Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Here, There, and Everywhere 2


We had an official song for the second part of our trip.  It´s called "Day Bus" sung to the tune of "Day Man" from It´s Always Sunny.
Day bus!  aaaAAAaaa!
Followed by a night bus!  aaaAAAaaa!

Mancora was blessedly less eventful.  We had a 6 hour bus ride through the desert to the beach town and arrived at our beautiful Posh Corps beach house.  We went down to a ceviche restaurant by the beach and Matteo and I jumped in the ocean while we were waiting for our food.  It turns out that our waiter was high as the stars and it ended up being an almost 2 hour wait.  He would come to our table, then run/scurry over to the kitchen, only to stand listlessly as soon as the door shut, unaware that we were watching him through the window.  It was funny until we got really hungry.  

We spent the next day on the beach playing in the waves and buying incredible mozzarella, tomato, basil empanadas from a lady with a basket who walked by at perfect intervals.  It had felt like forever since I’d seen the sun and the ocean.  Something about the beach turns me back into an 8 year old.  I can spend hours just swimming around and jumping in the waves.  All day if I have a boogie board.

Sadly, despite repeated sunscreen reapplications, I paid for my full day of nearly equatorial sunshine with a crazy sunburn.  I spent the next day reading or watching It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia in the hammock and rubbing overpriced aloe over my sun-dried tomato skin.  The peeling didn’t start until a few days later.  It was unsightly, but good bus entertainment.  It’s been several weeks and it still looks like I’m wearing a white bathing suit when I’m naked.  

Anyway, the next day we were up early and on a bus to go back to Chiclayo to catch a night bus to Chachapoyas.  The Mancora-Chiclayo bus took several hours longer than it should have.  It was cramped and hot as hell and thankfully, even the Peruvians wanted to open the windows.  We were accompanied by a vocal rooster and vendors selling ceviche and jello.  We had a few hours to kill when we finally got to Chiclayo and all went out for Chinese food.  Then I went walking with Baber and Ivan.  We got ice cream, then found a street where there were a dozen people selling puppies who were willing to let me pick almost all of them up.  Awesome.  

The hour finally rolled around and we piled on our night bus to Chachapoyas in Amazonas.  We were stopped several times during the night for landslides and unexpected rivers in the road.  At around 5 in the morning I was woken up from Dramamine-tinted sleep to hear Baber, my seat mate, yelling for me from outside the bus and telling me to bring water.  I grabbed my 2L bottle and stumbled out half-awake with my hair all askew.  Babes was sitting by the side of the road with a good deal of blood dripping from his hand.  It turns out that, good guy that he is, he woke up and went out to help move rocks from a recent landslide that was blocking our bus.  Someone rolled a rock on top of one of his fingers, which was covered in blood and had a good deal of skin and nail separated from their proper places.  He was brave when I poured water on it to clean it out and half the skin on his finger went flapping around.  It turns out that in the dingy hospital in Chacha, they pulled the nail off with pliers and cut the liberated skin off.  He’s ok, though.  And he took a lot of pleasure in wagging the finger in our faces for the rest of the trip, especially during dinner. 

We eventually arrived in Chachapoyas and to my favorite leg of the trip.  Amazonas is a beautiful department.  It’s like Jurassic Park and Narnia combined with worse transportation.  We went hiking to pre-Incan ruins, cliffs, and waterfalls, many times in pouring rain and came back to the city and had wonderful dinners.  The only downside was the several hour combi rides on twisty, bumpy roads to get anyplace, but it was through incredible landscapes and my belly behaved most of the time.  I don’t think it would to be too interesting to describe all the places we went, so check out Facebook for lots of pictures.  I couldn’t convey how beautiful it was with words, and the pictures only do a little better.  

You know the beginning of the first Indiana Jones movie where he’s in the temple, touches the idol, and is chased by a giant boulder?  That’s a Chachapoyan ruin.  Pretty cool!  

We were in Chacha for 4 days and then it was time for yet another long bus ride back to Lima.  While carrying my big backpack on my back, my smaller one on my front, another bag and hurrying to the bus station, I managed to hit a curb wrong and sprained my ankle.  I went down like a ton of bricks and came up with a mouth full of swears.  Poor Grant had to run carrying my backpacking bag while I hobbled to a cab with bloody ripped pants.  We all made it with plenty of time to hurry up and wait since the bus was a half hour late.  The curves coming down from the Amazonan mountains made reading impossible for most of us.  The bus entertainment was dubbed Sandra Bullock movies and Peruvian music videos on tiny screens.  Grant was sitting next to me and we had some nice chats and a discussion of religion before he mercifully passed out from the Dramamine I gave him.  I spent the majority of the time listening to music or podcasts and looking out the window.  If nothing else, the Peace Corps makes you more tranquil and able to deal with waiting or doing nothing for long periods of time.  I didn’t get antsy until the end.  We had an uneventful night and a breakdown in the desert 150k from Lima in the morning.  The whole ride ended up being 26 hours instead of 22, but we made it and nobody lost their minds.  

We had a nice time in Lima with wandering around (limping for me) and cappuccinos.  Nicole and I took a bus up to Junin the next day.  We were ready and it felt like coming home.  It seemed right that there would be snow and wind lashing the sides of the bus as it climbed.  

I’m getting back into the rhythm of things.  All the schoolkids ask me where I’ve been.  I’m motivated to work and get new projects going.  We’re going to start a recycling contest in one of the colegios and I’m hoping the money raised from that will get the municipality to sit up and take notice.  It turns out that a paper for my master’s that I thought was due at the end of May is due at the end of April, so that has been taking up a lot of my time.  It’s refreshing to use that part of my mind again.  Research, analysis, and above middle school level English.  Though it took me a full 5 minutes the other day to come up with the word “juxtaposed.”  That’s a long time to sit and scour your brain for something you know is there, but can’t put your hands on.  

I hope to get some good work done before our next training, which is already coming up at the end of May.  We’ll see!

No comments:

Post a Comment