Wanderin´ Around

Finally, my friends, after much waiting, catching up on old blogs, and a lovely bout with the Giardia bacteria, I’m excited to bring you some stories and pictures from my December/January vacation! I, along with the other YAVs (in shifts…oh and also Anna’s mom!) gave ourselves a little “coastal tour of Peru,” if you will, that included visits to Arequipa, Paracas, Lima, Trujillo, Huanchaco, and Huaraz. The trip was a wonderful break from my regular routine and a great chance to get to know more of Peru (before our vacation, I had only been in Lima, where I live, and in Huánuco for a long-weekend retreat…remember climbing the waterfalls?). I was very excited to get out of town! There’s no way I’ll be able to describe all of our adventures or post all of my photos (though I am going to try to post at least some of them to facebook…I’ll make sure I make a link on a blog so that you guys can see them even if you aren’t on facebook!), so I’d like to give you a quick look at each place we visited: the good, the bad, and the absurd.

Arequipa

Plaza de Armas in Trujillo

The Good: Arequipa is a beautiful mountain city in the South of Peru. It’s the second most populated after Lima, but is considerably cleaner and has a nice little coast-meets-mountains charm about it. It’s also situated around some beautiful dormant (we hope…) volcanoes and has beautiful hiking nearby. We had the opportunity to go to the very old and famous Monastery de Santa Catalina that’s a full city block full of historical relics and vivid colors! We also went to the museum where they keep “Juanita” the Ice Princess, the frozen mummy of a girl sacrificed in the mountains near Arequipa!

The Bad: Because we only had two days to stay, we didn’t get to hike into the famous and beautiful Colca Canyon. Looking at pictures from Joe and Alissa, who did, we really missed out on some pretty incredible views!

The Absurd: We couldn’t find typical Arequipeña food! Here we were smack dab in the center of a big city famous for its unique spicy cuisine, and all we could find was fried calamari! Oh well, I guess I’ll have to save my cravings for ocopa or ricotta rellena for the occasional special days at the corner restaurants in Lima!

Paracas

The Good: A beautiful beach town a few hours south of Lima in the region called Ica, where you can also find the famous Nazca lines. Very close to Pisco, a town where the famous Peruvian liquor of the same name originated, best known for its use in the Pisco sour (think a small, strong margarita made with whisky instead of tequila and with a touch of cinnamon!). Paracas itself is famous for the Ballestas Islands that you can tour early in the morning and see all sorts of beautiful wildlife, including beautiful tropical birds (according to Brian I should be looking out for “incredible birding” down here), manatees (which I ate for breakfast the other day without knowing it! I feel like a terrible person!) and of course, Andy’s favorite, SEALS!

The Bad: Well, we never actually made it to Paracas. We had everything lined up and reserved, but when we got to the bus station in Arequipa, the lady at the desk calmly informed us that the bus had never shown up in Arequipa and therefore would not be leaving for Paracas. We’d have to wait til the next night (not really much of an option, since we only had one day scheduled in Paracas!), so after some serious spur of the moment rebooking, we were refunded our money (with a fake S./200 bill…good thing yours truly has become an expert at spotting the fakes!) and got on another bus line taking us directly to Lima, our mid-trip destination. Bummer! I guess the seals will have to wait!

The Absurd: News abounds about the terrifying, fatal Peruvian bus crashes, and while in Arequipa, our site coordinator Debbie sent us an article about some particularly bad crashes that had just occurred with a not-so-subtle reminder to only take the best and most secure bus lines, since these crashes happen more often on the cheaper bus lines. But of course, in line with the absurdity of our vacation, while on the nicest, fancy-schmanciest, gringo-flooded Cruz del Sur bus line, we experienced our first (and hopefully last!) Peruvian bus crash! Well, Anna and Sarah Alta did, at least. Baja and I slept through the whole thing! It was pretty minor and only held us up for about an hour or so, but Baja and I were pretty bummed to wake up the next morning and find out we’d missed the adventure!

Lima

Parque de Amor in Miraflores

The Good: Delicious food, an exciting night-life, and lots of restaurants that give you a free pisco sour with your meal! We spent New Years’ (and the day before, since we didn’t end up in Paracas!) in Lima so that we could switch off Baja, who’d been travelling with us for the first half of the trip, for Alissa, who would join us for the second half. We stayed in a really fun (maybe a little too fun…) hostal in Miraflores within walking distance from the beach, the Parque de Amor (a free park by the water of beautiful mosaics intertwined with quotes about love), the “Central Park” area of Miraflores, and an incredible, fair-trade organic coffee shop with the only Chai Latte I’ve found in Peru!

The Bad: While we were in a different part of Lima (Miraflores…about a two hour bus-ride from Carabayllo, where I live) from my usual neck of the woods, it was still a bit of a bummer to spend more of our vacation time than intended in Lima, my home turf. We certainly had a good time, but nothing was new and exciting, it was all stuff that I, at least, had seen and done before.

The Absurd: On the way to the airport to meet her parents, Baja and I had a super-talkative taxi driver (always the most fun!) who was very interested in our lives, what we were doing in Peru, and what kind of men appealed to Baja, particularly if she had a thing for midgets (important note…this man was not a midget! He just legitimately wanted to know if Baja was into them). In the end, he told her that she was going to end up marrying a midget but losing him on her honeymoon because he’d be so small she wouldn’t be able to find him. I’m telling you, absurd.

Trujillo

Ruins from Huaca de la Luna

The Good: Famous Northern coastal city with lots and lots of ancient Incan and pre-Incan ruins. Of all the ones we visited, my favorite was certainly Huaca de La Luna, which means Temple of the Moon, a lesser-known temple than the more famous Chan-Chan, that in some places has up to 7 or 8 layers of excavation exposed! It was pretty amazing to see different layers/different epochs of old murals displayed right next to each other...really gave me a sense of the complexity of the history of this country!

The Bad: Trujillo is actually not that interesting of a city. A Peruvian friend advised us that it would be much better if we spent one night there instead of our intended two and spent the extra night in Huanchaco, a beach town about 15 minutes from Trujillo. Trusting our vast knowledge of Peruvian tourism and guidebooks over native advice, we spent two nights in Trujillo and did end up regretting that use of our time. The ruins were fabulous, but could have been done in one day. Lesson: Always trust the locals!

The Absurd: Trujillo is where I began to show the symptoms of what, I would find out a month later, was Giardiasis. In the mist of this, we came home from touring one day and I found myself wanting nothing more than a serious butt massage. When I said this outloud (not sure I really intended to), Anna’s mom immediately offered, and minutes later, I found myself receiving a butt massage from my friend’s mom that I had met, under rather strange circumstances, less than a week ago. Oh geez.

Huanchaco

Sunset in Huanchaco

The Good: Absolutely gorgeous beach town with a really fun hostal! We ended up staying two nights after all (and just cutting one night from our Huaraz stay) and enjoyed the relaxing pace of sleeping in the morning, heading to the beach for the afternoon, eating a delicious dinner (especially at an amazing vegetarian restaurant with $3 piña coladas and a wonderful view of the sunset over the water (that’s right kids, we’re at the Pacific ocean where the sun SETS over the water! Crazy!), and staying up late at night playing cards on the hostal porch. Great seafood and just a relaxing visit.

The Bad: The second morning, while everyone else was still in bed, Anna and I decided to be brave, get ourselves out of bed before 10 AM, and go read and talk on the beach. Which we did, and it was wonderful. And we even put on copious amounts of sunscreen. Or so we thought…that afternoon with both found ourselves painfully sunburned, me in a strange pattern on my legs where I must have missed several pretty large spots. That sunburn didn’t even begin to fade for about a week! Bring on the aloe!!

Just a little glimpse of my sunburn...

The Absurd: Our hostal had a turtle for a pet just chillin’ in the main lobby area, along with tables and hammocks. Best hostal mascot EVER!

Huaraz

My first glacier!

The Good: I saw my first (and hopefully not last, but you just never know at the rate we´re going…) glacier! It really was an amazing sight! You know if you’d asked me before I came here if there were glaciers in Peru, I’m not sure how I would have answered. But it turns out yes, there are in fact glaciers in Peru, and I had the privilege to “hike”/walk around the glacial silt and lake of one. It really was a wonder of nature….and HUGE! We walked in for over an hour, hoping to have the opportunity to touch some of the actual glacial ice, but no matter how much we walked, the glacier itself seemed just as far away! We did get some great pictures, though, and the opportunity to dip our toes in the ice-cold (literally!) glacial lake.

The Bad: Altitude sickness: apparently it’s a real thing. Huaraz in the Andes at an altitude of 10,000 ft, and the point where we went to start our glacial walk was considerably higher than the city itself. Anna and Alissa live in Huancayo and Huanta, respectively, both mountain towns of high elevation in the Andes. Alta had sent the last 4 months living in Huancavelica, another mountain town high enough that, I believe, you can actually just walk onto the moon. And then of course there was me, who has lived in the swamp that is William & Mary and am now living in Lima, a costal desert, whose altitude is más o menos the same height as Baja’s future midget husband. I found myself very easily tired/out of breath, dizzy, and basically just feeling like I was constantly drunk. This was particularly hard on our walk, as I felt bad for being so weak and slow and didn’t want to hold anyone up. However, every time I mentioned that I felt bad for being the “weakest link,” Anna reminded me that 1.) It was really ok, they were acclimated to the altitude from their living situations and I simply wasn’t, and 2.) I needed to suck it up and let them know when I was getting lightheaded so I could sit down our I was going to pass out, fall down one of the ledges we were walking along, die, and then be, excuse the terrible pun, but “dead weight” to carry back instead of just the “weakest link.” I found this argument rather convincing.

The Absurd: We left Huaraz on an overnight bus ride back to Lima, our fifth one in the course of two weeks. Speaking as someone who’s never been very good at sleeping in moving vehicles, those bus rides will take their toll on you! Fortunately, I’d had some success in the past popping a Dramamine pill (thank you Alissa!) that, even though I don’t get motion sickness, does a pretty good job of helping me get at least a few hours of sleep. However, the night of this bus ride, I found out that you can actually take two Dramamine pills at a time, and I figured hey, it’ll just make it an even better sleep! I could not have been more wrong. I became a crazy, half-asleep zombie of sorts. Well, a cuddly zombie. Anna, who had the great misfortune of sitting next to me during this bus ride, swears that at some point in the night I confused her for Andy link and kept cuddling up to her and just throwing myself across her seat. While the possibility that I had Andy on the brain is certainly very high, I’m sure my high school and college friends can attest to the fact that, especially when I’m already at least somewhat asleep, I can be rather indiscriminate in my cuddling attacks and am pretty horrible at sleeping in a small, confined space.

But that’s only the beginning. Along with becoming the cuddling zombie, I began to do absolutely absurd things in my sleep. Sleep talking is pretty normal, but when I started to sleep direct an orchestra, with my arms flailing everywhere, Anna became a bit more concerned. Then at some point I ended up leaning forward in my sleep and, every time the bus moved, banging my head rather hard into the food tray on the back of the seat in front of me. I’m sure whoever was sitting there was thrilled. I’d say, though, that it all culminated when I woke up with Anna staring at me, very concerned, and my seatbelt in my mouth (apparently I was hungry?).

So two lessons were learned from that trip. 1.) I will never take more than 1 Dramamine pill at a time, and 2.) Anna will never, as long as she lives, sit next to me on a bus again.

So there you have it – my Christmas vacation! These stories here can’t even begin to describe all of our adventures, but let’s just say it was pretty hard to get back into settle back into my daily routine in Carabayllo after such a great little “Tour de Peru”, if you will.

Now there is, I’m sure, at least one of you, who is very concerned that I did not go see Cuzco and Machu Picchu during this vacation, especially since the news has probably reached you about the mudslides that have wreaked so much havoc on the area. Rest assured, the other YAVs (minus Sarah Alta…sad!) and I will be going in May to hike the Inca Trail as part of our May vacation. And the most exciting part of this: my parents and brother Jim are coming! (We will greatly miss brother Jack, but it’s his final Freeman Jazz Band Concert and, as the only bari sax, he really couldn’t miss it.) So don’t worry, I will not spend a year in Peru without seeing one of the Seven Wonders of the World. But for now, I’m off to work and will soon head to a beach retreat in Máncora, a city in the north of Peru. When I get back, expect news on that, my new job working with Fair Trade link, some thought-provoking conversations, and a whole lot of bugs. So for now, my friends, chau, cuíadensen mucho!

I Wasn't Home for Christmas

I Wasn’t Home for Christmas

It’s as simple as that. I wake up January 19, look at the calendar, wonder where Christmas went and how it got to be 2010, and then I remember.

Oh yeah. I spent Christmas in Peru. Crazy.

This was the first Christmas of my life that I’ve spent away from my family, my house, my bed, my church, my dinner table, my tree – whatever sign of homeliness and familiarity we decide to use, this was the first time I was far from any of it. I missed it, for sure, but mostly in the days leading up to Christmas, in Advent (my favorite season of all, liturgical or otherwise), the season of expectation. A certain excitement and warmth builds within us as we wait for…something. What exactly we don’t know. The coming of the Christ child? Getting to light the big white candle? (Personally the pink candle was always my favorite.) Finally getting to find out what’s inside that present? The Monroe/Block Christmas Party? The Christmas pageant? The Christmas pig? The infamous “Christmas Stew” that you eat for weeks after Christmas and basically consists of everything you ate for Christmas dinner thrown together in a pot? The day when your kids finally let you change the radio station form Lite 98? We don’t really know. But it’s somewhere in the waiting that the Christmas spirit always finds me.

So this year, as I was waiting, I had the very disconcerting realization that I had no idea, really, what I was waiting for. None of the things listed above were going to happen for me this year. Except for the coming of the Christ child, I guess, but who really knows what that means anyway. I wasn’t in much of a mood for divine mysteries.

So I was excited, I was sad, I had new learning experiences, I spent an inordinate amount of time with Sarah Alta at Megaplaza because in some strange way, the lights and banter of the mall were the closest thing I could find to my experiences of US Christmases. (As a side note, I actually don’t mind commercialized Christmas. Sure, it’s very easy to miss the point and important to remind ourselves that we are really celebrating the humble birth of a man who lived a life of revolutionary love and was to change history forever, but for me, there’s something exciting, sentimental, and romantic about the lights, the music, the excited kids…it just does it for me.) I ate too much, exchanged gifts, cried on the phone with my family (sorry about that, guys…), watched Love Actually and had myself a Peruvian Christmas. I’m still processing what it was to spend Christmas away from home and experience it in a completely different cultural context – I may not finish processing that until next Christmas. But for now, I’ll try to describe for you, as best I can, my Peruvian Christmas.

First of all, as many of you know, working in the church makes for a crazy Christmas season. And it certainly was busy and crazy, but not as much as I expected. You see, for a culture in which church and religious practice are often treated as the most essential and core part of one’s life, Christmas is surprisingly…unchurchly. Christmas itself is really about family here. Each of the two churches I work for had a Christmas service, but one was December 20^th and the other the 23^rd. Christmas Eve services don’t happen in the IEP (though I’m willing to bet something like that exists in the Catholic church…).

In the IEP Ingeniería, the service was a little bit like a big Christmas talent show with interspersed songs (though most weren’t Christmas songs), a mini Christmas story reenactment, and a sermon. And then when everything was done, we drank hot chocolate (even though it’s summer here) and ate Paneton, the traditional Peruvian Christmas food which is best described as a lighter, fluffier, and much more delicious version of fruitcake. Each of the children present received a present bought by the church especially for him or her and everyone was happy and full of Christmas spirit. Not the same feeling I get at the Christmas Eve service at home, but still, the presence of a spirit of joy.

The service at the IEP Collique was less remarkable and less interesting, but along the same lines…talent show-esque with a sermon worked in there and Paneton and hot chocolate afterward.

Another interesting note –at both churches, where secular music, stories, really secular anything is often frowned-upon, the altars and front of the sanctuaries were decorated with what we call “tacky-Christmas-lights”, Christmas trees, and basically things you would never find in the sanctuary of a typical PCUSA church in the states. Like I said it’s interesting to see the differences across culture of what we to be sacred.

As I said earlier, there’s no Christmas Eve service. In fact, Christmas itself is celebrated on the 24^th, our Christmas Eve, at midnight. It’s much like our conception of New Years (or Michael Scott’s conception of marriage, if you’ve seen the episode of The Office where Jim and Pam get married). The whole extended family gathers at the home of some relative and waits anxiously for midnight, when they can officially begin Christmas dinner, a great feast in the middle of the night (quite a surprise for the stomach, since in Peru lunch is the biggest meal of the day and you don’t usually go to bed with a lot of food on your stomach). Christmas dinner consists of turkey, rice prepared with Coca-Cola (not kidding!), lots of other delicious dishes, and ends with (you guessed it!) Paneton!

Another exciting and totally new thing for me about Christmas is that at midnight, when it officially becomes “Christmas Day,” EVERYONE sets off fireworks. I mean everyone. I’m not sure about the legality of fireworks in Peru, but as my host family once reminded me, “prohibido” doesn’t really mean that much here. It’s bigger than any Fourth of July show I’ve ever seen, really an amazing sight. And such a contrast to the “Silent Night” that I think of when I think of Christmas night. It was a sight to be seen. I can honestly say I have never and probably never will again celebrate Christmas in such a loud, festive, boisterous way!

The 25^th, the big Christmas Day for us, is more of a day of rest in Peru. As you can imagine, if you started dinner in your relatives’ house across town at midnight the night before, you’re not much for waking up early on Christmas Morning. I think Alta and I got out of bed around noon. We went to Flor’s family’s house for Christmas lunch (we’d been with Eduardo’s family the night before) but before, as we were wrapping presents, made sure to listen to the Messiah (typical Christmas music at my house), Amy Grant Christmas songs (Typical Terpstra fam Christmas music), and Mannheim Steamroller, which feels like home to both of us. We also spent much of the time that she was here with me sitting on my bed harmonizing to Christmas Carols, mostly minor, of course!

At Flor’s family’s house we had another delicious turkey meal and did a Secret Santa gift exchange among the adults (all the kids got some sort of tricycle). Then we came back, crashed, I called my family and cried, Sarah talked with her host family from Huancavelica…and we ate some more Paneton. Not kidding. And that was it. That was Christmas. We left the next day for vacation (which will be my next blog post, coming soon, I promise). Very surreal, and looking back, it doesn’t feel like Christmas actually happened. It was just all so different. Like I said, I’m still very much processing it. If I come to any great insights about the interconnectedness of the whole world in the birth of the one poor child who changed the world (and there’s 10 million more who probably could…), I’ll be sure to let y’all know. But who knows. Come Christmas next year, maybe I’ll find myself feeling a little homesick for fireworks, summer weather, and of course Paneton!