Carhuamayo . Donde?

I have spent the second part of my Peru adventure with my girlfriend friend from college Hanna Dalton. She boasts being the highest Peace Corps volunteer in the world, 14,000ft! The bus ride out to see Hanna was one for the records. I woke up a bit hung over from my days at the Pariwana collectively. Luckily the woman at the front desk was nice and called me a taxi, my taxi driver was nice and made sure that we where at the correct station, unfortunately the bus driver of who’s bus I accidentally stored my pack was not as nice. He made me wait while he got his shoes polished before opening the undercarriage so I could retrieve my life and place it on the correct bus. I was the first on the bus and the first one asleep on the bus. When I woke up we where in the strangest city. It was hotter than a Sacramento summer mid August and looked like the Palm Springs desert. However, instead of beautiful colored mountains, the mountains surrounding the city looked like giant rock and sand pilings with houses neighboring recent land slide areas. Strange place. I finally got a seat mate but was still to out of it to make conversation. I tried to fall back asleep a few times but alas it’s hard to sleep when you think your having a heat stroke, the worst part of this situation is that there is no place to go. I had packed a bag of fruit including two pealed prickly pear fruit, mango slices, a papaya ( not my best idea with that one) and plantains. I offered my prickly pear fruit to the woman sitting next to me because she looked as miserable as I felt. We sat in silence for half an hour quenching our thirst on the sweet fruit. Once we finished the cactus fruit we started in on the mango slices and mustered a bit of conversation.
Mary is a 27 year old from Cero de Paso, a neighboring town to Carhuamayo even higher up the mountain at 22,000 ft. She has been morning the death of her mother for the past six months and is returning from a visit to see her sister. She told me that her mother was her travel buddy and they cruised all over Peru in a bus snacking and talking as we where. We talked story about our countries and focused on the animals in each. Once it finally cooled off we both passed out to rest. Before i took my leave for Carhuamayo, Mary instructed me to put on my warm layers and gave me her gloves; a beautiful pair of alpaca knit fingerless gloves with the ever so handy mitten flap, so functional. I traded her my favorite handmade head band and told her how special it was because my best friend Margaret had made it special for me. It’s composed of my favorite colors. I need to call her and catch up, the kindness she showed me I will never forget.
Hanna was waiting for me at the bus stop with her adorable pooch Taber. I was quite the spectacle in Carhuamayo, light skinned, light haired, light eyed people are not in abundance in this remote mountain town. There was quite literally a small crowd around me when I got off the bus.
Rural high Sierra Peru is what fairy tales are made of. Beautifull green rolling hills lead to crop covered slopes and then onto snow and glacier covered mountain tops. Nothing grows but grass and wet land vegetation. The houses are made of a combination of local supplies, cinder blocks, bricks, reddish earth/clay, and peet. Peet is a dark organic matter composed of sheep shit, dirt and grass, some houses are solely made of this material and it doubles as fuel for cooking.
Hanna’s host family lives in the only two story house on their slope. Her host Dad built the whole thing himself and just finished the rather large kitchen. The kitchen is the gathering spot for meals as well as tea time! Hanna’s host momma is a sassy and libations character that enjoys bossing people around, especially the people working her friends market stand, Ha. In the two nights that I stayed with the host family I whiteness the family devour bowls of chicken foot stew as well as the maximum amount of carbs any person could consume. I am intrigued by the chicken foot stew but as a precaution to my health I merely admired the dish. As for the carbs, the family diet consists mainly on carbs as they are inexpensive and there are 7-11 mouths to feed on any given night.
During my first full day in Carhuamayo I got to experience my first full fledged Peruvian market, the Friday Ferria. Practically evey street in Carhuamayo was lined with vendors, some familiars but mostly exotics. There where medicinal tents selling cooked frog stew for a number of other ailments. As well there where other jungle herbalogists demonstrating rituals and sporting showy outfits. There where roasted llama heads for sale and still bloody sheep skins. There where collections of jungle fruit that I knew and then piles of new shaped and colored fruit. Tents where filled with colorful skirts, socks, hats, pants, and scarfs. Meat vendors could be care free because the climate does’t support bugs and keeps the meat chilled all at the same time. When someone orders, the person behind the table takes a saw to the carcass in front of them. “A quarter llama please…” Chickens and ginnie pigs where sold live and halved and I gaped, open mouthed at every squash we passed, they where about 50lbs and way bigger than a bread box! My favorite stands where the ones that where fresh, fragrant and colorful, the yarn stands and the herbs stands.
Hanna and I cruised the streets picking up supplies for our picnic and groceries for the family. As well, we sampled food from Hanna’s favorite stands. We tried umitas or sweet tamales, chiclos or boiled Ande’s corn, and a type of passion fruit I can trembler the name of.
Before heading back to the house to prep our food we made a quick stop at Hanna’s first grade class! What fun! The kids where enthrall end to see Hanna outside of her normal visits as well as the foreigner. I got hammered hard with questions from the kids. ” why are your eyes green?” ” Why does your skin look like milk?” It was fun to see their smiling faces even though most of their teeth whee rotting out due to their diet high in sugar and lack of dental care.
Our trip that afternoon to Bosque de Piedras was incredible. The park reminded us of a green Joshua tree. Rock spires covered in colorful moss and lichen alike spiraled and piled high in the most peculiar formations. The altitude made it difficult to walk anywhere quickly so we ended out stopping of lunch 20 minutes into our walk. We sat on a flat rock over looking the entire park as well as a “passing” thunderstorm. When we got to walking against started to hail! Then hail turned to rain and we where getting soaked. It wouldn’t have been to bad if we both hadn’t gotten swallowed knee deep by the sponge like ground. The ground is something worth mentioning as well. The ground was composed of a combination of a star shaped plant and a prickly moss and surrendered under foot with every step, just like a sponge.
The mode of transportation around these parts is by bus or by coche, registered cars that cram as many people as can fit into a Sudan for an economic price. The drivers of these coches are wild! We took three different coches to get to La Merced, the edge of the jungle, a safe jungle town. During the final leg of our trip we got stuck with a driver who was either reckless or extremely talented. It brought into question the amount of trust that I put into my coffers in this country, once in the car I am at the mercy of their driving. This last driver was taking blind corners in the opposite lane of traffic! Poor Taber got car sick for the first time…in my hand. Vomiting is a strange theme throughout my Carhuamayo trio to be touched on later.
La Merced was a funky town. We stayed at the Hotel Fanny, they didn’t have not water or a pool as they had claimed online, or at least the pool was a moto ride away. Hanna and I spent our time in La Merced sampling different foods, heladerias (ice cream shops) and cremalados(fruit mush frozen slushy deliciousness). Que Rico! The first night we had Chefa, a combo cuisine of Chinese and Peruvian food. The second night we ordered a menu de la dia, “Eat like a rich tourist, pay like a backpacker.” Menu’s are perus best kept secret, maybe not so secrete, but you have to ask for the menu it will not be handed out. Our one excursion away from the plaza was to a waterfall. We had to cross a very sketchy draw bridge to get to the trail head. The wooden planks that composed the bridge where patched together and where spaced four inches apart. It felt great to get under the fall! Our trip back to Carhuamayo went much more smoothly than the way in. Our driver on the way back was a boss when it came to communication, he didn’t just honk the horn he laid on it! There was a point in the trip that we had to pass through construction and at the end of the site was a wooden blockade keeping traffic flow regulated. Our driver didn’t even touch the brakes when approaching this blockade he simply punched his horn for a solid minute and watched as the workers scrambled to move the wooden horse. The second part to my puke theme was also in this car. I sat next to a man that had just had his appendix taken out and spent the two hour trip spitting up into a plastic bag…
Before taking off for Lima once more to catch my bus to Cusco I stocked up on groceries in the local market because food in Cusco was for sure to be more expensive!
My bus for Lima left at 11pm and I was lucky enough to be accompanied by the Host Papa, he had work to attend to in Lima. I got to sleep most of the way on the bus but was awoken every hour or so to the woman next to me puking into a plastic bag! Ug, because of the altitude and the windy roads I have never been surrounded by so much pucking in my life. Papa woke me up when we etched outer stop two hours before I had expected to arrive. He instructed me to head upstairs to the waiting lounge and hang, I didn’t know why, but I trusted him so I did. I eventually figured out his plan was to continue to sleep I the waiting area until it was light out. When I was ready to go he helped me grab an honest cab and I was off to hang at some plazas in central Lima. I thought that I had a half day to kill before my bus to Cusco that left at two. So I read my barrowed Lonely Planet book, napped in the shade, explored the art exhibition park, and ended up hanging out with a man from Japan for two hours. This man took me by surprise asking me where I was from in the states and if I spoke Spanish. I was very leery at first but his charisma and humor soon took over my distrust. I wanted an iced coffee and he was looking for Japanese food, we settled for juice. We talked, in Spanish, about life in Japan and how he has three cars because he wants three cars. As well we talked about the ever troubling issue of the forward ness of the men in Peru. He says that women in Japan wear very short skirts and skimpy clothing but the men still have respect for these ladies, where here a woman gets pawed at endlessly for wearing jean shorts! We agreed to visit one another one day, heheh, he is about 59 years old and has a daughter who’s 30 and works for American Airlines and speaks five languages!
Turns out in my frustration with the internet I purchased my bus ticket for tomorrow not today and only found out after getting a security officer to help me cut the line because my taxi driver was an idiot and took twice as long to get me to the station and I thought I wasn’t going to make my buss, who’s the fool now? I hauled my bags back to the street and vented to a bag coffer, he was eating a chiuppie and I had to have one, he graciously bought one for me, laughing I said I would see him tomorrow.
So here I am back at the Pariwana for an evening. It’s interesting to see the few individuals that are still here. Two other encounters to mention. While I was watching a group of youngsters slack line in the park I was confronted by another Japanese Peruvian man who was going to school to be an actor. Yukur was very refined and respectable. Today has been my top day for strangers approaching me for conversation. The last a bit strange, I watched a kitten get hit by a car and was helpless to do anything about getting it out of the street, luckily a woman ran out to save it. I have never seen anything like the sort or felt so helpless, aye aye aye.
Great news! Tomorrow I’m off to Cusco and I found a place that sells iced coffee in Miraflores thanks goodness! 21 hour bus ride here I come, next stop Matchu Picchu!!!