Vacation/ Thanksgiving

Happy Late Thanksgiving to anyone who is reading this, to those who don’t read my blog I don’t care how you Thanksgiving went! Just kidding. Peace Corps gives us three days free for traveling so a group of us decided to take advantage of the free vacation (especially since we don’t get any vacation for Christmas or New Years or weekends or really anytime off)

Unable to miss out on the chance to get some good Thanksgiving food, I woke up at 

4am on Wed so that I could get myself into town in time to take a bus to the beach where another group had organized a Thanksgiving dinner. It was okay food but really great company. I went with 2 volunteers from here, and once there, met up with a friend from Ancash, my bosses, volunteers from another group, and volunteers who work in Lima. It was a beautiful day on the beach socializing and stuffing our faces. 

From there it was a series of car rides back to the city to start the second part of our vacation.

A group of girls, my friend Chris and I headed to the “door to the jungle”, 

Chachapoyas for a few days of fun site seeing. I was in Chacha in August with people from my community so I had already seen some of the big sites (see pictures in Picasso), so the first day while the rest of the crew headed off to Kuelap, I hung out in the city and wondered around for a very long time. A very long time. It was a lot of fun actually. I went and visited some friends I met last time I was there, hiked up to the lookout point where you can see the whole city, 

had a great lunch, did some work on the internet L, and got really really lost. After organizing the next day’s adventure I headed back to the hotel and met up with everyone else. 

We ran into “the Australian” that the rest of the crew met during the day and headed off to an eventful dinner. From there most of the crew wanted to go to bed but the Australian (his name’s Al), Chris and I don’t give up so easily.

 We were off to a bar for local liquors and conversation. I’d like to point out that local liquors are basically 80% alcohol with a bit of fruit flavoring. Drinks like that inevitably lead to conversations about particle colliders, quantum physics, and laws of force, and of course, religion.

 It was good time. Once the local drinks got to be too much the boys ordered us two rounds of pink fruffy drinks at which point, the bar decided it was time to close. So we did what any good tourist (or Peruvian) would do, we headed to the Plaza to drink and continue the night. Unfortunately by this point there was no place to buy more drinks so we just sat in the park talking and laughing until I realized that I would pee my pants if we didn’t head back soon. So at about 3:30 am it was everyone off to their beds

The next morning we were up at about 6 to head out to the third highest waterfall, Gocta. It was a bit of work to assemble the troupes (the 4 other girls from PC and Chris) but we finally began the hour long drive about 6:45am. Our driver dropped us off in this teeny tiny town about a 2.5 hour walk from the waterfall. As we fell out of the car with all our bags (the plan was to camp) hordes of children came to stare at us. I always feel like an alien around children in the pueblos here.

They all look at us like we have 7 heads. So after some bumbling around, we discovered that our plan to hike in and see the top of the waterfall then hike out and take a car to the bottom was fuddled by a landslide we settled on leaving our packs in the town, hiking in and then deciding what to do. As we finished up breakfast, our Australian friend showed up with his Spanish speaking guide and tour group. We absorbed him into our more English friendly group and headed off on the 2.5 hour walk up hill to see the falls. It was incredible. The hike was incredible. Chachapoyas is famous for all the wild orchids growing all over. We were able to see a decent sampling of said orchids, along with tons of other beautiful plants and butterflies. A botanist’s heaven. The falls are beyond description. They are beautiful. Gocta defiantly ranks up there as one of the top 15 most beautiful places I’ve seen in my life (don’t ask me to list the others but I’m sure there are more). We hung out and played in the falls for a while and eventually started the much shorter and easier hike back down.

Peru is turning me into quite the fashion plate obviously

We got a bit wet hiking into toush the falls

There was a bit of shuffling to figure out how to get back to Chachapoyas. There aren’t really any cars at all in the tiny little pueblo and Al’s tour group had an emergency head injury and left him. After a bit of conversation the mayor of the region came up to get us and

 drive us down to the big (20,000 people tops) town where we could get a ride. Of course the mayor mercilessly hit on one of the girls, which made me giggle, but we were all grateful for the ride. Once in the pueblo, we scored tickets back and had some time to wander and sample some local food including beer flavored ice-cream. No lie. Beer flavored. Not even good beer, cheap Peruvian beer flavored, and then dipped in chocolate. All for 1.5 soles (or 50 cents). It was fabulous! The long ride back was filled with jamming to our Ipods, dancing to the music on the radio, getting new hairstyles and generally scaring the locals. Good fun.

Once in the pueblo it was time for showers and a good pizza dinner. Dinner was once again accompanied by local drinks and talks about religion and politics. Eventually I was left with the boys to finish off our jar of local berry flavored rubbing alcohol and we headed off to the bars to meet up with another group. As with any good night out, one of the girls filled the first half of the evening with scouting talent in the locals and were thoroughly disappointed. From there on out there was a bit of dancing met with more boredom and the decision to move our now augmented (we met up with 2 tourist from the states, another volunteer, 2 friends from Chiclayo, and some other tag alongs) to a new bar. This bar was equally unexciting, so in true fashion we made our own fun. The group began to file out little by little. I was also done with the too loud music and 14 year old boys and (thought I) tried to gather the troupes to go on a mini-hike to the lookout with an already purchased bottle of wine. In the end it was just 

Al the Australian and I off for another adventure (and without the bottle of wine). It must have been 3 or 4 or so when we left and then there was waiting for the sunrise and I finally got back to the hotel about 6:30am. Another good night.

Our next adventure was to start at 8:30 so I was up by 8ish or so to get ready and run to the other hotel to wake up our Australian friend, who, very wisely, decided to bond with his bed rather than go out hiking with us again. Smart guy. We (after losing the Ausie, and another volunteer, we were down to 3 PC girls, Chris, and I) were off 

again to Pueblo de Los Muertos (City of the Dead). Now I still don’t know exactly know what it was that we saw. I’m not sure if this was a functioning city or a tomb. Either way it was pretty cool.

I made the dumb decision to hike in a bit farther than the path. 

It was a cool walk and a fun adventure until I came to the point where I could go no further and did the inevitably stupid thing of looking around to see where I came from. It was at that point that I realized how narrow the path was and the abyss into which I would fall if I had even a slight misstep. That realization made the walk back to where I left the group a whole lot more difficult- especially when I thought they had all left and there would be no one to tell of my death.

 (I’m the little white spec)

Luckily Chris was there waiting when I finally hit somewhat sturdy ground and hiked back with me. It was one of the longest 45min walks I have ever been on. My heart was beating like crazy from the few times I slipped and realized how likely it was that I could die right there, the altitude, my 3 hours of sleep in two days, and the walk up the mountain. It was rough. But we made it. I was defiantly glad Chris had stayed to watch me die and walked back with me. There was a point when I thought about setting up camp right there in Dead People Town. Couldn’t be too bad could it?

And that was about the end of our adventures. Once we got back to town we met up with other volunteers and our Aussie friend and headed to a typical lunch. Afterwards we said good bye to our Aussie friend and those volunteer lucky enough to stay another day and headed to the bus. I don’t think I have ever slept so well on a bus before. I was out. We got back to town about 6am, set up transportation for those that had to travel, ate breakfast and all headed in our own directions. Once I arrived at my house I went straight to my bed where I stayed until 3pm. I woke up and played an absurd amount of solitaire on my computer and went back to bed again with the goal of returning to life as usual. I guess my next adventure is finding something to fill my days until my next outing. But it was one hell of a vacation. 

so there were supposed to be more pics but they didn't load. More soon!