behind Pucusana looked like something from another planet. It was surreal.

We stuck around for dinner and got a pizza at an Italian restaurant nearby. Weekends are a wonderful break from the rice, rice, and rice that we eat every day during the week. Out of the nine meals that we have prepared for us each week, I’d say at least 7-8 involve rice. I love carbs, and that’s a lot even for me. So yeah, the pizza was a nice change of pace! For dessert, we got picarones (pee-cah-ROH-nays), Peruvian doughnuts made from sweet potato and squash and coated in a syrup that Debbie and Julie said was made with figs (figs are a big deal around here), but who knows. I was definitely a fan of the picarones (it was like eating fried air… yes, I know that doesn’t make sense), but I could have done without the sauce. Maple syrup probably would have been really good on them, or just a sprinkling of powdered sugar. Either way, I would do it again.

It was a short adventure but more than worth the trip. We took a combi back to the highway and then went the rest of the way on a moto. The motos are like if you chopped the back wheel off of a motorcycle, connected the front part to a carriage, and stuck a tarp over it. You end up with three-wheeled “taxis” with space for a driver on the motorcycle part and about three full-sized passengers on the bench seat behind them (though three is just the maximum number for a comfortable ride… it seems like ‘as many as you can cram inside’ is the maximum number allowed).

This isn’t a great picture, but you can see some motos on the street

Today was the usual church, grocery shopping, cleaning, and working on my to-do list. Big changes are ahead tomorrow! School starts and with it come the afterschool and overnight programs. Goodbye quiet, kid-less nights. See you next weekend.

Azpitia

Posted on February 26, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

We had another weekend of freedom!! It is so incredibly nice to have a break, especially with the end of summer school and the craziness of the last week, trying to get everything done. We went on another mini-adventure yesterday to make the most of our time!

From the moment I woke up, the day was already going wonderfully. Why? Because I got up at 9AM after 10 WHOLE HOURS of sleep! In the scheme of my normal life, 10 hours really isn’t that much. In the scheme of my life here, 10 hours is nearly unheard of. Same with 9AM. Ah, Saturdays! They really are the best. We intentionally planned our destination to allow for some morning relaxation time, and honestly, that was equally as nice and rejuvenating as the actual adventure. I even had time to do some reading, organize my stuff, and catch up on a few things that I had been putting off before we had to head out for the day.

Horrible picture, but this is the beginning of the dirt road to get there

Julie, Debbie, and I headed out around 11:45AM and stopped in Chilca to pick Vanessa up on our way. I was excited to have some time to hang out with her that didn’t involve talking about work/summer school! Our destination was Azpitia, a town about 45 minutes south of us. It’s just about in the middle of nowhere, and apparently, Jim and Tony randomly stumbled upon it years ago when they were doing some exploration driving where you just take turns and see where you end up. After getting there, I seriously have NO idea how they found it. You get off the highway at an exit that seems deserted, go down a skinny paved road, and then turn off onto an unpaved road that looks like a driveway. How did they even decide that it was a road? I don’t know.

First glimpse of the valley, plus a view of the road we had to take to get there

You drive along that mess of a road – windy, unpaved, and dusty – for maybe 10 minutes before coming around a bend and BAM you’re hit with an amazing view of a green valley. Remember, we’re in the desert here, so “green” isn’t exactly common. We’re used to a whole lot of brown, brown, brown. The reason everything is so green there is because of the river Mala that flows through the town. Early in the town’s development, the people created an irrigation system to turn this desert valley into a viable location for farming. Looking at it now, there’s no argument that it has been anything less than a huge success.

So much green! You can see the river at the bottom of the picture, but it’s a little hard to pick out because it’s so brown

We ate lunch and then spent some time walking around. You can walk along the cliff that leads down to the river, and there are a bunch of restaurants that seem precariously perched over the edge but that give you an incredible view of the valley. There’s also a fun sidewalk which is worth noting because it has trees growing out of it, situated in an irrigation channel that runs down the middle of the walkway. We took a steep staircase down to the river which is probably the brownest thing in the whole valley. I don’t know that it’s usually like that, but there has been more rain than usual this year, and a lot of the rivers are apparently higher and dirtier than in past years.

We headed back to Chilca after our mini-hike. It wasn’t the longest adventure ever, but it was relaxing and beautiful and refreshingly green which was enough to make it perfect. Even better, we had plenty of time to come home, watch a stupid movie, and get to bed before the neighbors’ parties really got going.
Today was the usual Sunday routine but thankfully without the panicked last-minute prep for class. Church, grocery shopping, and time to chill before we get back to work tomorrow. I’m not completely sure what this upcoming week is going to involve, but we have a one week break to get everything ready for the start of school next week. As far as I know, my job is to just do as I’m told… I can handle that.

Birthday Party and Aliens

Posted on February 23, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

Yesterday was another long and tiring day! I started writing this last night, but I was doing the whole fall-sleep-and-write-nonsense thing, so I figured that finishing it would be better left to today.

Wednesdays are usually kind of chill because we don’t have any classes, but yesterday was definitely the exception. The big activity for the day was finishing up the soldering and antennae on the C3 robots to get them ready for class today. I got started in the morning and had only finished the soldering and antennae bending by lunchtime.

The afternoon was completely booked by a birthday party for the people with January/February birthdays. The kids get to drink soda and eat candy, and there were some pretty hilarious activities. They started off with some races where each person on the team had a straw in his/her mouth, and two teams raced to pass a plastic ring from straw to straw without using their hands. After that, they did a relay race where the team members had pass a balloon over their heads and through their legs, and then afterwards, the front person waddled their way around a chair while holding the balloon in between their legs. The process repeated until the entire team got a chance to waddle.

It was fun watching the kids play the games, but my favorite part (besides the cake, of course) was the dance party at the end. Ligia explained the rules: you dance around with the music while it’s playing, and once it stops, you freeze like a statue. The real fun began when the kids started to be creative with their frozen poses, the girls usually opting to hug each other and the boys pretending to fight.

After the party, we had a little down time to work on our robots, until about 5:30 when we left for a staff bonding excursion! I wasn’t sure about going because we still had a lot to do with the robots, but I’m so glad I did! It was cool getting to spend time with everyone outside of work, plus the excursion was great.

We went to Las Salinas in Chilca to do a group hike. The first part of the hike is pretty short, and you make it to the top of the first hill where there’s a huge cross and a nice view of Chilca. There are two ways to get there: the way you’re probably supposed to go, with a bunch of switchbacks, and the way we went, with an aggressive incline (I’d guess 60 degrees) and shale-type rock pieces sliding around. I thought the view from there was cool, but then we kept going! We went up more super-steep hills until finally reaching the top… where there was a random rock wall. I was confused about why it was there until we got closer and I realized that it wasn’t just one wall, it was a square of rock walls, and inside was a rock circle with one rock in the middle. Weird. The explanation of what it is makes it no less weird: aliens.

The front of the Chilca pamphlet. Alien.

Chilca is obsessed with aliens. The tagline of the city is “Chilca es de otro mundo” or “Chilca is from another world”. There are a bunch of reports of UFO sightings, and the Chilca marketing people have run with the idea, making it the center of their marketing material. The pamphlets describing the attractions in Chilca feature pictures of a red-orange alien participating in activities from horseback riding to bathing in the lagoons that supposedly wield “energy from another galaxy” and have various healing powers (here’s the website).

Vanessa said that people come from all over the world (alien-enthusiast types of people) to do rituals or something to communicate with the aliens from inside the rock shrine. There’s some claim (by a Peruvian “UFO contactee” Sixto Paz Wells… if you’re interested, here’s a weird interview with him) that they’re drawn here because Chilca is on a geological fault and the released energy creates a magnetic corridor that their ships use. Or something. I’ll let you form your own opinions about that.
Whatever the reason for their existence, they’re impressive. The walls are made from rocks just stacked on each other without cement to hold them together, and they aren’t cut into specific shapes or anything to make things easier. Whoever put that place together had a lot of time on their hands.

Anyway, the view from the alien communication square was even better than the first lookout. I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Check out the mountains in the background!

Debbie and I still had hours of robot work to do after getting back which is why I was falling asleep last night while writing. We finished the antenna connections around 10:45PM… ugh. But now they’re finished! And the hiking break was well worth the time.
Today wasn’t extremely eventful. We had our last period with Vanessa’s class and tried to wrap up their city and robots. It mostly went fine except that one robot started smoking when we put batteries in… ehh well, we’ll figure it out. That’s a problem for tomorrow!

Barranco

Posted on February 19, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

We had a rare treat this weekend… a day off! Actually, we technically had two days off (a normal weekend… imagine that!), but Debbie and I had to do some prep for class today, so maybe we’ll settle at a day and a half.

In celebration of our vacation, we planned a trip into Lima on Saturday. Debbie and Julie’s favorite part of town is the Barranco district, described by them as “hipster Lima”. It’s the part of the city where a lot of artists and musicians live, and you can definitely feel the artsy vibe (plus there are murals everywhere). There is also a famous 19th century bridge, the Puente de los Suspiros (Bridge of Sighs), that crosses a ravine (“Barranco” = ravine) turned walkway to the beach (called the Bajada de los Baños). As you might imagine, this part of the district is very popular, especially during the summer months as people are actually going to the beach. The beaches in the area are PACKED, and the waves are decent so there are also a lot of surfers (fun fact: the “shores of Peru” are given a shout out in the Beach Boys song, Surfin’ Safari).

The cliffs and the remaining part of the walkway to get all the way down to the beach

The church next to the main plaza: Parroquia La Santísima Cruz

I’m getting a little ahead of myself though… As I was saying, we decided to go into Lima, but not until around noon so that we could sleep in!! I got a whole 10 hours of sleep! Plus I had time to accomplish things before we left. It takes about an hour to get into that part of Lima from where we are, and after we got to Barranco, we ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant and did the walk down to the beach. The way down is nice and scenic, and the way up is nice and steep. As a reward for our good walk, we got some gelato and watched some spectacle that was going on in the main plaza. No one in our group seemed to know exactly what it was, but there were a bunch of groups dressed in traditional attire (someone said they were from the highlands but who knows) and doing dances. I wish I had any idea of what was going on/that we were a little closer, but it was still cool to see everyone’s outfits.

Our last stop of the day was Larcomar, a shopping mall in the Miraflores district of Lima. We rented bikes, per my request, because I’m working on a bucket list goal of biking on every continent (shout out to Kristine who came up with the idea for herself and allowed it to be stolen by me). I only have Oceania/Australia and Antarctica left, and don’t even ask me how I’m going to accomplish that last one.

Late sunset from elsewhere along the cliffs

We biked down the road that runs along the cliffs to “Parque del Amor” (Love Park) and then paused and found a good spot to watch the sunset. The sunsets here are pretty amazing, and there are people lined up along all the good lookout spots on the cliffs (Miraflores is basically city, cliffs, beach, ocean) to enjoy the view. You can’t go wrong when you end a day by watching an awesome sunset! Afterwards, we headed back to the mall to return the bikes and then to the car to make the trek home. By the time we got back, I was wiped out. Good thing too because our neighbors kept up their perfect record of Saturday night parties, but I was so tired that I fell asleep without a problem.

Today was the usual Sunday schedule – church, grocery shopping, some relaxation time, and class planning with Debbie. As much as I’ve enjoyed teaching this class, I also won’t be too upset when we don’t have to prep for it anymore! Teaching is a lot of work! The last week of summer school starts tomorrow, so we only have 2 more classes to finish off the robot and city projects. We can do it! I think. I hope.

Field Trip!

Posted on February 8, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

Today was so much fun!!! We went on a field trip with the team and ALL of the kids. The morning was the usual: make coffee at 6AM (my least favorite thing to do), run back to my room and pray/read my Bible for about half an hour before I have to get ready and run to the kitchen again to make breakfast for the team (I’m a professional bulk scrambled eggs maker now), eat, and go to worship with the team and the other missionary staff. After that, the day’s adventure started!

We loaded the 50 kids plus the 20 or so teachers, team members, helpers, etc. onto a coach bus, along with games and toys and food and water, and made our way to the beach. That wasn’t the ultimate destination, but we pulled off the highway for a quick pit stop. I thought it was pretty brave of the teachers to plan a “quick stop” at the beach with all of those kids.

Somehow, we got everyone off the bus and down to the ocean where they splashed around for about half an hour before we rounded everyone up again and went back to the bus. Also, when I say “we”, realistically, I played a very small part in making everything happen. My biggest beach duty was making sure no kids drowned, a task made much easier by the fact that none of them went in past their knees.

The main stop of the day was a pool at this hotel/resort type place in Mirasur. It’s about half an hour south of where we live in Chilca. Once again, my job was to come out of lifeguard retirement and make sure all of the kids stayed safe. I was nervous at the beginning, especially because that’s when kids are a little more rowdy. I had to grab a couple of kids throughout the day and pull them up, but they might have been okay without me. I just wasn’t willing to take any chances, so if anyone looked like they were even struggling, I didn’t give them a chance to keep going on their own.

Once things settled down, I had a lot of fun! I swam around with a few kids, helped them with their swimming, attempted to teach Eddy’s daughter how to swim (and speak English… we’re determined to make her grow up bilingual), and got a chance to hang out and spend time with the kids while finally feeling like I was in my element. Time flew by, and before I knew it, it was time for lunch. We kicked the kids out of the pool, changed, and ate.

We had about an hour and a half to go before we needed to head back to Esperanza de Ana, so everyone played in the hotel’s big grass field with frisbees, volleyballs, pool noodles, soccer balls, and some inflatables. I mostly spent my time having a frisbee catch with one of the kids, and by the time we had to leave, I was totally exhausted.

Some well-irrigated fields in the middle of the desert

The bummer of the day was that our soldering practice went horribly. We’re trying to get ready for our robot project with the kids, and we’re struggling. One of the guys on the team knows some things about soldering, so we asked for his help. He said that he thinks we have the wrong type of solder because it wasn’t melting as easily as it should. Part of me is feeling like, “Hooray! Maybe we’re not the problem!” and the other part of me is grumbling about the fact that they didn’t give us the right stuff at the store. It’s fine though! Everything will get figured out.

For now, I need to go to sleep before I fall asleep at my computer again… anddd too late… I just did. Okay! But I’m up again and will go to bed as soon as I get this posted.

Errand Day

Posted on January 28, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

We had a big errand day today, and it was one of those unfortunate errand days where everything goes a little (or a lot) more slowly than you’re expecting, it becomes impossible to finish all the tasks on your list, and you go home feeling slightly defeated because you know you’re going to have to do it again.

Since it’s the weekend, we “slept in” and left at 9AM. We were headed to central Lima, which I hadn’t been to before. When we went into Lima for church last weekend, we were still a bit on the fringes of the city. Our first stop was to get fabric for curtains, and apparently one of the only places to buy bulk fabric like what we were looking for is in a semi-shady part of central Lima. Eddy (one of the Esperanza de Ana staff who does a lot of the driving), his daughter (who’s 2 years old and is one of the most talented escapees in Julie’s class), Julie, Debbie, and I loaded into the EA van, and off we went.

A car filled with free floating mini-pots. I can only imagine how fun it probably was to load and unload each of those individually, definitely through the windows.

Reading the paper because what else would you do at a time like this?

I want you to keep in mind the fact that I previously declared that I never wanted to drive in Peru because it’s terrifying… and now take whatever I thought I knew about driving here, multiply it by 1000 terrifying points, and you have the actual central Lima driving experience. I haven’t seen such a lack of order on the road since I was in China (crossing the street, in parts of Shanghai and Beijing at least, equals taking your life in your hands). I’m going to try to explain, but there’s literally no chance it does the experience justice. There are cars everywhere. No one pays any attention the lines on the road (assuming they even exist). Pedestrians boldly step out into traffic and act like the hand they’re holding up to tell cars to stop is creating a force field that will keep them from getting hit. Some intersections have literally no indication of how drivers are supposed to decide who should go (no traffic lights, stop signs, etc), so everyone tries to go at once. It’s like everyone is constantly playing a game of chicken: one driver says, “I’m going to put my car there,” and another driver says, “no, that’s where I’m going,” and then they both floor the gas pedal and head for that spot until someone decides that today is not the day to get into a car accident and backs down. Some drivers decide that it’s a great time to catch up on the happenings and read the newspaper while sitting in traffic. Everyone is constantly honking, as if that’s going to make all of the traffic ahead of them magically disappear. Our one cab driver definitely had some road rage issues, and at one point he started yelling out the window at the honking truck behind us, got out to yell some more, and came back to grab his baseball bat (which he probably had in the car because he had a softball game later… NOT. Clearly this isn’t the first time he’s felt the “need” to use it). Luckily, he just waved it around, got back into the car, and kept driving like a maniac.

The fabric store. You can only see about 1/3 of it here… Yeah, that’s a lot of fabric.

We somehow made it to the fabric store alive… at about 12:15PM (I’ll do the math for you: 3:15 after leaving home for what should be maybe an hour and a half trip). We wandered around and asked a bunch of fabric stores if they had what we needed before getting directed to a shop through some random hole-in-the-wall hallway. Debbie got what she needed for the curtains, and I bought some fabric too for an undetermined future project.

By the time the fabric expedition was complete, it was around 2PM, and we were all starving. We located the closest quick and reasonably-priced place to eat and promptly stuffed our faces. I got “arroz chaufa con pollo” which is essentially chicken fried rice. I think it was really good, but I can’t be sure because my brain wasn’t fully functioning at that point.

Julie, me, and Debbie in the Plaza Mayor in front of the cathedral.

Before loading back into the car, we walked around the historic center of Lima. There’s some pretty architecture and an epic central plaza (Plaza Mayor de Lima) that is surrounded by some government buildings including Lima’s city hall (Palacio Municipal de Lima) and the Palacio de Gobierno del Perú (where the president lives – basically the White House of Peru), and the Cathedral of Lima.

Today I found myself in object form, and I am a toilet.

At 4:00PM, we had officially completed one thing on the to-do list. Ouch. Thankfully, most of the other things got cut. On the way back to EA, we stopped at Maestro (Peruvian Home Depot) to get some supplies for maintenance and a few upcoming projects, and after that, the only stop left on the list was home. By 7:45PM, we were back, and I was exhausted.

Now, it’s almost midnight and the neighbors seem to be having a competition to see who can be louder. The one party is at the same place as last week, I think two properties away from us. Word on the street is that some “young people” are trying to start a makeshift discoteca there. You might be wondering if there are zoning regulations or something against that sort of thing… and I’m wondering the same thing. This can’t be legal, right? On the other side, our immediate next door neighbors are having a party, and the music is so loud that we could just have our own party here using their music. I’m not even exaggerating when I say that I think they’re trying to outdo each other because the music on both sides has gotten progressively louder since the beginning of the night. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO SLEEP??? I have ear plugs, but I hate sleeping with them in and my ear canals are so small that they always fall out. UGHHH. Get ready for a grumpy Lara tomorrow.

Welcome to York!

Posted on November 11, 2016April 27, 2020 by Lark

For the Harry Potter fans out there… In King’s Cross on the way to Hogwarts

Guess who I’m with right now? James!! Yesterday, I took a train to York and now here I am! Seeing him in the train station was the same weird experience as when I met up with Sosane. Like… we were both wearing “normal” clothes and seeing each other in a “normal” situation, but for us, that’s abnormal. Fortunately, just like before, we got over it pretty quickly and picked up right where we left off in Ghana.

On the city walls. You can see York Minster in the distance.

Yesterday, we walked around York a bit and James pretended that he knew something about his city (he doesn’t). Luckily the internet exists, so I did some research to learn the basics and try to figure out what the “must see” attractions are. To give you the 30 second summary, York is a VERY old city. It was founded by the ancient Romans, has the largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe (York Minster), and has Roman/medieval city walls that are still intact. James isn’t exactly what you would call a history buff and probably would have been fine with just hanging out, but since I’m only going to be in town for a couple days, I insisted that I have to see at least SOME of the sights.

The walls and one of the “bars” (gatehouses).

We decided to let most of the history tour wait until today, so after our little walk around town last night, we ate dinner, played some ping pong (James destroyed me) and pool (we each won a game, and he promised that he didn’t let me win), and watched a movie before passing out.

Today, we entered full-on sightseeing mode, and it was great! We started off the day by walking a portion of the city walls. The existing walls are a mix of ancient Roman and medieval, and they’re the most complete medieval city walls in all of England. The entire length is about 2.6 miles, but we only walked a portion. If we had more time, I definitely would have been into doing the whole thing because besides getting to check out the walls, you get some nice views of the city along the walk.

On a bridge crossing the river. James said that the river floods every year, and all the bars and businesses along the river are just used to having to repair damages when it happens.

Our next stop was the York Castle Museum. James had never been there, so we really had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. The actual building used to be a prison, and the galleries cover a random variety of topics. There are exhibits about children’s toys, an indoor recreated Victorian street, life in the prison, the sixties, fashion, and World War I, to name a few. The exhibits were well done, and we spent more time there than I think either of us expected. I was happy because James said he actually enjoyed it, so I didn’t feel like I was just dragging him around with me. We both started feeling hungry at the same time, were shocked when we looked at our watches, and headed out on a quest to find food.

The Victorian road replica. It was “night” (not sure if it always is), so it was hard to take a good picture, but it really did feel like you were outside (though slightly warmer, thankfully).

There’s also a reconstructed flour mill that was relocated to the museum grounds.

The last stop after “lunch” (if you can call a 3:30PM meal lunch) was York Minster, the cathedral. We got there right around closing time, so instead of paying to walk around the whole church, we used the “walk inside and see what you can from behind the ticket barriers” strategy and then walked around the outside of the church. Even without the full indoor tour, we still got a good sense of the building. The exterior is beautiful, and there’s a lot of stained glass (128 stained glass windows, to be precise) that we had a good view of from the outside because it was getting dark.

A not-so-great night picture of York Minster. You can kind of see the stained glass windows… guess that’s one of those things that doesn’t really come out in pictures.

Now we’re back at James’s house, eating Chinese food (which is completely different from Chinese food in the USA – can you believe they don’t give you chopsticks?!? – which is completely different from actual Chinese food) and enjoying some down time before we go out to experience some York night life. I’m getting the full cultural experience!