Within the first 20 minutes of being in the park, I saw far more than I did the whole time I was there a year ago. When we had come the year before, I had been miserably sick and the weather was foggy, cold, rainy, you name it. It was clear when we got there this time. Well, okay, not at first. But within ten minutes of getting in, I could see everything.
We decided to split up (I was feeling grouchy, which happens about once a month, sadly) and meet up later, so we all teetered off. I headed in the direction of the ancient Inca Bridge, which was a small hike (and I would say not really worth it, but I liked it). I was completely surprised when I saw both Lars and Charlotte already there, both arriving separately and independently! We had all gone the same way. I was finally not feeling so grouchy and mean anymore and we spent the rest of the day together, looking over every bit and piece of the ruins, although we had missed our chance to climb Hyuanapicchu, the mountain that is seen in the background of the most famous photos.
We didn’t have a guide like most of the other groups had, but I had a guidebook to Peru that would tell us enough of what we needed. We saw everything in that park and had a blast doing it. I was even able to get Lars to pose for a picture or two, which is a nearly impossible task to achieve.
We took the bus down (I know, horrible, but Charlotte's knee was hurting her) and showered and chilled out with one of the talking parrots. The next morning we caught our train back to Ollantaytambo, another large set of ruins, which I chose to not go into this time, seeing as how the price was exorbitantly high. I hung out in an internet café checking email until Lars and Charlotte were finished, at which point we took off in a taxi that happened to be going back to Cusco. The couple and their daughter that took us were perfectly polite people, asking us where we would like to be dropped off when we got back to the city.
We managed to find Charlotte a hotel room and then Lars and I took off to find our way to Cai Cay! Charlotte had plans to explore the city while we were away.
We took a cab out to Cai Cay, where we were welcomed with open arms. I got to sleep out in the loft with the boys, which was fun for me since I sleep on the floor that I had helped build the year before. There were very few boys on the trip, but they were great and quite funny. And the work that they had done was AMAZING. I know that they didn't think they had done much, but it was because they were so close to it and couldn't see the improvements. They had worked wonders!
The next morning we got to work with the team on laying rock for a patio (a frustrating task because it supposedly had to be perfect for something that they knew was not even going to look anywhere near perfect once the cement was poured). Partway through the day Lars started to get sick, getting even to the point where he had to go lie down and sleep it off, though he threw up violently several times. I tried to mother him, but darnit, the man just wouldn’t let me! :) I left him alone and by evening he felt a little better, but by the time dinner was finished, I was throwing up violently into the grass as well. It felt stupid, because here we were having lived in South America for six months and in front of a bunch of weak-stomached Americans, we were the only ones throwing up.
We slept another night (I, by the way, was sleeping with every bit of clothing I had brought with me on and without more than a poncho for a blanket in the cold Peruvian night air) and were able to catch a ride back into Cusco with the team, as they were to fly out that afternoon as well. We wearily and weakly said our goodbyes, walking away missing what we were leaving behind.
When we made it to the hotel where we had left Charlotte, we really didn’t expect what we were to find. Charlotte had just started getting sick that morning, also violently throwing up. Apparently we had eaten something all together that was bad for our systems. The weird thing was that we had not seen each other for two days and when we had eaten together, we had not eaten the same thing. But for some reason we were all getting sick at slightly different times but with the same symptoms. Lars was a perfect sweetheart, going out into the city and getting us a good supply of water, crackers, bread, and yogurt for our 21 hour bus ride that we were about to start back to Lima. You can trust me when I say that we were not looking forward to the ride, but we had seats right in the front, which was AWESOME.
When we got to the bus station that we felt like we had just left, we were informed that there were mining strikes up and down Peru, meaning that there was no bus yet to take us back to Lima. We had planned that bus so that we would make it on time to the airport in Lima for our flight back to Piura (the town from hell). So they were telling us that we should come back in four hours and maybe there would be a bus. Well, we had nowhere to go, we were ridiculously sick, and we needed to get back to Lima in a hurry.
So we laid around in the bus station for an hour and a half, at which point a bus showed! We asked and asked and asked and no one seemed to know if we could get on it or not. Then all of a sudden the people who had tickets for the 4pm bus were the ones who could get on the bus, while those of us who had already been waiting from the 2pm bus were going to wait some more. I think that finally enough people yelled at them saying how stupid of an idea that was, that they finally let the 2pm’ers on the bus. But since the majority of us had someplace to go, only us orphans that had hung around the station for nearly two hours were the ones still around to get on. So we were made to wait anyway, but finally got out of the station at 5pm, which we thought would be early enough to make it to Lima in time for the flight, although it was looking tight.
The buses all bore painted letters on the front saying things like “long live the miner’s strikes” and such. Unfortunately we sat next to a couple who seemed to think that campesinos and mine-workers had no real right to ask for good working conditions. They were from England, if I remember correctly, and they were saying “It’s always about the f*ing miners. What about the people who have to travel?” Although I feigned understanding, I was inside screaming their ignorance. Yes, poor tourists indeed, who are paid well enough to get to take vacations.
Lars sat in the frontest seat that we had, next to two little kids, both of which happened to get pretty motion/altitude sick during the ride and were throwing up violently enough that I felt the need to put in my headphones to keep what little was in my stomach where it was. But we all did well. No throwing up. Lars spent the entirety of the time that he and the little kids were awake playing card games, learning hand games and talking about the thorn he had shoved in his ear. We tried to catch it on film but had no luck with that.
Alright, I’m bored of talking about the trip. Time to talk about something else. This is Emily hour with your host…. Emily. Have you ever wondered where babies come from? Not me. Actually, I have always wondered where Jelly beans come from. Especially Jelly Bellys. I mean, first of all, where on earth do they get the flavor from inside of the bean? The popcorn ones are so amazing to me. I mean, I hate them, but that doesn’t stop them from being amazing. I hate them because it is a jelly bean that is buttery and salty, which doesn’t make sense to me, nor is it at all appetizing. If I am going to eat something that is buttery and salty, I want popcorn in the way popcorn was MEANT TO BE, not encapsuled in something that should be sweet.
Regardless, it is amazing that this little bean can make me feel like I just ate a bowlful of theater grade popcorn. I once bought one of those packs of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Bean (which, for those of you twerps who don’t know, is from Harry Potter and are magically flavored) and I was SO IMPRESSED! Not that I liked eating grass or dirt, but sinking your teeth into a dirt bean was almost EXACTLY like getting a nose full of dirt kicked in your face. Not necessarily pleasing, but AWESOME nonetheless! It filled my nose, made me sneeze, I tell you, it really was magical.
Okay, back to Peru. When we got to Lima, Charlotte and I shoved ourselves dirty and weak into a cab to get our arses to the airport. We said goodbye to Lars, who went walking to find a bus to Loja or Cuenca (both of which are back here in Ecuador again). We caught our plane just fine, although had we been any later we would have been running to the gate.
When we got to Piura in the afternoon, we headed innocently to a bus terminal hoping to get a ticket to Loja or Cuenca, only to learn that no one in the whole city was selling tickets because of the strikes. We even went so far as to check a very sketch establishment that had a nasty dirty waiting room, complete with urine smells, a tent with people living in it, and a chicken squawking somewhere in a corner.
Bleh, so once again we were stuck in Piura with nothing to do. We got a room with the hopes that the roads would open up the next morning, but with no guarantee. We washed a little bit of clothing and then slept together in a double bed, since EVERYONE was stuck in Piura and the hotel had no more rooms other than a matrimonial. Oh, and all this time before we went to bed, we were trying to get hold of Lars, because we knew that if we could not get anywhere in the country due to the strikes, we highly doubted he’d even be able to get out of Lima on a bus.
In the morning we got up somewhat early and were ready to go before 9:00, only to arrive at the station and learn that there would be no bus until at least 7:00 that night. We had another 10 hour wait, sitting without food but with all we had with us in a bus station that was mostly just HOT. But there was a beautiful dog. I’ll post a picture.
When we finally got on the bus, we had had nothing to eat but fruit, bread, yogurt and crackers for more than 24 hours. We slept all the way to Loja, except for the twenty minutes that we spent getting back into Ecuador at the border. By the time we got to Loja, we didn’t feel like looking around. We got straight onto the next bus to Cuenca, where we were scheduled to meet up with Lars. We found him, got a room in the middle of the city that was very nice, and finally got some rest and some food.
Turns out that Lars had been stuck in Lima with no way to get out and had to buy ANOTHER last minute ticket (he had had to buy one on the way down to Lima for one reason or another) to Piura, at which point he was in the same town we were at the same time we were, but his phone was dead. So he wrangled a taxi to get him to take him to the strike line, where he got out and banged on bus windows until one let him in at least to sleep. They thought he was going to attack the bus with a gun at first, but they let him in. The strike line broke some hours later, but somewhere along the way, his whole bus was forced to get out of the bus in the middle of the night and clear the road of boulders the size of I don’t know what for a couple of hours to keep going.
He apparently made it into Cuenca sometime near the middle of the night, at which point he and three other people went to a hostal owned by the bus driver’s brother to get rooms. Apparently it was seedy and in the middle of the night one of the girl’s awoke to find the hostal owner’s son lifting up her sheets to get into the bed with her. She asked what the hell he was doing and he responded, “Quiero estar contigo,” or “I want to be with you.” She asked how old he was and he said 18 (she must have been 22-24-26ish) She was so freaked out that she went to sleep in the room of the Canadian couple that had come with them. In the morning Lars went with her to help translate and tell the owners what had happened. They basically called her a liar, saying that the boy had been in the room with his mother the whole night. Plus, they found out he was only 16 years old, not 18.
I have two questions… first of all, why would they lie about something like that? What could they possibly gain from telling a lie like that, other than MAYBE a free night stay? The hostal couldn’t have been more than $10 per night anyway. Secondly, what did this 16 year old boy possibly think was going to happen once he got to that girl’s room? Like, hey, I want to be with you and she just says, well thank god, it’s about time, get in here? Really? Needless to say, they all paid their bills and went to look for a new place to stay, and sometime later we met up with Lars.
Cuenca was a beautiful city! We didn’t have much time there, but we got to see the overview, LOTS of churches, and the orchidearia, which was AWESOME enough just by itself. A complex just to raise orchids. What is better?
We bought a ticket for something like 8:00 at night, which was a great thing, seeing as how they were going to let buses through until 10:00 because the roads into Quito were going to be closed because of mining strikes here in Quito! We were amazed! The strikes were all through Peru AND in Ecuador! We made it onto the bus and slept as well as we could until Quito. The bus pulled into Quito somewhere around six in the morning, at which point we hiked into the Mariscal, ate some breakfast, drank a LOT of coffee, and went to our meeting at PUCE with the new students for the semester at 8:00, smelling like three-week-old clothing and sporting bags under our eyes so intense that the length and activities of our trip were apparent. We were home.
No comments:
Post a Comment