Wednesday, August 24, 2011

For the Love of Cumbia

Hi everyone,

So I realize it has been a while (okay, almost 4 months) since my last blog. I have been very busy in that time with work projects, though recently I have also been busy catching up with the entire TV series of Lost. I have so much to share that I don't even know where to start, so I will start with something easy (and to me highly amusing): translations of the names of popular cumbia bands.

Cumbia is the most popular genre of music in coastal Peru, which is unfortunate because to me reggaeton, musica criolla, salsa, huaino, and the other types of traditional and modern music they occasionally listen to here are all much better. But the people love cumbia, so cumbia is what we listen to. Here are a few popular groups in my region, for your listening pleasure.

Corazon Serrano - Mountain Heart
Agua Marina - Marine Water
Marisol - okay, this is just the name of an individual woman (which is pretty cool because most cumbia is performed in all-male groups), but it means Sea and Sun
Grupo 5 - 5 Group
Hermanos Yaipen - Yaipen Brothers (I would like to point out that only a few of the many guys in this group are brothers)
Karicias Sensuales - Sensual Caresses
Sol Andino - Andean Sun
Corazon Sanjuanero - San Juan Heart
Sexteto Internacional - International Sextet
Caribeños - Caribbeans
Armonía 10 - Harmony 10

This is just a small sampling of bands that are nationally or locally popular, but it is a great example of how unabashedly cheesy Peruvian culture is. Listening to the lyrics just strengthens that impression, and unfortunately a number of songs showcase blatant sexism. At first I absolutely hated cumbia music, but after 9 months in site of being forced to listen to it almost constantly, I have gotten pretty familiar with a lot of songs. I have a good idea of which songs are sung by which groups, and I have learned a lot of the lyrics. (And a little pat on the back for that--I think that understanding songs is one of the most difficult aspects of learning a language.) Unfortunately many of these songs are also pretty catchy, and I have even begun to like some of them, or at the least differentiate between which ones I dislike less than the others. Having attended half a dozen cumbia concerts helps quite a bit.

I'm hoping to get a more substantial update posted soon, so stay tuned!

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Chachapoyas Bound

Two weeks ago I got to take my first real vacation in the 7 months I’ve been in Peru! We don’t get to go on vacation or have visitors during training or our first 3 months in site because we need to focus on training and integrating into our sites. We build up 2 vacation days for every month we are in site, and we get days off for a number of Peruvian holidays and a couple of American holidays. Most of those are only 1 day, so you can’t really do anything, but we get 4 days a piece for Easter weekend, Independence Day, and Thanksgiving where we can travel without using vacation days. I have been eligible for vacation since the beginning of March, but I want to save up some days to visit home at the end of the year and to go on longer trips to interesting places in Peru. I get to go to Chiclayo, the capital of my department, a couple of times a month for meetings and to run errands or meet up with friends, and I have been to Trujillo, a nearby (relatively speaking) departmental capital for conferences a couple of times. Other than training in the Lima area and visiting other peoples’ sites in Lambayeque, that is all I have seen of Peru. So, this Easter weekend, I finally got to travel somewhere new, and I didn’t have to think about work the entire time!

The dilemma was deciding where to go. The majority of people from the Peru 16 group (the Environment, Health, and Water & Sanitation volunteers that arrived in September 2010) were going to Mancora, a beach town in the department of Piura. I have heard good things about Mancora, and want to go there at some point, but going there during Semana Santa (Holy Week) just sounded like a Spring Break-style nightmare. Then 3 of my friends (one environment and 2 health volunteers, all from Peru 16 in Lambayeque) said they were going to a place called Chachapoyas, and wanted to know if I wanted to come. When they said it was at the edge of the jungle in the Andes Mountains, and that there were ruins nearby known as “The poor man’s Machu Picchu,” I was in.

So after a busy month in March of doing surveys, writing my community diagnostic, and going to Early In-Service Training, and an even busier month in April with brushing up my community diagnostic, looking for sponsors for our weekly radio program, going to a lot of meetings and trying to start projects, and going to a renewable energy workshop in Trujillo, I packed my bags and headed out the morning of Wednesday the 20th (but not before I finished making copies of invitations to my big, town-wide presentation of my diagnostic and my plans for the next 2 years and handing them out to town officials!). I got to Olmos, met up with some friends, and headed on to Chiclayo where I spent the afternoon running errands and talking to friends and family online. Luckily my altitude sickness medication had made it to the post office by the time I got there! Once I get to about 8,000 or 10,000 feet, I start feeling the kind of headachy, nausea, tired, altitude sickness feeling, and I got pretty sick when I went to Pike’s Peak, at about 14,000 feet, as a kid. In my one trip to altitude during training, I found that the medicine helps with this feeling, though unfortunately it doesn’t help with respiration when you are walking uphill.

We climbed on our night bus at 8:00 pm. On the trip to Lima, you can take a very comfortable bus with a seat the basically fully reclines and a perpendicular leg rest. This was not that bus. The seat only reclined about a third or half-way, and the leg rest was at about a 45 degree angle. After dinner, we had the pleasure of watching a very violent and poorly-acted Evangelist movie from Mexico from about the early 80s. Assuming the “flight attendant” was a devout Evangelist (they are a common religious minority here after Catholics, and are not allowed to watch movies or listen to music that are not Evangelist-themed), my friend and I did not want to offend her by asking her to change the movie. (For the record, I am not against religious-themed movies, from any religion; this was just a very poor quality movie.) We had a 5-minute conversation on the subject, and decided to ask her to put English subtitles on, knowing that this movie would definitely not have subtitles. She happily agreed, and it turned out that the movie indeed did not have subtitles. We then asked if maybe we could change the movie, but she said all the movies she had were from the same production company. Darn. At least I had an interesting book to read.

By the time our bus arrived in Chachapoyas at 6:00 am, none of us had slept much. I already have a hard time sleeping when traveling at night, and riding on a double-decker bus through the mountains with all the twists and turns and changes of altitude did not help. Neither did stopping in the middle of the night to let half the passengers off. Luckily our hotel was within easy walking distance from the bus station, and with the help of my friend’s guidebook and directions from a couple of locals, we made it there without any trouble. Even luckier was that our room was available. I got to have a hot shower, and we all passed out for a few hours. When we got up, we took our time finding lunch and figuring out what to do for the rest of the day. We met up with 2 other health volunteers and one of their friends, a girl from Finland, and climbed a few stairs to get to a look-out where you could see the whole town. Chachapoyas is the departmental capital, though it is very small, only about 20,000 people. It is very quaint-looking and not very touristy yet, though it had a reasonable restaurant and tourist-store selection.

Next we grabbed a cab to a tiny town called Huancas, where there was another look-out over an entire valley. He dropped us off outside of town, and we hiked up a hill to where there was a little look-out tower, and an observation deck on the side of the mountain. On the other side of the canyon you could see a big 5-tiered (depending on how you count it) waterfall. I took the opportunity to play with the black-and-white and sepia settings on my new camera (thank you education and work credits on my tax return!). I also bought my one souvenir of the trip (I know, not even any postcards!), a cream and colorfully-striped wool shoulder bag that was supposedly made by a local group of single mothers.

The town had some great environmental slogans painted on the walls: “The Earth has a fever…we cure it by planting trees.” “Trash isn’t what is thrown, but he who throws it.” Compared to Lima and the department of Lambayeque, what I saw of the department of Amazonas, or at least the area of Chachapoyas, was very, very clean. I don’t know if people don’t throw their trash all over the place like they do here, if the municipalities hire more people to clean up the trash, or if there is just more rain, and thus more plant life to cover up all the trash.

When we got back, we visited a small museum where they had several mummies and a number of other artifacts such as pottery, simple weapons and tools, and fossilized shells from when the area was part of the sea floor before the Andes erupted. Another girl and I went to the fruit market, and wandered around looking at the shops and sites a bit. That evening we all split a few small pizzas and a plate of pasta alfredo. Good pizza and pasta are hard to find here; these weren’t quite like home but still pretty good. A group of ragamuffin traveling musicians, I think from Italy, came in, which was entertaining at first, but we were all glad that we were about ready to leave. We also booked our tours for the rest of the trip. When my friend was trying to make arrangements for us, she came across a hostel that looked nice. They had worked with Peace Corps before, and quoted us a lower than normal price, forgetting at first that it was a holiday weekend and that they would normally raise the price a little bit. My friend asked them to honor their original price, and they said they would, but if we took a tour to please take it through them. We said that would probably be fine; we’ll play it by ear.

During our travels that day, we had checked out the transportation system in town and consulted the guidebook. We debated about what we wanted to do and when we wanted to do it. In the end, we had decided to take a tour to Gocta waterfall, hire our own cab to go to the Keulap ruins and hire a guide once we got there, and we were undecided about the third day but we figured we’d do that on our own as well. We started talking to the people at the hotel, and they quoted us a good price, lower than what they had listed, for the waterfall tour. We knew we weren’t acclimated to the altitude yet, and from my experience in Marcahuasi during training, I knew I wouldn’t do well with much hiking and I didn’t want to hold up the group. The guy in charge showed us a picture, and said it was an easy, flat, two-hour walk from “here” (a small town) to “there,” the shelf between the two tiers of the waterfall. He told us there would be a “procession” of locals because it was Good Friday. We thought would be a good cultural experience, but we asked if we would be able to hang around afterwards to relax after the procession left. I asked, “Since we are 4 people, would we have our own car? That way we could go down to the lower part of the waterfall, and possibly swim or put our feet in the pool, and chill as long as we liked.” He said, “Yeah, yeah, of course, you can stay as long as you like.”

Then, of course, they started pushing us to do other tours. They had a Keulap tour, and a tour to Pueblo de los Muertos, Karajia, and Valle de Huaylla Belen. They quoted us lower prices than what they had listed for both of these tours as well, making each day close to the same price as it would have been if we did it on our own. We asked about other costs, and they said 2 of the stops on the 3-stop day had a S/. 4 entrance fee, and none of the days included lunch. One person then started giving us the guilt trip about how they had given us a low price, and they were trying to help us out. I pointed out that they had saved each of us S/. 45 by lowering the price of the rooms, so if we each spent at least that, we would be covered. What they were proposing would cost us each S/. 133 (only about $50, but that‘s a lot for a Peace Corps volunteer), when it normally (supposedly) would have been S/. 200. We all thought this sounded pretty good, but I didn’t like how pushy they were being, and we couldn’t discuss it amongst ourselves right then and there like we would have normally because they spoke a decent amount of English. And of course they wanted us to pay for everything up front.

So we discussed it over dinner, and finally decided that it would just be easier, and about the same price, to go ahead and do all the tours. We ran into two 3rd-year volunteers who were staying at our hotel and had done the 3-stop tour that day, and they said it was cool. We were concerned though about one of us getting sick, either from the altitude or the normal Peace Corps stomach issues. They gave us the “yeah, of course we’ll return your money, no problem” bit. I asked them to write that up for us and sign it. They wrote out a receipt for the first tour, but they just wrote my name on it and they wrote it out for the standard full price. We protested about the price he wrote down, but he explained that it was for one tour for all four of us, and not all of the tours for one of us, and that he knew it was a lower price, he was just writing out the standard price (don’t ask me why, but if we needed money returned that would screw them over and not us, so whatever) I asked again for the guy to write a note on there that said the would return the money if necessary. He just kept writing, and was starting to move on to the next one, when I finally just said, “Here, let me see that.” I wrote in the other 3 girls’ names, and a little note that said if someone got sick or there was a problem their money would be returned. My friends made fun of me for how picky I was being, but I have worked in retail long enough to know how dishonest people can be and how they can screw you if you don’t have paper to back up your verbal agreement, and I have lived in Peru long enough to know about the lack of customer service and how many people try to take advantage of the “rich, white, tourists.” Due to all of this, my friends felt the need to give me a new nickname: Ball-Busting Sara. For many people from my home town, they might have a hard time picturing that side of me, but I have to say, though a bit vulgar, the nickname’s pretty accurate. : ) Then one friend felt the need to shorten it to Busty, which is not at all accurate.

Anyway, we get a good night’s sleep (the hotel itself was pretty and had comfortable beds) and go downstairs the next morning. Turns out, we do not have our own car, but are sharing a small bus with 11 other people, including the two 3rd-years from the day before, and a guy from England that they made friends with. I am already fuming at this point, knowing this means that we will not be able to take our time, but will get herded along with the group. Then, about 20 people pass by on the street singing, and one guy is carrying a cross. Is this the big procession we heard about? I decide to keep my grouchiness to myself, and just see how the day goes. We finally get going, and drive about an hour to a small town. No sign of another procession. Then we are told there is a S/. 5 entrance fee. This gets one of my friends riled up as well, because it was definitely not mentioned the previous night. A woman came around asking for lunch orders, but the price was a little high, so I just decided to share a bowl of soup with someone. Luckily I had bought some trail mix and other snacks in Chiclayo, and some bread and fruit in Chachapoyas. That provided me with cheap and healthy breakfasts and snacks that day and the next day, and lunch that day.

As soon as we started walking, it became apparent that the trail was not flat. There were a few flat spots, and a few gently sloping ups and downs, but it was mostly fairly steep ups and downs for long stretches. Luckily it wasn’t along the side of a cliff where you could fall to your death, but there were a few large stretches with lots of loose, slippery rocks. As I suspected, as soon as started going uphill I started breathing heavily. I had to stop very frequently to catch my breath. Luckily my friends were very understanding and supportive, and at least one would almost always stop and wait with me. Occasionally they had problems as well, because we are all used to hot, flat, sea-level dry forest and none of us had fully acclimated yet or was expecting that strenuous of a hike. Our guide told us at the beginning that we would walk at the pace of the slowest person, and that no one should go ahead because they might take the wrong trail. Well, he started out at the head of the group and never looked back. He had left us behind within the first 10 or 15 minutes. You better believe I was cursing him, and the blasted guy at the hotel who told us it would be flat, in my head and out loud for a large part of the hike. I’m sure my friends got tired of hearing it, even if they agreed.

About 2/3 of the way in we caught up with the rest of the group at a rest stop, and I asked the guide, partly nicely and partly grouchily, why he had left us, and told him we were having problems with the altitude. He apologized, and from then on he kept a much closer watch over us. He was actually pretty nice and knew a lot, and since he was a local guy that didn’t earn much, we ended up tipping him at the end of the day. There was at least one Peruvian couple in our group that was struggling also, and the guy spoke English pretty well. He said that they didn’t think the trail would be as “exhausting” as it was either. But, the trail after the rest stop was a little easier. When we stopped to take a picture at one point near the end, I headed out before my friends assuming that they would catch up quickly, but it turned out to be an easy downhill slope, so I ended up getting there first. It felt pretty good to make it after that 2.5 hour ordeal.

Gocta waterfall, by some measures, is the 3rd tallest waterfall in the world, counting the two tiers. However, somehow it had escaped the notice of the Peruvian government and the international community until very recently. It has only been open for tourism since 2006. So it was still really nice and tranquil. The town was small, without too much stuff to cater to the tourist industry. The trail, though rough, was small and unobtrusive enough that you could not see it from the outside. We got passed by quite a few tourists going in both directions, but there were times when we couldn’t see anybody else on the trail. When we got there, there were probably 30 or so other tourists. From where we were at the pool at the bottom (another wrong statement by the hotel staff, but it was okay, we wanted to go to the bottom and not the middle anyway!), you could just see the bottom tier. I think it must be a relatively small amount of water because the pool and subsequent stream of water were not very big. The arrangement of rocks made the spray and rivulets do all sorts of interesting things. The day had warmed up nicely, probably to the 70s, but it was pretty chilly with the spray of the water.

We decided to try to get horses on the way back, because another girl at that point was having leg problems in addition to my breathing problems, and we were all just pretty tired and not wanting to hold the group up. Well, they couldn’t go on the last part of the trail, but they could meet us at the rest stop. When we got there, we found out that only two of the horses were almost there, and that the others were on the way, but we would have to wait 30 minutes. We didn’t want to wait, or spend a lot of money, so we said not to send the other two, that we would take turns. Some parts were a little treacherous, and the guys they sent to lead the horses rushed them on a little more than I would have liked. I am not great at riding horses, but I have done it enough that I would rather have the reigns in my own hands, or at least trust the horse to pick its own way along the trail. But, there wasn’t anything too bad, and we made it quite a bit faster and didn’t feel like we were killing ourselves with the hike. They way the turns worked out I finished the trip, albeit slowly, on my own two feet.

That evening, we had a few words with the management. My friend said she could be in charge of talking to them, which was probably for the best because she was nicer than I would have been. She said, just for future reference so that they can improve their tours, that there was an entrance fee and that the hike was not flat, it was actually very strenuous. The lady starts protesting that people are always very happy with this tour, and that there is always an entrance fee. We said that the waterfall and everything were great, we were just told the wrong things. We asked what other expenses there would be, and they had told us just lunch. I added that we were told we would have our own vehicle, which was not the case. Then, and this is the lady that was being the most overbearing and pushy the previous night, that we should wait and talk to the guy in charge when he got back. However, by the time we showered, rested, and got dinner, none of us had the motivation to take it up again, especially knowing that it wouldn’t change anything.

The next morning, we got up bright and early to make it to the 8:00 am departure time. In true Peruvian fashion, we got there maybe a minute or two early and were the first ones there, and we didn’t leave until about 8:30. We made it to the first site at about 10:30, but that included a rest stop at a mini-museum where we also paid our entrance fee and ordered lunch. They wanted an exorbitant price, so we decided we would risk it and just find another restaurant when the time came. We continued on to the first stop, Pueblo de los Muertos. We had been promised by some other volunteers that this day would be much easier than the previous day--the hikes were intense in some parts, but much shorter, only 30 or 45 minutes total. Well this hike was about 45 minutes, going down the whole time, and in some places slightly treacherous. There was a really nice view of the valley, though.

We ended up in a small cliff-dwelling community. You could still see the basic structure of the walls of the houses, maybe about 12 or 15 houses. I would guess that they were between 500 and 1000 years old. In one spot you could still see the bamboo or sugar cane or something they used to provide structure to the adobe walls. There were interesting symbols inscribed in some of the walls, and bones placed strategically in others (though who knows were those really came from and how old they were). There were two huge mortar and pestle sets for grinding corn flour and other things. In several other nearby niches in the cliff you could see tombs and sarcophagi. After only about 20 minutes we had to leave, and it was another tough, more than an hour long climb back up. Our guide was nice enough to offer to carry my bag (it was small and not very heavy, so at first I declined, but then I caved in and was glad I did). He also shared my interest in stopping to look at cool bugs. Peru has really colorful beetles and lots of other interesting insects.

From there we headed back for lunch. Maybe because it was the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, we could not find an open restaurant. We had been told we were running late and wouldn’t have the full hour for lunch. We spent a good 20 minutes looking for a restaurant, and were about to go back with our tails between our legs and see if there was any extra left of the expensive lunch, when we finally found a little place that was open. There weren’t a lot of options, but we got a decent lunch for less than half the price, so we felt like the venture was a success. It’s all about the little things here! We drove another hour or so to Karajia, a small sierra town. A sign promised 1 kilometer to our destination, and we were told it was an easy walk. More like a 1 kilometer walk along a dirt road between corn and potato fields, and then a kilometer of hiking down another rocky mountain trail. The discrepancy was to be expected by this point, which made it both funny and frustrating.

We arrived at another site in a cliff where there were 6 sarcophagi housing mummies and representing various gods and kings from long ago. Originally there had been 7, but at one point there had been an earthquake (the guide might have said in 1998...but I don’t remember) which knocked one down. I was getting pretty tired by the hike back up, and the blisters that had starting forming the day before were full blown. As some of my friends can remember, I spent a lot of time and effort, and eventually a lot of money, looking for the perfect running shoes to take to Peru as my official Peace Corps sneakers (I only took 4 pairs of shoes with me). While these sneakers are pretty comfortable in general, it turns out if I walk in them for more than an hour or two, they give me blisters. Guess I should have just brought my trusty, comfortable, 10-year old Asics with me, even if they are starting to fall apart.

We finished up the day with a brief stop at Valle de Huaylla Belen (a river valley). It is a popular area for camping and trekking. On the way back, we got to see a really pretty sunset over the mountains and forests. Sometimes, it pays off to be behind schedule. : ) I should also mention that we spent most of the day listening to a CD of popular American music the tour guide had, mostly from the 60s and 80s, with my friend sitting up front as the DJ. I was worried the Peruvians would be offended by this, but they seemed to prefer our music to the limited options on the radio. My friends were all singing along, which is not really my thing, and one of my friends was trying to get the whole group to sing karaoke when we got back. Thankfully, this didn’t happen. I was tired and just ready to chill by the time we got back. Overall, this day of the trip didn’t offer well-developed or jaw-dropping cool tourist attractions. It was more of a chance to see a good chunk of the area on the drive, do some hiking (okay, I wasn’t happy about the amount of hiking at the time, but if I had been prepared for it, it probably would have been nice), see some traditional, picturesque mountain towns, and stop by a couple of historical/archaeological sites along the way. It was nice to get an idea of the “real” Amazonas, as opposed to the sugar-coated, tourist-driven version that a lot of these places end up becoming. I would definitely visit the city of Chachapoyas again, and travel to other tourist destinations in the area. If I ever do so in the future, it will be interesting to see if things have changed.

On the last day, we finally made it to Keulap, the biggest tourist draw in the area. It is the ruins of a fortress of a pre-Incan culture. Eventually, the Incans conquered their society. Later, the Keulap people made a pact with the Spaniards to help bring down the Inca Empire. However, they ended up getting smallpox from the Spanish (by accident or by design?) and were almost entirely wiped out. They had no written language, so we don’t even know the name by which these people called themselves. Keulap is based on a word from Quechua (the language of the Incans which is still spoken through much of the sierra).

The drive itself that morning was about 1.5 hours, but it took longer because we made a couple of stops. We stopped in a small town along the way to order lunch. As usual, it was kind of expensive, we had just about run out of snacks and there didn’t seem to be many other options in the area, so we went along with it. I also finally got the chance to order something I have been wanting to try for a long time… Next we stopped to pick up a couple who had just finished a trekking tour. Turns out they were from Holland. Because there were only two seats left in the van, the guy ended up sitting in the back and the girl ended up sitting by my friend and I. She was really interesting to talk to. Turns out they were doing a 6 month tour of South America. Besides speaking Dutch, they were fluent in English (for a moment I thought the girl was British or something because she spoke English so well), and spoke a little Spanish, German, and French. Oh, to be European and automatically have to learn more than one language.

So we finally got there and get out of the van, and immediately see that there is going to be some hiking involved. We had been promised by two other pairs of volunteers that no, there was absolutely no hiking. You just get out of the car and you are there at the ruins. Those liars! At this point though, we just all groaned and laughed. Of course! Of course, the trip would not be complete without this final insult. Next we got in line for our tickets. A tour guide from another group and several tourists pushed their way in front of us (in general, Peruvians are pretty bad about cutting in line, but this was worse than usual). We started protesting. My friends had been teasing me the whole time about my insistence on making known our complaints about things not going the way we had been told. But by then, they were all tired and fed up as well, and all 3 of them started chewing out the tour guide, saying how rude they were being, and how they were cutting the Peruvians in front of us who had been waiting for a while. It didn’t make a difference to them, or the guy doing the registration, but the guy in line in front of us thought the whole thing was pretty funny. He spoke some English, and ended up making friends with us for the day. Also, it turns out there were like 4 different registration books, for students, nationals, international travelers, and who knows what else. So the registration guy had to dig out a different book for some of the cutters, and then a different book for us, slowing the whole process down even more.

Once we started walking, it turned out it was just a short climb and then a short walk, maybe a kilometer. The altitude was just enough higher that you could feel the difference, but it was such an easy walk that it didn‘t really matter. This is about the amount of hiking I had been expecting the previous day, and the previous day’s hikes were more of what I was expecting the first day. : ) Oh, Peru. Also, the whole way was paved with stones and there were several benches at intervals. So this walk was actually very pleasant. There were wild orchids along the way, and many of the paving stones had fossils of sea life from when the area was a sea floor before the Andes erupted.

The fortress is about 100m wide, 700m long, and 5-20m high. We entered through the gate where the royalty, warriors, and priests had entered. We climbed a number of stairs to get to the main part of the complex. You could still see a lot of the foundations of the houses, and they had reconstructed one to resemble what it would have looked like when it was inhabited. They constructed the houses in a circular fashion because they are more resistant to earthquakes. One really interesting thing was to see was a house that had three different foundations--the original circular one, the larger rectangular one from the Incan reconstruction of the house, and the Spanish renovation with two wider doors instead of one narrow one. You could also see different patterns in the stonework of different houses to represent the different clans in the community, such as the serpent, the puma, and the condor. Most of the houses had several holes in the floor to accommodate the water drainage system that still functioned throughout much of the complex, to store there food, and to store the mummies of their family members. One house had a long, narrow stone cage where guinea pigs were raised. Among the numerous houses, there was a religious building, a tomb, and a guard tower, which was originally surrounded by a false floor that would cave in under the weight of the intruders if they made it that far in their attack. The royal housing complex and guard tower were located on a second, higher level. The guide also pointed out the gate where everyone else entered--you know, commoners, llamas, food.

I think we just got to see about a third of the complex; presumably a lot of it was still being excavated, studied, and reconstructed. Unfortunately it started raining on us about halfway through, but luckily I had thought to bring my poncho with me! Undoubtedly this was something that my mom decided to buy for me at some point. I had never worn it, but came across it when I was packing up my last apartment and packing my bags for Peru, and decided to throw it in--it was small and light and might come in handy. I then came across it for again while packing for my trip to Chachapoyas, and thought the same thing. I had even remembered to throw it in my shoulder bag the previous day. So, this poncho did indeed come in very handy, but then I managed to forget it under the seat in the van where I had put it to dry on the way back!

On the way back, we stopped for lunch, and I finally got to try cuy--guinea pig, that is. I had heard before I came to Peru that it is considered a delicacy here. Guinea pig was originally domesticated here in the Andes a couple thousand years ago. The guinea pigs here are a little different than the pets in the US. Their heads are a lot more pointy, and they are much less cute and cuddly looking. Traditionally cuy was the main source of animal protein in the mountains for poor people, but lately it has become more trendy. In a lot of places it would cost around S/.30 for a whole cuy, instead of about S./8 for a whole chicken. Since I have gotten here, I have been wanting to try cuy. I have seen a lot of guinea pigs being raised to be eaten or sold, but I have never been served it or seen it much in restaurants. This place just served a fourth, so I didn’t have to contend with the head or the little paws. It turns out the skin is really thick and tough--about like cured leather or something--and there is very little meat. The meat is pretty tasty though, maybe somewhere between the flavor of chicken and pork. I would definitely eat it again, but probably only if someone else went to the trouble of skinning it and putting all the little chunks of meat on a skewer or something.

We made it back to Chachapoyas with plenty of time to check out of our hotel and wander around looking for snacks to take on the bus before it left at 7:30. One of the interesting things about Chachapoyas is that it definitely has a tourist industry, but it is a small enough town with a small enough tourist industry that we kept seeing the same people over and over. There was a very interesting mix of tourists: several groups of Peace Corps volunteers, a number of Peruvians (mostly from Lima, many of whom spoke decent English), and a number of Europeans (the Italian vagabonds, the British guy that made friends with some other volunteers, a Finnish girl that was friends with some other volunteers, the Dutch couple, and several groups of Germans). I didn’t see any other people from the US, though I’m sure the mix varies depending on the time of year.

One Peruvian couple from Lima was on the same tour as us all three days, and they ended up being on the same bus back to Chiclayo. We also ended up on that bus with the British guy, the Peruvian guy that we met while registering for Keulap, and a group of 3 young Germans that we had seen at various points throughout the trip, including when we first boarded our bus from Chiclayo to Keulap. I ended up being seated next to the one young German guy in that group. It turns out that him and his two travel companions were also volunteers living in Peru. They lived in Chiclayo and had been there for about 9 months. They live with host families like we do. The guy I talked to taught computation, and the two girls worked in other similar programs. He told me that in Germany, all young men have to either do a year of military service or some other kind of public service, so he chose to do this volunteer program for a year after high school. He is 19, a few months older than my little brother. Crazy. I couldn’t have done a job like this at that age. But it was nice to compare notes about things like food that Peru just can’t quite, such as sandwiches, pizza, steak, ham, salad, pasta, cheese, and bread. We ended up speaking to each other entirely in Spanish, because I don’t know any German, and he, being European, of course knew some English, but he told me that he’d been working on Spanish so much that he could still understand English pretty well, but he couldn’t really speak it much any more.

When we left Chachapoyas the bus was only about half full; we stopped an hour later to pick up the rest of the passengers. A guy sat down across the aisle from me, and immediately struck up a conversation, even though I was already in the middle of one. Peruvian men are usually very interested in young white women, and Peruvians in general are very curious about what the heck we are doing here, and assume that of course we want to tell them about it. It is a good chance to tell Peruvians a little about the US and the Peace Corps, but I don’t think it would be exaggerating to say that I’ve had this conversation at least 500 times since I’ve been here. Sometimes it is hard, especially on vacation, to make yourself have a conversation you don’t feel like having with someone you don’t know, but then you smile and have it anyway, because you are representing your country and you want to spread the word about your work.

So this guy tells me how he just finished some bike tour, and how he is a physical therapist in Trujillo. He asks if I ever have neck pain, and explains that I have a long neck, and then demonstrates these exercises that I should be doing. At this point I’m thinking, alright, who is this guy? Who does things like that? He wanted to exchange phone numbers, you know, just so I could make an appointment next time I’m in town. I told him I’d give him a call, but I couldn’t give out my number, it was only for work. The German guy chips in at this point, in English, to be careful about who you give your number to, to which I replied in English, yes, absolutely. At this point, go back to trying to concentrate on dinner and the movie, which was a lot better this time. We stop to get gas, and the Peruvian guy gets off to get a snack. I pretty sure you’re not supposed to do that, but I wasn’t going to say anything. We start moving a little later, but I was paying attention to the movie and didn’t really notice. A few minutes later the steward comes up to the German guy and myself and asks if there was a passenger in the next seat. We said yeah, he got off a little while back. Oops.

The bus stops, and German guy then reminded me to check my stuff. I had two bags under my seat. Usually I am pretty careful with my stuff, but I had let my guard down a little bit once we were on the bus, so someone really sneaky might have been able to snag my bags with my computer and passport. Luckily everything was still there, and a few minutes later the Peruvian guy comes huffing and puffing back on. Apparently he had gotten a moto when he realized the bus left without him, and managed to make it back on when the bus stopped. And he seemed to lose interest in chatting after that, so the rest of the night passed uneventfully, except that we were careening rapidly down mountain curves the whole time. The bus was already uncomfortable, and with all the stories you hear about buses going off cliffs in South America, I couldn’t really sleep. And then we got back into Chiclayo at the unseemly hour of 4:00 am. My friends and I decided to grab a cab, and see if there were any rooms left at the hostel we always stay at. Luckily there was, and we got a discounted rate since we would only be there until mid-day. We managed to get a few hours of sleep and run some errands before heading our separate ways.

Though it probably sounds like I have a lot of complaints, I actually really enjoyed this trip. I got to relax, see some cool sites, and enjoy good company. The complaints are just so funny to share with everyone back home, and it is both despite of and because of all of these roadblocks that the trip was so fun and memorable. Thanks to my travel companions for making this a great trip! I can’t wait for my next vacation! Happy Easter everyone!

Friday, February 11, 2011

Noise, Noise, Noise

One of my least favorite things about Peru is the noise. In the more urban areas, just like in the rest of the world, there are always horns honking. For a long time, much of this honking seemed completely random. However, with some observation and the help of one of the Peace Corps drivers during training, I have learned to differentiate some of the honks. There the ones that signify, “Hey buddy, get a move one,” when a light turns green, for example. The more forceful ones are of the, “Hey jerk, you just cut me off!” variety. Then there are the honks to acknowledge a pretty girl or to greet an acquaintance. In the countryside, the mototaxistas honk their horns going around a curve to forewarn anyone coming from the other direction. You also hear this at intersections in the city, because there is a lack of stop signs, as well as a lack of adherence to most traffic rules.

What’s worse is the music. I like most of the reggaeton, salsa, musica criolla, and other types of music in Peru. Even the American pop music is alright because it reminds me of home. However, I’m not a huge fan of cumbia, which is what they listen to most of the time out in the campo where I live. I have been told that cumbia is the most popular genre of music in Latin America right now, but that Peru has really bad cumbia. I really wouldn’t mind listening to it, except that the radio stations play the same songs over and over, and basically everyone here listens to music louder than I appreciate (I am a little bit of granny in that sense).

However, any time any one is feeling a little festive, they crank the music up louder than that. If there is some sort of fiesta (high school graduation, church reunion, town dance, baptism, etc), they have a DJ or a live band, and the speakers are turned up so loud my ears literally hurt and it takes me a day or two to hear properly again. I think this is about par for the course for any sort of concert or music festival, but at least when I would attend that sort of event in the US, I felt like I had some sort of control over where I sat/stood (i.e. how close to the speakers), and I could always leave if it was that bad. I never really feel like I have those options here.

Similarly, people usually have their TVs turned up louder than I would choose. This also goes for when I have gone to bed. There is absolutely no sense here of “Oh, someone’s trying to sleep, we should turn the music/TV down.” I guess people here just grow up with loudness from the time they are in the womb, so they have learned to sleep through it. At the parties where the music is so loud that I can’t hear the person next to me speaking, there are always babies and young children passed out in their mothers’ or other female relatives’ laps.

I was woken up recently at 6:30 in the morning to, again, music playing more loudly than I would like generally, but especially for that early in the morning. Any time of day between about 6:00 am and midnight you can hear music, if not at your own house, then at a couple of houses nearby. And if it is loud enough that you can hear it 100+ meters away, then you can imagine how loud it is at that house. However, it is interesting to note that pretty much everyone likes the same music here. In the US, young people, middle-age people, and older people usually have very different tastes in music, and those tastes vary a lot from person to person within each age group. Here, it is all cumbia all the time. Younger people might put on some reggaeton occasionally, but the parents will still listen to it. Everyone enjoys the same radio stations and the same cheesy concert DVDs of their favorite local cumbia bands. Everyone dances at all the events that have concert/dance components, which is pretty much all of them. And everyone turns up the music too loud.

In addition to horns honking and music playing, there are also the animals. I have sheep, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and dogs living right outside my house. Throughout town, there are also goats, donkeys, horses, cows, ducks, and cats. As animals do, they are generally wandering around, looking for food, and making some sort of noise. Sometimes you will hear a rooster crowing. Growing up in the country this is a familiar noise, but that doesn’t make it any less loud and annoying, especially if you are trying to sleep. Then, occasionally you hear a donkey braying. There is no way to really describe this awful, loud, complex series of noises, but many times when one gets going, the rest of them within hearing distance will start up. This is especially annoying at night, and they have actually woken me up before.

Sometimes you will hear a dog barking, but then, similarly, many times that will set off the other dogs. What’s worse is when they start fighting. The dogs here are generally a lot more aggressive than the dogs back home, I think because they are raised to protect the house, family, and animals, not for companionship. They are also a little bit abused and neglected compared to what most people from the US think is appropriate. So, if another dog wanders into their territory, especially at night, watch out. My host family’s dog, King, was tagging along with me the other day when I had to walk to the other side of town. We walked past an area that I know has a couple of small, aggressive dogs, so I tried to walk on the other side of the street. Before I know it, there are like 6 dogs attacking my poor dog. I tried to throw rocks at them, but of course I didn’t get to close, and I was too flustered to have any sort of aim. Luckily, King managed to escape after a couple of minutes and run off toward the house without any real injuries. I hear this sound of yelping, snarling, barking, and scrabbling around in the dirt far too often.

Then, there are the bugs. I grew with the sounds of crickets and other insects during the summer. However, I never really had to deal with them in my bedroom. Here, I have a door to the main living area and a large outside door in my room. Both of them have cracks around the edges of sufficient size to let in all manner of insects. Right now, we are in the middle of a June bug infestation. As soon as it starts to get dark, they start swarming inside by the hundreds, especially if the lights are on. I have taken to just lighting a candle in my room to do my work in the evenings, and that helps a little bit. Depending on the how recently it has rained, there are also lots of mosquitoes. I get a few crickets, moths, katydids, and other random insects. Luckily, my mosquito net protects me from most of these bugs, but I can still hear them all in my room. For the most part, they are not loud, the they just make those creepy scraping, flapping noises that bugs make. It is surprisingly distracting when you are trying to sleep.

So, thank goodness I came to Peru with my I-pod and my ear plugs. I always like to have music around, but I was never of fan of ear plugs. I don’t like how they feel, they always fall out at night and I’m afraid they’re going to get lost, or I’m afraid I won’t hear my alarm, etc. However, I had just a simple pair of foam ear plugs that I came across when I was packing, and decided to throw them in (along with an eye mask, which I also never really like but have used here on several occasions). Boy am I glad that I did. They aren’t great, but they block out the quiet noises and take the edge off the loud ones. Between the music, the host family talking, the animals outside, and the bugs inside, I use either my I-pod or my ear plugs pretty much every night. Should any of you ever visit me, make sure you bring your ear plugs, and get ready for the noise!