Journal Entry Eleven in Peru - 14/03/10

(posted 3 weeks later)

I'm sitting in a "mid-range" (according to Lonely Planet Peru) hotel room in Huancayo waiting for my tour guide to arrive in 15. It's a day-long tour of "traditional" areas and attractions in the vicinity and I'm wondering for how long I can stay awake. You see, I took an 8-hour sleeper-bus up from Lima and although it was much more comfortable than a plane and I did sleep through most of it, it wasn't an uninterrupted stupor. I did get to hear a salsa-fied version of Coldplay's "Clocks" and see bits of a random movie with JT and the guy who won the Oscar this year. The whole experience was a bit surreal. Whether I make sleeper buses my method of future transport in Peru depends on if I can arrive in Lima at 7am on Monday morning, get to work by 8 and teach a whole day of classes without passing out!

...

I am back and the tour was great. Exhausting, but fascinating. At the onset, I thought 'traditional' would be a bit boring and that I should've taken the archaeological tour. However, this would have been a fruitless exercise as the touring agency only has the one van and traditional was the tour of the day. In fact, they delayed our set-off until they'd rustled up enough tourists to fill the van. Also, I didn't understand much of what the guide said in Spanish and this would be a much bigger problem when you are standing in front of a bunch of oddly-shaped rocks!

So, we visited a few workshops of 'talleres' in the area: a 'textileria' in Hualhas where they weaved alpaca wool amongst others, a silver jewellery 'plateria' and a bee-keeper's house in San Jeronimo, and a 'lecheria' or cheese-plant in Huaychulo. I realised I've never seen cheese being made until then, except on that British programme, "How the Victorians did it" and it doesn't seem to be that different. In fact, in the street market of Huancayo, we saw cheese being sold in that intermediate stage between lumpy milk and hard cheese. Also of note, I had some 4-day fermented honey wine, which was interesting, and not in a bad way. It's a shame I couldn't buy any, but travelling light is essential and I already splashed out on some cheese and honey. There was an old lady at the textileria who was also giving out a drink which looked like dirty dish water, but I wasn't feeling particularly adventurous and didn't want to tempt the onset of the altitude sickness everyone had warned me about.

Our next stop was the "Laguna de Paca", which looked like a flooded field in parts but made for some stunning scenery with the surrounding mountains. On the drive to the lake we saw plenty of cows, sheep, goats and pigs, but not a single llama. Apparently, pigs are a treasured pet in these parts, along with guinea pigs, although both eventually become dinner. I also saw the large white statue of the Virgin Mary on a hilltop in Concepcion, Peru's answer to the Christ of Rio. From my few weeks here, I have discovered that the mother of Christ plays a more important role on Catholicism here than God. Penultimately, it was lunchtime in Ingenio, the trout-breeding town. It is unbelievably tasty, despite being a 'pink' fish, which I hate having previously eaten salmon. Again, it was served with rice and potato, but I managed to finish it by virtue of leaving the rice and most of the potato untouched. I think there's no need to mention the salads... During lunch, I made friends with the mother and two daughters of our group and even managed a conversation. My Spanish is improving, although I take far too long to think out what I'm going to say. After lunch, while waiting for the rest of the group to assemble, I wandered over to the neighbouring restaurant and tried to snap 'artistic' photo of a kid on a swing through an archway. His brother saw me and informed the kid of the fact, after which he watched me intently with a look of either suspicion or disappointment that I hadn't snapped him. Thereafter, it was a hop across to the trout farm to see the varying sizes of trout through their lifetime.

Our final visit was to the Franciscan monastery of Santa Rosa de Ocopa, in Ocopa. The church isn't anything to write home about despite being unconventionally pink, but the monastery was a delightful experience, albeit a wee bit too long. [I just tried to click Ctrl+S on the notebook I'm writing on! It is 10:30pm and I am waiting to board my sleeper bus back to Lima.] Although, while I was waiting for the group to collect itself I watched a hummingbird gathering nectar in the cloisters for a very ling time. And, I saw about 50 different types of hummingbird, despite them being stuffed ones in the monastery's Amazonian fauna room complete with monkeys, a crocodile and my first ever stuffed snakes. The monastery also has the most amazing library with ancient books and bibles in various languages, including Arabic and Japanese. For those who care, the Franciscan monks do make wine - I saw the room they make it in. I must remark on the paintings and general portraying of Christianity and the indigenous people. All the paintings show the monks and 'teaching' and providing aid or the unarmed monks being shot with arrows by the Indians and there is even a wall of faces titled something along the lines of 'monks who died a violent death'. Of course, no mention of is made of the conquering Spanish who arrived earlier with their guns and killed who they wished and took what they wanted. If your first encounter with a white person is a rifle explosion in your face, you are hardly going to wait for the monks to pull something out of their cassocks!