Showering in Site

Well guys, I finally did it.  After climbing up my mountain (see the last blog post) a shower was deemed necessary by all parties (aka me).

I come home ready to strip immediately and simply throw myself into the shower only to find the bathroom….occupied.  By someone in the shower.  After nearly a month of wondering if the shower was even used, the one time I am in a desperate need to shower, it’s taken.  What?!

I pace in my room a bit, wishing desperately to be free of my own sweat.  I’ll skip over the (seemingly) endless waiting and get to the important part—glacially cold water bursting from the showerhead.  Easily the shortest shower of my life.  I resolved to wimp up and go for a heated bucket shower the next time round.

THE NEXT TIME ROUND

Heated bucket showers are the best thing in the world.  For a few brief minutes you entire body is warm, free of the rain, wind, and cold that tends to plague the elements as soon as I decide to shower. 

Moral of the story:  I will probably not go 12 days without showering again.

Besos!

I Climbed My Mountain (a la Sound of Music—except not really because I literally did and the Mother Superior was being metaphorical)

From the main highway up to my little ole town of Huantar there is a 200 meter gain in altitude.  In some ways, like at sea level, this is nothing, but in other ways, ways like lung capacity, this little ole altitude gain is a force needed to be reckoned with—and after about a month in site I decided that by golly, I was going to reckon.

Walking down the hill is about 40 minutes of relative ease.  Yes, your knees occasionally ask if so much continuous down is truly necessary, but down in the key word there.  Gravity is working in your favor, and every step downward brings the slightest increase in oxygen saturation.  As it turns out, walking up does the exact opposite.  Your knees are fine, but your thighs are cursing you to kingdom come and your lungs are so busy sucking up the available oxygen to deliver to your cursing thighs that they can’t be bothered to respond.

As a coping mechanism, I divided and named the various segments of my walk as a way to measure my distance.

Part 1: The road

            The road is easy.  It’s incline is reduced so that thirty-year-old cars with treadles tires can drive up without stalling.  You walk along thinking, this ain’t so bad.  You’re right.  It’s not…yet.

Part 2: The swamp

            You leave the road briefly to cut the distance off of a switchback.  You delicately hop, skip, and leap across the less-swampy bits to reach the lightly marked goat trail.  You start to go up and it hits you, you’re climbing up.  But this portion is relatively short and before you know it you’re back on the road—but just to cross it so that you can come to

Part 3: Mordor

            Black stones and rocks mark this barren landscape.  There are few clumps of grass to reduce the chance of your boot slipping and yet you know there is nowhere to go but up.  The ring must be destroyed after all.

Part 4: The part you always forget

            Mordor thankfully is short (don’t Frodo and Sam wish they could have said that [last LOTR reference I promise, maybe]) and soon you’re back to the road only to remember that damn, you forgot about this part. It has the subsections of “False sense of security flat part” and “I think the road is just around this corner, oh wait no its not.”  Once you get through this bit you reach the road for the last time until Huantar proper.  You pause here.  Casually you glance downward, not looking to see if a car is coming up, of course not, you don’t actually want a ride, this is good exercise, this is character-building, this is FUN, but just to stretch your back.  In the back of your mind though you know.  This is your last chance.  You take one more step and there’s only one way up to Huantar—on your own two feet.

Part 5: The long part

            This part is long (shocking).  The first bit is steep and you pass such memorable points as “that place I saw a dead, bloated donkey,” “that place I got stabbed in the armpit with a thistle,” and “that part where I regret my decision to walk up.”  Before long though you reach The Straight and Narrow.  It is a long portion that is straight and narrow (I know that my naming abilities are simply astounding you all).  It’s kind of awful though because there are no curves in the path so that you can wistfully imagine it will be easier just around the corner.

            After the straight and narrow, you come to The Slides.  Steep and rocky, you will inevitably slide down them a little bit.  And in one of the great mysteries of the world, there is always one more segment than you remember.

            Finally you come the top of the portion of The Slides, and it blissfully, mercifully “flat” (in comparison).  Even better, the wall of the cemetery is within site.  Home is so close you can almost taste it.

            You pass the field that reminds you of a painting of Russian peasants working a field, you walk briefly under the shade of tall eucalyptus trees, you pick up a stone to deter a barking dog, you push yourself, huffing and puffing, up the final steps up the last hill, you ignore the women pointing at you and your red, sweating, stinking body, and at long last are walking the paved streets of Huantar. 

I was too busy trying to breathe properly to take pictures of this particular hike, but enjoy some shots from other, less arduous climbs

Besos!

On Christmas Day I hiked out to a tree that dominates the skyline and taunted me for weeks.  Finally I walked out to it and here she is!

Going where no gringa has gone before

Looking out over Huantar

Some of the desert foliage of my region

More desert foliage

Looking out over Huantar

My new tree hiking goal

O. M. G.

I finally got to Season 3 of Scandal.  It’s mind-crack.  I mean this shit is RIDICULOUS.  And yet, I want so much more.  There’s no way it’s going to be able to sustain this level of entertainment.  I’m going to need to start watching in larger and larger binge-marathons, until finally, even 24 solid hours of Scandal won’t be enough.  I’ll need something more.  I’ll need Real Housewives of Somewhere.

Be concerned.  Be warned. This could happen to anyone.  

How to make Pachamanca en Tierra (Christmas Eve at the Health Post)

There is no dish more Peruvian, especially Sierra Perú, than pachamanca en tierra.  Normally eaten in May for Mother’s Day, the health post staff decided to make it for the Christmas Eve celebration.  Here is how it is made:

1)      Build an igloo-like house of stones (my sincerest apologies for not having photos of this part.  I suppose we’ll all just have to wait for May) and burn firewood inside for approximately 5-7 hours, or until the stones are red hot.

2)      Slowly take apart the stone house using anything but your hands.  Eventually it will capsize upon itself, at which point you work to create an approximately one layer thick bottom base of red hot stones.

3)      Pour papas (potatoes) and camotes (sweet potatoes) onto the first layer. Cover the potatoes and camotes with more stones and rocks and proceed to place the paper-wrapped meat (chicken, pig, cuy, or rabbit) atop this layer.

 4)      Layer by layer, stone by stone, put on the humitas (sweet tamales), the habas (lima beans), and the choclo (corn).  Cover the towering mound with tarps, then pasto (grass), and finally dirt.  Cover it thoroughly so that no smoke can be seen escaping.

5)      Wait an hour to an hour and a half.  Run around merrily if under the age of six. 

Slowly begin to deconstruct the mountain of rock-cooked food, eating as you excavate each layer.  I highly recommend the camotes and humitas.  The pig’s not bad either.

There’s a couple other key steps involving seasoning the meat that I was not a witness to and hence cannot explain.  It’s fairly essential though, so if you do plan to use the above instructions to make your own pachamanca, I recommend not doing that and instead looking up an actual recipe.

Besos!

It's Christmas Night in Huantar

Boy, have I done you guys a disservice.  Christmas Eve, by family took me to the plaza for the Christmas celebrations.  I was under the impression that it was just going to be a bunch of townspeople hanging out in the plaza de armas (town sqaure)—hardly a photo-rific opportunity.  So I left my camera back in my room (though I took my waterbottle with me.  It’s my signature accessory after all) and we set off for the plaza.  Lord almighty do I wish I had brought my camera. 

Turns out Christmas Eve in Huantar is all about church.  Peruvian Catholic midnight mass is not that different from Chicagoan Episcopalian midnight mass.  The Gospel is read, songs are sung (including one in Quechua!), and communion is taken.  Par for the course.

But then the Christmas Pageant began.  Two of the high schoolers, a boy and a girl, were dressed up as angels and they walked up the aisle singing a carol.  Thirty some little kids filled the aisle behind them.  There were also two guys with furry face masks, apparently representing the viejos (why old men have forehead beards was not explained to me), as well as a real live baby lamb. For this portion imagine your average pageant—proud parents, indecipherable speeches, forgotten exits and entrances.  Until that is, the negritos made their entrance.

The negritos are the teenage boys in blackface.  That’s right, you heard me.  Perhaps you’ve noticed from this blog that political correctness is not an all-consuming concern with Peruvians.  Never has that been so evident as this night.  Pair by pair, the ten negritos made their way up the aisle, doing a little shoulder shimmy-wobble.  Their whole heads were covered in a balck mask, and they were wearing traditional sotumes.  Once they reached the priest seated at the front of the church, they briefly adored the baby Jesus doll nad then began to violently jog backwards, shaking and shimmying and occasionally throwing themselves into the pew to try to kiss one of the abuelitas.  One abuelita straight up slapped one of the boys. After twenty minutes of this, four girls, dressed in white dresses and draped in white veils, slowly hip shimmied their way up the aisle.  Their return up the aisle was far calmer and restrained.  After this the whole church filed outside to watch a negrito-virgin dance that culminated in AN EPIC SWORD BATTLE BETWEEN THE GUY-ANGEL AND A GUY DRESSED UP AS THE DEVIL.  That’s right, the devil and an angel dueled on Christmas Eve. 

I so desperately wish I could show you pictures.  Maybe next year.  But rest easy knowing that in the end, the angel won, Christmas was saved, and Tiny Tim will one day walk.

Besos!