Promo Trip 2009 - Chachapoyas

So one of the reasons that the kids really wanted me to stay until the end of the year, was that so I could go on their promocion trip. However, this year there was a conflict, because the primary and secondary school BOTH wanted me to go on their trips, and they left back to back and we essentially going to the same place. Up until a few days before they left, the colegio didn't even know if they were going to be able to go on the trip. Luckily, the trip didn't conflict with Camp VALOR and I decided to go on the colegio trip, and then see how I felt before I decided to go on the primary school trip. Everyone told me that the primary school trip was "better" because they were going farther (Tarapoto versus Chachapoyas). I haven't actually been to Tarapoto, but these paseos aren't the best way to see places for the first time. Here they think farther is better, even if they only end up spending half a day in the place. I'm very close with most of the kids in the 5th grade of the colegio, so that made the trip a lot of fun. It was pretty much what I expected after last year, lots and lots of time on a bus, and disorganization. However, we did make it to our final destination, although we lost a day in the process. The ultimate goal was to see the ruins of Kuelap, however once we got to Chachapoyas (30 hours on a bus later) we were informed that our bus was too big and wouldn't make it up the road. It hadn't rained in a few days so they decided to make the 3 hour trip up the mountain anyway. Kuelap is pretty cool, and I actually went their last year for thanksgiving. Unfortunately, shortly after we got there it started to downpour. This definitely put a damper on all the photos and videos the kids had planned. It's really a shame that it rained, because the view from up there is gorgeous. These kids live in the mountains though, so I don't know how much they actually appreciate that kind of beauty. While we were up at Kuelap, I actually ran into another Peace Corps Volunteer who was also there visiting. He had actually hiked the 3 hours straight up the mountain instead of taking the long winding road by car. Since it was raining, I offered him and his sister a ride back down the mountain in our bus. As we began our descent, the road that had been nice and firm in the morning, had turned into a mud slip and slide. Several times the wheels started spinning, and my friend told me this was dangerous because the bus could fish tail off the side of the mountain. We were in the back of the bus and I just happened to be looking out the window when the wheels started spinning and next thing I knew, the back of the bus was swerving towards the cliff. That was enough for my friend, and he got off the bus and decided to walk down, even if it took six hours. I wanted to get off as well, but I couldn't leave the group I was with. However, he lucked out and found a pick up truck to take him down the mountain. I wanted to get off the bus and hop on that truck but there was no cell phone service to communicate. I got really mad when the truck passed and our bus driver wouldn't let me off, so I decided to storm off that bus the next time we got stuck in mud. I didn't really have a plan, and left everything on the bus. I walked/ran behind the bus for a good half hour until the road got less muddy. The road was that bad that I was able to somewhat keep up. I found out later that 2 other boys were begging to be let off the bus but the teacher wouldn't let them. Once the road got better, the bus stopped and let me back on. However, an hour or so later we got stuck on a curve, and once again they wouldn't let us out. Finally they let us out, and a group of 5 of us just started booking it down the road. I wasn't really thinking so I left my camera and everything on the bus, so there are no pictures. We walked a good hour and a half before the bus finally was able to get out of the mud and pick us up. We figured the farther we walked, the less we had to be on the bus.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We stopped in the middle of the night in the town of Jaen, because apparently there are a lot of cool things to see there. Then we spent all morning in the plaza de armas, hoping to go to the zoo or the pool. Then the teacher decided that we couldn't see anything because we had to get to Chiclayo early. I didn't really see the point in spending 7 hours on a bus during the day, and neither did the kids. What difference does it make if we got into Chiclayo at 8pm or 10pm. I then asked to use the bathroom before I left, but they wouldn't let any of the kids off the bus to accompany me. I once again left my cell phone on the bus, and the bus took off even though they knew I was in the bathroom. So then we wasted another 30 minutes while the teachers had to go find me, and two other parents who were also not on the bus. If the bus had just waited instead of driving to the end of town, we wouldn't have wasted so much time!

Ok, so this sounds pretty negative, but sometimes I just get sick of the logic here. I did have a lot of fun on the trip, but it was mostly because it was with 26 high schoolers that I'm close with and have been working with for the past 2 years. I decided not to go on the primary school trip to Tarapoto because I had to go down to Lima for medical checks. I'm just getting back from that, so I have no idea how that one went. My host mom, dad, and 2 host brothers all went on that trip. I actually called them when I was in Lima to find out when they were getting to Tarapoto because I was contemplating flying there from Lima. I then found out that they weren't even there yet, and were only planning on spending half a day there before turning back. That pretty much sealed my decision to stay in Lima and not waste money on a plane ticket.

I bought a spray bottle top for 1 sol, about 30 cents. It was the best investment ever. EVERYONE was jealous, I just told them I was smart like that. Then I had to go around spaying everyone down because the heat was unbearable.

Entertaining themselves on the bus without air conditioning.

Jaen. It's part of Cajamarca, but at practically zero elevation so it's very hot. Here is the Plaza where we spent 2 hours taking photos.

No trip would be complete without a trip to the beach. Only one swimmer amongst the group (me), but luckily it wasn't deep.

The whole group in front of Kuelap....before the rain.

If we look uncomfortable it's because it's pouring rain and we are soaked.

Eating menú at a truck stop. But, they had fried PLANTAINS!!!!! I was very excited.

Definitely not the bus-cama-cama that I'm used to!

Camp VALOR, take 2

This past weekend the Volunteers in Cajamarca put on another kids camp. This camp, Camp VALOR, was for teenage boys. This was the 3rd camp I've participated in, and the second one involving boys. I am probably biased, but it's so much easier to entertain girls! Luckily I wasn't one of the people in charge of planning this camp so it was nice to not have all the pressure of running the camp. Nevertheless, the camp was a success, and all three boys that I brought from my site had a great time.

Field game activities

Everyone at VALOR

The 3 boys that I brought to VALOR

sLearning the Michael Jackson - Thriller dance

more maps

Last year I painted the world map with a bunch of kids in my site. This year I decided to change it up a little bit and paint a map of Peru in the primary school. I had the kids draw the map of Peru using the grid method, but then I had the good luck of finding someone who had a rented projector in my town. Since this was the only time I've ever found a projector in my site, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and used the projector to draw maps of Cajamarca, San Miguel, and Cochán. Ideally, Peru would have been the first map, but since I had already drawn it, I wasn't able to change the order. Peru is broken down into departments (Cajamarca), and then in Cajamarca there are provinces (San Miguel), and each province has districts (Cochán). Furthermore, each district consists of various caserios. So in the end, I ended up with 4 maps along the entranceway. While the world map was cool, I think the kids were way more interested in these maps, because it consisted of places they actually knew. It was very cute watching all the 6 year-olds trying to sound out the names, and then running their hands all over the map of Cochán to show everyone what caserio they lived in. The only problem with it being in the primary school was that the 10 and 11 year olds that I recruited to paint aren't that careful, and I was constantly having to stand guard during recess to make sure the kids didn't run their dirty hands all over the wet paint. Below are a few pictures of the painting process, and the finished project more or less. It's still missing a few finishing touches such as labels for each map, but I think you'll get the idea.

In order: Cajamarca, Peru, San Miguel, and Cochán

Basura!!

One of the most frustrating things about living here is the trash situation. While there are a few garbage cans in town, most people just burn their trash, or throw it on the street, grass, or whoever they are. Whenever I go on a hike, the kids want to leave the trash in the middle of nowhere, and I have to convince them to put it in a bag and carry it back to Cochán. Even in Cochán, they have people that sweep the streets, but they just dump all the trash into the stream that runs through town. The garbage cans are taken around the corner and dumped in plain site. There isn't any kind of hole or garbage dump. Anyway, the doctor in my site had a friend from Cajamarca that works with waste and decided to come to Cochán to raise awareness of the trash situation. When I heard about this, I jumped at the opportunity to help, because this is one of the things that bothers me the most. We decided to have the 4th and 5th grade of the colegio participate in a clean up of the river that runs through town. There were incentives such as prizes for the group that gathered the most trash, and they were taught how to separate organics from inorganic. Apparently the doctor tried to clean up the river with kids from the primary school the year before, but the parents were outraged and put out a denuncia. We figured that by working with the older kids there wouldn't be a problem, but there is always a problem. Even though we had the permission of the director, the day of, the same father who had a problem in the escuela, and happens to be the head of the parent committee, decided that it was hazardous and the children would not participate. Luckily, there was some negotiating, and they made the event optional. We ended up with 39 kids out of the 65, which ended up being perfect because there were only 40 t-shirts.

I had seen the trash from the river, but I never realized how disgusting it was. You would be amazed at what was found in there. Even though we were cleaning the river, people around still had a negative attitude. They told me, there's no point in doing that because people are just going to continue to dump things in there. They don't realize that while you can't expect a change overnight, hopefully little by little you are able to reach a few people and make a difference. People don't think it's a problem to dump things in the stream because once rainy season comes the water level rises and washes it all "away." Out of sight, out of mind apparently. While I've been doing my part to ingrain the importance of not littering on the kids, it would really be nice to do a whole campaign. Unfortunately I have little time left, and this problem is bigger than me. There is no support from the authorities in town, and no progress has been made to build a landfill. Once we had all the trashbags of trash, there was nowhere to put them and we were forced to put them around the corner, where all the other trash is thrown.

At first they weren't so eager to dig in.

Getting dirty

They found a mattress in the river.

The crowd that gathered to watch from the street (the middle of town). Apparently watching people pick up trash is interesting.

This group of 4 girls won, picking up 25 bags of trash!

Picking up trash is fun!

Lots of trash


After the clean up with their new t-shirts.

Hiking and more hiking

One thing I'm really going to miss when I leave here, is all the hiking that I've been able to do. There isn't much to do in town, and even less to do in my room, so I try to get out and see as much of the mountains that I can. While the little kids are adorable, I am lucky to also be friends with many of the older kids, thus I always have hiking partners. It's getting to the point where I've seen more of Cochán than most people in my town, and I've seen several tourist spots more than once. Condác is a waterfall that is about an hour and a half to two hour walk away. Most people in my town have never been but are always talking about going. I'd actually been twice before, but I offered to go again since a lot of people wanted to go. It also helps that I have a camera, thus I am always invited on these little outings. Kim, a volunteer in the nearby provincial capital of San Miguel, mentioned that she likes to hike, but there aren't that many places to go hiking in San Miguel. Now that there is relatively easy transport between our sites, I asked her if she wanted to come to Cochán for the day and go on a hike. She came over on the early combi, helped make empanadas and we were ready to go, or so we thought. The little group of 8 or so that I had planned to come somehow grew to 17 people. It was a very random group, but it was still a nice hike, and it didn't rain too much. There was very little water compared to when I went before, but this enabled us to cross the river and actually enter where the water fell. Crossing the river was still scary and on the way back when I jumped from rock to rock, my precious metal water bottle fell out and sunk to the bottom of the river. It was very sad, but luckily I still had my camelbak to hold me over.

The next weekend we planned to go on another hike, to some ventanillas in the neighboring district of Tumbaden. I had seen these ventanillas from across the mountain, but i had never actually been there. This was going to be a long hike, so many of the kids's parents wouldn't let them go. We ended up with a good group of 7, but two of the kids went on ahead. They were supposed to wait up for us on the road, but just as I called them my credit on my phone ran out. We were already out of town so there was no way for me to get credit. There was only about a minute of credit between the other four people I was with. One of the girls that went on ahead actually knew the route, and I was the only other person that had any idea where these ventanillas were because I had seen them from a distance. Well, we tried calling but Peruvians tend to be vague about where they are. I ask her where she was, and she told me was "por abajo" which basically means down there. We ended up going another route because one of the kids I was with thought that was the way, and we realized it wasn't when we called the girl again. This time she said she was at the bridge, which isn't very helpful considering there are a million bridges. She then clarified what bridge, and we realized that we were still an hour away from there because of our little detour. We told them to wait for us but we failed to mention that we didn't know the way. When we finally reached the bridge, they were nowhere to be seen. We used the last of the credit to call her, only to find out that she was already up the mountain at the ventanillas. We asked her where the path was and she responded "por alli por alli" which means over there, over there, before our credit ran out for good. I knew the general direction of the ventanillas, but since we couldn't find the path, we spent the next hour climbing and crawling up 1,000 feet in an effort to get up the mountain. All in all, we spent over 4 hours walking, in what should have been a 2 1/2 hour hike. Once we were there, we eventually met up with the two kids that went ahead and enjoyed the ventanillas. I had been to the ventanillas in Cochán, but these were much cooler. After some picture taking and lunch, we walking another 30 minutes to the pueblo of Tumbaden. It started to rain so we took shelter in this little veranda like structure on the plaza. All was good until the town drunk that had been sitting below decided to climb up the stairs and enter our little party. He stumbled up there and took a seat next to us with his belt in his hand. He looked at us and kept whipping his belt around. One of the local kids told us to be careful because he hits, so we gave him an empanada to keep him busy and got out of there as fast as we could. When we were in Tumbaden, we ran into 3 other girls from Cochán, and we all met up and decided to walk back together. We had a 3 hour hike ahead of us, and it was getting late and starting to rain. This time the hike was easier because we actually found the path, and we got back into Cochán just as it was getting dark.

Oooh - Ahhhh

Kim and I, entering the frigid water.

The group in front of the waterfall.

I present the ventanillas of Tumbaden

Lots of ventanillas.

There are some pretty cool and very random ventanillas.

On top of the ventanillas in a Tinaja. See those hills behind me? We had to go down the mountain, up the next one, back down, and up again.

We reached our final destination, Tumbaden, a district capital even smaller than Cochán in the neighboring province of San Pablo.

Music Videos

I recently purchased a small camcorder to capture some of my last few months on film. The girls in my site had fun with the camcorder, and one weekend we spent the whole day filming different "shoots" for their music video in and around Cochán. I was supposed to edit the video some more but I got lazy. So here is "Amiga" by La Factoria, starring Karla, Paola, Susan, and Cori.

Argentina

So this is a way overdue post. I mostly blame it on my internet being crappy and not letting me upload pics. A few weeks ago I went on a vacation with my friend Melissa to Argentina. Because I extended for a few more months, I had just enough vacation saved up for this little trip. This was definitely a splurge vacation, and one of the few vacations that I have taken that haven't involved seeing family. We only were in Argentina for 11 days but I think we were able to see alot of the country. First stop was El Calafate, which is way down south where we were able to see one of the few growing glaciers in the world. It was pretty cool to be able to walk on the ice. The one thing that I didn't really realize before this trip was how far south Argentina was. We went at the end of their winter, and since I've been in Peru for the past 2 years, I forgot what real cold felt like. It was very refreshing to feel that cold crisp air of winter. After going to the glaciers we hopped on a flight to Puerto Madryn where we were able to see what the coastal part of Patagonia has to offer. We went whale watching and luckily we weren't disappointed. I had never been whale watching before so I wasn't that excited before. However, we lucked out with sunny skies, and tons of whales really close to shore. We also went to go see the sea elephant colonies. Unfortunately there weren't too many yet because the season had just begun. They are very lazy and just lay there in the sand.

After spending a few days in Patagonia it was back to Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires is a very modern city and it reminded me much more of Europe than of South America. The people there are all very tall and pale, especially in comparison to Peru and Ecuador. We actually were able to spend a fair amount of time in Buenos Aires, most of it which was spent on a mission to taste as many different ice cream shops as possible. No one told me before, bt Buenos Aires has incredible ice cream. It is more like the Italian gelato because of all the Italian immigrants. Some people might think that Argentinian food is bland, but for me it was perfect. There was sooo much pasta and gnocchi, great steak, and amazing empanadas. It's a good thing I was only there for a short time!

We were also able to make it up to Iguazu falls which is in the northern part of the country. Unforunately we had cloudy weather for this part of the trip, but the falls were still pretty impressive. We visited both the Brazilian and the Argentinian sides of the falls. When we went to the Brazilian side, I was a little nervous because I was going to use my Ecuadorian passport for the first time. I was so nervous that I was an idiot and left my US passport in the hotel room. The border was only a few minutes drive away, but once we got to the border, we encountered someone on a power trip who detained me because I was illegally in Argentina according to my Ecuadorian passport. Melissa had to go back to the hotel to get my other passport, while I waited at the border. When we crossed into the Brazilian side, I was worried they were going to say something because it's kind of odd giving someone a brand new blank passport. I mean, how did I get to Brazil, if I had no stamps. But they stamped me in no problem, and I didn't have to get the visa to enter Brazil.

The Brazilian side of the falls is cool because you are able to see a panoramic view. It was a little weird because they spoke Portuguese. I'm awful at languages, and I get really confused when I go somewhere where I don't understand the language. On the way back there was a little confusion with out taxi driver who tried to overcharge us a ridiculous amount for when he went back to get my passport. He was half an hour late picking us up though, so I was firm and refused to give in. He decided to haunt us the rest of our stay at Iguazu though, up until we got in the shuttle to leave for the airport. When we went to the Argentina side of the falls, we could really sense just how powerful those falls were. The water level was high so the water was brown, so again, pictures really don't do it justice.

After getting back from Iguazu, we spent a few more days bumming around Buenos Aires. We did take a little day trip into Uruguay, to visit the quaint little town of Colonia. It was a nice little day trip, but let's be honest, we really just went there to say we've been to Uruguay.

So, there's my trip in a nutshell. Hopefully this won't be the last of my travels, but it will be the last until I finish my service in December.

Iguazu Falls

La Boca in Buenos Aires

Practicing my jumping skills in Patagonia

Walking on el Perito Moreno glacier

Lots of ice, yum!

Sea elephants are cute!

Male sea elephants, not so much!

Lucky shot of a whale jumping.