Peru: Day Four

Day four was Sunday, and I was so glad. At this point in our journey, my phone had been stolen and I hadn't had a hot shower the whole trip (hostel desk clerks kept insisting there was hot water, and it was always a lie! Plus the shower the night before had a moldy shower curtain. Gross). I was also homesick for the place where I spoke the language and toilets had seats. Needless to say, I needed a Sunday.

We got dressed up and met Clariza and her kids at their house before going on to the church. It was a short walk through town. I was a little thrown off at the gate surrounding the building (though not too thrown, since everything else had been gated). As soon as we entered the building, though, I felt right at home. The building was a little different from the ones back home, but it was definitely recognizable as an LDS church, and the same Spirit was definitely there. Of course, I still didn't understand what anyone said, but it was nice to sit in a familiar place.

There was no pianist, so the chorister gave us a starting count for the hymns. It was so wonderful to hear melodies that I knew, and so wonderful to be able to take the sacrament in such a faraway place. I must admit to tearing up a bit here and there. The meeting ended with Bergs' favorite hymn, "In Our Lovely Deseret". This was a total coincidence, so Bergs and I were cracking up when I realized what we were singing.

We only stayed for sacrament meeting, so afterwards we went back to Clariza's to change and have lunch. She was going to make us ceviche, chicken style. Bergs was very protective of the food we ate, and she was also kind enough to mention to Clariza that I didn't like onions and peppers. I was really excited. And while Clariza prepared the ceviche, the children put in church movies and let me watch them in English! It was pretty great.

The ceviche was quite the experience. Overall, it was delicious, but Bergs didn't realize that I also don't like celery. Not wanting to offend anyone, I was determined to eat as much as possible. I tried to convince myself that it was raw potato and not celery. I did a pretty good job, but it eventually was too much. I did enjoy the chicken and the lime flavor. It was really good. Here are the pictures of my dish, and Bergs', which was made the correct way.

We also had yucca, which was really good, and mangoes! A whole mango, eaten with a spoon. That was the greatest mango of my life.

After lunch, some members from the ward came to visit. Their bishop, who wasn't much older than us, knew some English and spoke to me a little bit. Clariza's kids were also learning English, but they were better at writing, so they wrote me questions and I wrote them answers.

When the ward members left, we went to do some visits, including this stop at the apartment Bergs lived in.

There was also a lovely woman named Miriam who owned a pink salon in front of her home. She gave us Inca Kola and handmade napkin holders made out of gourds.

We went back to Clariza's to pick up our backpacks; I was slightly exhausted and ready to eat a granola bar for dinner and go to bed. We had decided to splurge and stay in a hotel that night in order to have hot water, plus the hostel the night before had been a little chilly. Clariza surprised us, however, by announcing that she and the ward members were going to give us a farewell pizza party! I was pretty excited because there was cheese involved (still a little homesick at this point), but Bergs advised me to be cautious because the pizza probably would have no cheese and sliced up hot dogs....but it did have cheese! And sliced ham! That pizza was so wonderful. And it was so great to be surrounded by so many fantastic ward members. They were all so excited to see Bergs, and so nice to me. Every one gave me a hug. I even got to watch part of Despicable Me 2 in Spanish!

And there's day four. I even got it all in one post!

P.S. The hotel clerk claimed that they had hot water 24 hours a day...except it needed to take 10 minutes to heat up. Ten minutes came and went...no hot water.

Peru: Day Three - Part Two

Day three continues with the tale of the "gringo killer". After the phone theft incident, we boarded a commercial bus for Huancayo. Since the driver was below the passenger level, we were able to sit in the very front of the bus, right up against the windshield. We had to put our backpacks in front of us, so there wasn't an enormous amount of legroom, but the view was amazing.

As we settled into our seats, I pulled out my breakfast tamale. Apparently, Peruvians often eat tamales for breakfast. It seemed a little odd, but I was hungry and still a little shaken from the theft, so I dug right in. Bergs did warn me, however, that there was a large purple olive in the middle of the tamale. She said Peruvians call it "the gringo killer". This concerned me, but I figured that if I ate carefully, I could pull the olive out when I got to it.

I reached the olive and pulled it out. There was a small pool of olive juice in the cavity left behind, but I figured it would be drowned in the flavor of delicious tamale. I was wrong. I took of bite of tamale and olive juice..and very nearly threw up. VERY nearly. Many of you know that I have a weak stomach, but this was bad. I did manage to get the rest of the tamale down, mainly because I had to get rid of the super gross olive taste.

The rest of the somewhere between 6 and 8 hour ride was filled with gorgeous Andean scenery. Well, that and the bus driver risking crazy car passes over double yellow lines. That was sort of terrifying, especially from the top of the bus. But the Andes are gorgeous. Once we got further into the mountains, they were green instead of looking like piles of rocks. This was my favorite spot:

Bergs told me that this was the place that a lot of people start feeling altitude sickness, but I felt just fine. Her theory was that it was because we already live in such a high elevation. Coming into Huancayo, I almost felt like we were driving home to Cache Valley. See?

Once we made it to Huancayo, we made our way to Clariza's house. Clariza was Bergs' pensionista in that area. Clariza had, hanging on her wall, a picture of Bergs that was drawn while she was there.

We left our backpacks at Clariza's and headed into town to shop. There is a wonderful mall of sorts, Casa de Artisano, where people sell things that they have made. I bought scarves for the girls in my family, as well as a stone nativity scene and a beautiful sweater. After that, we wandered about the streets of Huancayo in search of a store that sold really inexpensive ties. We finally found it and Bergs and I purchased some ties. It was quite the exciting journey.

After the shopping, we had dinner at La Lena, where I ordered another delicious chicken dish with fries. Very delicious chicken in Peru.

At the end of the night, we picked up our backpacks and found a hostel to sleep in. This one featured beds that dipped in the middle. We were sort of concerned that the beds were going to eat us...but we survived.

And that's day three!

Peru: Day Three - Part One

Day three started with a cold shower. So cold. I thanked my lucky stars that my hair didn't need to be washed (and I hoped that we would have hot water by the time my hair did need washing).

We originally had planned to have breakfast with a family in Chosica, but the timing didn't quite work out. The person from that family that Bergs had wanted to see ended up walking with us to the bus stop. She brought tamales for us to eat for breakfast, which I was pretty excited about.

We got on board one of those crazy buses and took a seat, backpacks and all. I had my smaller backpack (which I used when we had somewhere to leave our big backpacks) on my lap, and my phone in my front pocket. It occurred to me that my phone could fall out of my pocket, so I moved it to one of the mesh pockets in the front of my small backpack, holding it with my hand from the outside of the pocket to keep it from being pilfered.

Tragically, I had greatly underestimated the ingenuity of Peruvian bus thieves. Attend the tale of the theft of my phone.

A man got on the bus and reached up to hold the bar above his head. In doing so, he dropped a handful of coins, which came cascading down upon my head, and down to the bus floor. I bent over to help him retrieve the coins, releasing my hold on my phone. After straightening and handing the man his coins, I went to return my hand to my phone, only to realize it was gone. Desperately, I checked the pockets to my bag and the pockets of my pants, but it was useless. The phone was gone. And we had to get off the bus right then anyway, so I had to buck up and move on.

We crossed the road to the cross country bus station (or really just the place where the bus stopped; it wasn't a station by any means). Sitting on a plastic chair outside a roadside market, the theft of my phone sank in and I did start to cry a little bit. It was a very sad moment. Once I calmed down, though, I started to see how the situation wasn't so very bad. First of all, Bergs had free international texting, a fact we had only learned upon landing in Peru. She was able to text my mom and have her call to have my phone turned off.

Secondly, I had removed all of my pictures from my phone before leaving home. I had planned to use my phone as my camera, so I wanted to make sure that I had plenty of room on my phone. All of the pictures that were on my phone were safely saved on my laptop at home. I had lost a few pictures from the last couple of days, but not very many. My phone had died the evening before, so I took all those pictures of Chosica on my camera anyway (which I had brought as a backup, just in case).

Lastly, I was safe. We hadn't been harmed in any way during the theft. I hadn't even realized it happened until it was over.

Before I went to Peru, I had prayed that the Lord would help me to see His hand on my trip. I had meant in the people we would meet or in the beautiful Inca ruins we would visit. Of course, He had another plan. It really touched my heart to be reminded that He was looking out for me, and that even though I had lost my phone, I hadn't really lost as much as I could have.

Peru: Day Two - Part Three

I hope no one is getting too terribly bored with all of these posts (though, I guess if they are bored, they don't have to read). I'm really enjoying writing about the trip, and when I print my blog book I can have the experience forever (I'm not so good at the journaling). Also, I think it's good that I've waited a while to write about it. When I first got home, I was mostly thinking about how grateful I was for hot showers and being able to drink tap water. Now that it's been a while, I'm able to look back at what a wonderful experience it is. I would so go back, provided I had access to hot showers...that was really rough.

So after our visit way up the hill, we headed to visit another family at the bottom of the hill. We walked down, down, down, and down some more. The city, somehow, was just so charming. I can't even describe why it was charming; it just was. Once we got to the bottom of the hill, we walked along the railroad in a very poor part of town. Here, the houses were in one solid row that went on as far as you could see. They all shared walls. Some had actual roofs, but a lot of them only had corrugated metal for roofs.

We walked on the ends of railroad ties as the sun set (and walked faster so we could get to our destination before dark). There were children playing in front of their houses, and people out talking to each other. It really was so beautiful. We reached the family Bergs wanted to visit, and they pulled us in to sit for a visit. The mother sent the children to buy a bottle of Pepsi, and we talked (well, they talked; I listened and picked out a word here and there).

After the visit, the mother escorted us closer to the city center. On the way, we met her husband, which Bergs was really excited about. After we chatted for a while, we continued up the hill (in a moto-taxi - that's when I took the picture that was in the last post) and walked through a beautiful park. There was a pond in the center with a statue, and a raised and covered walkway around it. The statue was a goddess (I believe), and I thought about taking a picture but she was quite naked. It was lovely, and the park was wonderful. So many people walking around or sitting at benches. Bergs pointed out the church house across the street that she went to when she served there.

After walking through the park, we crossed the street and entered a beautiful plaza which led up to a giant statue of Christ. There were fountains with colored lights leading up the block to the statue, which was on top of several layers of waterfalls. We stood around and waited for the statue and waterfalls to light up, as the sunset was still fairly recent. Eventually, the statue lit up, but the waterfalls never did. It was still really cool to see.

We then decided that we needed some food, so we headed to Roky's. There are a lot of chicken places in Peru, and a lot of them have names that sound a lot like Roky's. We ordered bottled water (specifically asking for non-carbonated), I got pollo a la brasa (chicken), and Bergs got cow hearts on shish-kabob (I forgot to write down the Spanish name). The food was amazing! We sat at a window and watched people on the street below, which was fun. And here are pictures!

Full of lovely dinner, we found ourselves a hostel and got some shut-eye. Thus ended day two.

Peru: Day Two - Part Two

Wow, I can't believe it's been almost two months since the last time I blogged! Holy smokes.

So back to Peru! After Chaclacayo, we hopped on a bus to Chosica. This is where I really had to chance to see the houses. We took a moto-taxi up a very steep dirt road.

- Oh moto taxis! So fantastic. Think of a rickshaw, but a motorcycle instead of a bicycle, and surrounded by metal like a car. I loved them. This isn't a great picture, but it was the best I managed to get. They move so fast! And this is a pretty good example of traffic there.

So anyway, we went up this steep hill to visit some of Bergs' friends, and I noticed that A) houses were stacked up on top of each other, and B) the houses are built clear up the mountain. In some places, there weren't roads or staircases to get up to the houses up on the hill. Another thing I noticed in Chosica is that there are dogs everywhere! Just wandering the streets. The weird thing was that they all looked so tame. They didn't look gross, and they just laid around on the sidewalk. It was so odd.

While talking to the first family, I heard a bunch of screeches, yells, and other alarming noises coming from the other room. I thought that maybe there was an unhappy child hanging out in the background, but eventually one of the family members went into the room and brought back...a parrot.

Some of you may know that I get a little nervous around birds. I don't like it when they get too close, in case they're planning on poking out my eyes or nipping at my ankles. *Shudder* I tried to keep my cool, but the bird was just hanging out and suddenly flew towards the window, which was right behind me! My reflexes kicked in, and I squealed and ducked. Bergs and the family thought it was hilarious, of course, and the kid holding the parrot kept getting it riled up to see my reaction. It was sort of unpleasant.

The family, though, was lovely and so friendly. Everyone we visited gave me a hug and kiss on the cheek, even though they didn't know me and I wasn't even able to speak to them. It was so amazing to feel so much love from perfect strangers.

While visiting this family, I experienced something new for the very first time: the lack of a toilet seat. It was a little disconcerting, but I was determined to roll with anything that Peru sent my way. Later, when I asked Bergs about it, she told me that in Peru, if you are not poor, you have a toilet. If you are rich, you have a toilet seat.

Turns out day two will have to have three parts. The next one has lots of pictures, I promise!

Thanks for reading.

Peru: Day Two - Part One

Before I start on day two, I should share my terrifying moment in the night between days one and two. I had a very vivid dream, in which I looked up at the wall next to my bed and saw a small hole. Through the hole, someone was pointing a dart gun, which held a poisonous dart.  I woke up screaming, which woke up Bergs, who was understandably shaken and asked what was wrong. I looked back up at the wall and realized it was just a dream and back to sleep, but it was so scary! I think it was just me getting out all the nerves of being in a foreign country. It was funnier in the morning,

After a shower in the tiny bathroom (hot water, which I didn't realize I was lucky to have) and a breakfast of half a banana and a roll with jam, we embarked into Lima. This is when it really hit me that I was in Peru, and I was struck with how amazing it was that I was there. It was so great to see the city by day. In some ways, it was just like any other big city in the U.S., but it was also very different. I thought it was charming. I felt uncharacteristically adventurous with my backpack strapped on, walking the streets of Lima. We stopped by an internet cafe to call our parents. The payphones were surprisingly inexpensive, considering we were making international calls. 

From there, we went in search of a bus. Buses in Peru are a lot like taxis in that you sort of flag them down on the street, except they're jam-packed with people and you have to jump on as fast as you can.  If you're lucky, you get a seat. In this case, we stood, backpacks and all, en route to Chaclacayo. This was my first view of crazy Peruvian drivers. All of the vehicles are crowded onto one-way streets. The cars next to you are close enough to touch, and if there's an inch of front of your car, someone will take that opportunity to pass you. It was quite terrifying the first couple of days, especially when we were in taxis, but after that it was just funny. I swear that Peruvian drivers must be highly skilled, because I didn't see one traffic accident while we were there. The other thing I noticed is that the Andes mountains around Lima are not green. Quite honestly, they were like giant mounds of dirt. For someone used to green mountains, it was incredibly odd.

In Chaclacayo, we visited a lovely woman named Rosita.  She was one of Bergs' pensionistas in Peru, which means that she cooked all of the missionaries' meals (the Church gives them money for food, but they donate their time and talents).  On our way to her house, I noticed that all of the houses had bars over the windows, but they're all very decorative bars. A lot of them were in flower designs. Also, all of the houses are right next to each other. I didn't see a single free-standing house. Rosita's house was nice looking on the outside as well as the inside.  Most houses were fairly nice, but simple, on the inside, but were very rough-looking on the outside.

Rosita was very excited to see "Hermana Bergsjo", and was very gracious in welcoming me to her home. She made us lunch: aji de gallina, which is chicken in a cream sauce over rice. Aji is a hot sauce. A very hot hot sauce. Bergs warned me that a little went a long way, and I thought I had done that, but it was still so hot (I have a low tolerance for hot foods). Needless to say, I felt like my mouth was on fire. Many Peruvians were amused by this tale during the duration of our visit. With lunch, Rosita gave me Inca Kola! Inca Kola is like the official drink of Peru. You know how we see Pepsi everywhere? That's how Inca Kola is. It tastes like a cross between cream soda and bubble gum, and it's violently yellow colored. I loved it! 

Before, during, and after lunch, I found that I was able to follow the conversation fairly well. I don't speak much Spanish, but enough of it is similar to French or English (and Bergs has an American enough accent) that I could at least pick out the subject most of the time. This was helpful in me not feeling like an idiot.  I was able to actually enjoy the conversation. Rosita asked if we had boyfriends, and was shocked that we didn't (actually, everyone we visited asked this and was shocked). It was amusing. I also got asked a lot if I would date a Peruvian. 

Since this post is getting quite long, I believe this is a good place to stop. Good news: pictures start in the next post! And the story for why the first two posts had no pictures will be on a future post.

Thanks for reading.

Peru - Day One

So...it's been a month and a half, but now begins the tale of my travels! The good news is that I took notes on my trip.

Why I went to Peru: My friend, Michelle Bergsjo (aka Bergs), served her mission in Peru. She was planning on going back for a visit, and asked me if I wanted to come. It was a terrifying thought, going to another country where I wouldn't speak the language, but it was too exciting an opportunity to turn down.

Our journey began on a snowy Thursday morning. There was snow on the ground when we left, but the snow starting falling again as we drove through the canyon on the way to the airport. It was exciting to think about the warm weather that awaited us south of the equator.

At the airport we ran into two of the account managers from the company Bergs and I work for. Fun fact: one of them flew first class, one flew economy.  We discussed whether the first class account manager flew first class because she was a senior account manager, or if she paid for her own upgrade.

We flew to Dallas-Fort Worth, then to Lima.  It was a very long flight, and to make it longer, the airplane did not play the movies they said they would. Instead the showed a cycle of screens that showed us how far we had flown and the time/temperature in Dallas and Lima. Oh, and the same episode of Parks & Rec twice. Good times.

We landed in Lima at 1:00 a.m. We went through customs, and I was concerned because the person at the desk didn't seem to speak English. But I got through and received my very first passport stamp! It was quite exciting. We exchanged some currency and looked for a taxi driver who could take us to a nice hostel. We found one, Bergs negotiated price, and we were off!

We drove about half an hour to the hostel. I'd heard about the crazy traffic in Peru, but being the middle of the night it wasn't too crazy. We did drive by the ocean, though! I didn't even realize it because it was so dark. Bergs told me that the ocean was on our right side, and I thought at first I was looking at very small sand dunes; turns out they were waves! I've never seen the ocean at night. It was so cool.

We arrived at Lion Bed and Breakfast for Backpackers and got a room. There was wi-fi, so I checked in on Facebook (we planned on finding a payphone to call our parents in the morning). The room was tiny; there was pretty much only room for two beds and a television. The bathroom was very compact. It was a tiny room with a shower head on one end, a toilet on the other, and a sink in the middle. We found an English station on the television and settled in for our first night in Peru.