Monday, July 28, 2008

Markahuasi

Hello all,

This keyboard is pretty awful, so I´ll keep it pretty short. This weekend I got three days off instead of the usual one because July 28th is Peru´s Independence Day. I didn´t really get to see much of the celebration that accompanies it, although nearly everybody flies the flag and/or wears a special ribbon in the flag´s colors. Also, coming back today we saw tons of people at the prevalent local clubs, which are kind of like a hybrid summer camp and country club. They were cooking out, swimming, and playing outdoor games which reminds me of how most of us spend July 4th. Also, many go camping, which is what I did.
Where I went was the sacred mountain of Markahuasi. It is 12,000 feet tall, which was a pretty crazy ascent, especially with the thinner air. It took us (my host brother Juan Carlos, my pretty much host cousin and fellow volunteer Patti, and I) 4 hours to do it, although to be fair Patti probably could have done it a lot quicker. Juan Carlos and I have pretty similar physiques and are almost the same height, which provokes a lot of family resemblance jokes, although he is quite a bit older- 35. After we arrived we rested for a few minutes and then climbed some rock formations to view the sunset, which was pretty awesome. We bedded down about 9 to get an early start.
Markahausi is a table-top mountain with rock formations all around and some chulpas, or pre-Incan burial chambers. There is also a pretty spectacular lagoon and rocks shaped like all kinds of things. We saw all of this this morning, bright and early. Juan Carlos and I slept out in the open, which was freezing but worth it because of the stars. I woke up a half hour before everyone else, at 4 a.m. and just stared at the stars until they started moving. This hemisphere has a whole different set of stars than up north, and it was beautiful. After that we broke camp and saw the sights before descending, a lot quicker. I´ll have some pics up soon enough, as well as those from my trip up north to Cahamarca. Well, I had better run because I´m being called...

Thursday, July 24, 2008

More Updates

Hello all,

Just wanted to touch on my birthday yesterday. It went off in the typical Peruvian fashion, BYOB with a lot of music and everybody getting fed around 9pm. We were out pretty late, which is why I´m heading to bed pretty quick here, but I definitely had a lot of fun and couldn´t ask for a better group of aspirantes (fellow trainees) to have celebrated it with.
This part is for my Dad, and other baseball fans. Sorry we got cut off on the phone, it isn´t 100% reliable here, but usually pretty good (ditto for whoever else called me last night and got cut off before I got there- technical problems...). So Joe Blanton got moved to the Phillies for righthander Josh Outman, 2B Adrian Cardenas, and OF Matt Spencer. Cardenas is the real name here, and should get to battle with Patterson next year for that 2B job. Some folks have called him Utley lite, but I think that´s pushing it a little. I see somebody more like Robinson Cano without as much of the average. Still, not too shabby. Arizona got Tony Clark back for a fairly nondescript pitcher and Jon Rauch for 2B speedster Emilio Bonifacio- think Luis Castillo- who´s apparently a pretty sure thing. Lastly, the Astros got Randy Wolf for P Chad Reineke, who´s a so-so kind of prospect. Not sure why they did that, as their chances of even getting a wild card are pretty slim. When you´re battling the Cardinals and two teams who just added the likes of Rich Harden and C.C. Sabathia, you really need to do better than a barely average free agent to be...

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Update

First off, thanks Grandma Mary for the letter. That´s two days in a row with mail, which is pretty cool. I need to figure out the post office system before too long so I can write back.
Secondly, I just got back from the doctor and apparently nothing is too seriously wrong. My leg actually hurts more today due to the fact that I got woken up early this morning by a charley horse (the same leg of course). However, the doctor told me that the swelling should be gone in a week and I can play soccer in two. Better yet, there is no ligament damage at all, so there should be no future repercussions. After the fall I took I was sure that I had torn something completely in two, but apparently I´ll survive to fight another day...

Monday, July 21, 2008

Trujillo

Well, I have some good and bad news. First off, thanks Grandma for the card, I did get it- my first piece of mail! I was pretty excited. My birthday is coming up and my host family (and a goodly portion of the community) is abuzz about what to do for it. I´ll probably have my trainee friends and some folks from the community come over, do a bit of dancing and imbibing, and eat some cake and good home-cooked food. At least, that´s how it´s gone with other trainees that have had birthdays so far. I´m not used to a lot of fuss over birthdays, so this is all kind of amusing, but it´s also kind of nice to be the center of attention once in awhile. I guess I had better get used to it because apparently at site I will always be under the microscope.
As for the bad news, I tore up my knee pretty bad at the beach on Saturday. "Tore up" might be a little intense, but it´s definitely swollen to twice its size and is difficult to get around on. I´m going to a specialist in Lima tomorrow and may get an MRI to make absolute sure what´s up. I´m rooting against anything being torn as that could potentially keep me out of the game for awhile, and the last thing I want at this point is to be medevac´d to Panama or the U.S. I´ll try and post something small tomorrow when I find out what the deal is exactly. I also got my camera messed up at the beach because I made the mistake of trusting females to make sure my stuff didn´t get lapped by the waves while I was in the water. Every single item of their´s made it out o.k., but somehow every single item of mine, while right next to theirs, on the same towel, got left behind (yes I´m a little bitter, but I don´t hate all womankind because of this- o.k., maybe a bit). The moral of the story is I´ll get over it soon enough, and I may be able to get a camera shop to clean out the sand that is impeding the lense from opening. So all may be well fairly quickly, although it may take a little more time for the knee.
As for Trujillo, the city after which I titled my post, it was awesome. It is a bit touristy because of the beautiful beach of Huanchaco and the extensive pre-Incan ruins of Chan Chan that are near, but it is nice nonetheless. I got to see the ruins and do the beach on successive days, as well as got to a place that brewed its own beer, making it automatically the best in Peru I´ve yet partaken of (in careful moderation, of course). Outside of the last hour at the beach, I enjoyed it a lot, and pictures of the entire trip are forthcoming. Well, the family´s calling me to eat, so I had better run. Adios,

Zach

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Cahamarca

Hello all,

I have been in Cahamarca for the last several days. Cahamarca is a northern department (equivalent of a state) with beautiful green mountains and lots of dairy products. The city that I am currently in is named Contumaza, and is beautiful. There will be a business volunteer spot opening up here, and I would not mind at all ending up in this town for my two years. I have been expressing a strong interest in agriculture though, which is pretty atypical of my fellow volunteers. I may end up down south then, but either way I feel that I have a pretty good chance of being in the mountains instead of the coast, which would make me very happy.
Anyway, we have been teaching a business workshop to community college students here and today I have free time because the students are out in the town selling a wide variety of mostly food products. This is because the workshop was built around them starting a small business at the end of the week, obtaining a small loan, paying it back the next day and reaping the profits. So far every group (my class has four, and the other two have a combined 8 I believe) seems to be doing very well. They do not need to pay their loan back until 3pm, but already many of the groups have sold out of their stock or met their breakeven points (the point after which whatever you get is pure profit).
As for the town, it has 9,000 inhabitants but feels like barely a thousand, a beautiful plaza with a huge conifer in the middle of it, a mirador (lookout point) complete with a live captured puma, and beautiful winding streets overlooked by balconies and older folks in ponchos and oversized local hats waving as you pass. The day before coming here I was in the capital of Cahamarca City for a little more than an hour which was beautiful. I ate lunch at a local restaurant and had fried cuy (guinea pig). The way they usually do it is skin it and throw it in the fryer, head, feet, and all. That was a bit unappetizing right off the bat, and you had to basically tear what little meat there was off the bone. It had a vaguely seafood taste, and I was not terribly excited about it all told. If I do end up in as rural a community as I am hoping for, I will probably be eating a lot of it though, so I had better get used to it. I will survive I am sure. On the brighter side, the ice cream I had afterwards was some of the freshest and tastiest I have ever had.
Well, I had better sign off. Tomorrow I am going to Trujillo, one of the most beautiful and historic cities in Peru. Given time and some sun I will probably see some of the most extensive pre-Incan ruins in the country and hit up the beach. I will let you all know how that went later…

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Photos!

I don´t have a lot of time to write because I´m busy preparing for a field visit to the mountains of Cahamarca (18 hours north) next week. The good news is I now have my photos up! Follow the link below, click on the image (entitled Peru 1) and enjoy...

http://picasaweb.google.es/zijerem

Friday, July 4, 2008

Transportation

Hello,

I thought I´d talk this time about our transportation situation here in Peru. I´ve probably covered some of this in previous posts, but I don´t think adequately. Peace Corps aren´t allowed to drive for liability reasons, and I wouldn´t want to here anyway because the roads are simply insane. All kinds of vehicles share them and lane stripes are only a suggestion as lanes will fluctuate between the posted 2 and as much 6 depending on how many cars want to sneak into one gap.
Public transportation used to be full-sized city busses like in the U.S., but during a harsh depression they were changed to the present system to bring more jobs. Now the combis (actually called custers, but everyone calls them combis) rule, which are basically extra-large vans decked out with bars to hold onto... basically a subway car on wheels. And they get every bit as packed as subway cars, with people literally hanging out the doors at times. So, every morning I get to pretty much meet intimately total strangers as we´re pressed together by the crush or people trying to get out. It definitely can be frustrating and awkward, particularly because the cobrador, or door-opener/money-collector, often tries to cheat you. I´m getting used to it, though, and for small trips it isn´t at all bad. Longer trips, like an hour or more, really get to be a descent into Hades, though.
For those longer trips it is advisable to take a proper combi, which is a small van which they also pack people into, but you are more or less guaranteed a seat (or a bench). This costs more, about 5 soles, which works out to less than 2 bucks. When you consider we only get 8 soles a day on top of food/housing, this adds up though.
You can also take taxis, but there is no meter so you need to know about how much it should cost and bargain it down to that amount. Otherwise, particularly if you´re a gringo, they´ll happily fleece you. So far these are the only forms of transportation I´ve taken outside of center-owned vehicles, but I´ll let you all know of others as I encounter them...