We are doing great here in Peru and it is crazy to think we have only two weeks left before we are back home in Colorado! Peru has been lovely, but I think all three of us are about ready to be home at this point.
Well the last couple weeks have been a lot of fun! Wrenn is finally moving on from his tongue sticking out phase, and he is getting really good at crawling and sitting. I can't wait to get him home where he has more room to explore and wander, and a high chair will be nice too.
We have been pretty busy the last few weeks trying to see and do all the stuff we have wanted to in the Lima area before we go. We went to the zoo here in Lima:
These crocodiles were awesome! They were so still we wondered if they were real. Then one moved its foot and the other we could see breathing. The water in their habitat was pretty gross, we felt a bit bad for them.
These parrots weren't in a cage for some reason. They didn't seem keen on escaping though, so I guess it works. We also got excited over other parrots we saw that kept saying "Hola!"
The zoo had some really great amusement type areas for kids. They made me wish Wrenn was a little older, so we could have an excuse to play in them.
The zoo had a botanical garden! This botanical garden was different than any botanical garden I had experienced because it looked exactly like the natural foliage I am used to. Walking through it and realizing that pine trees and shrubs were weird and different for Peruvians was an interesting perspective.
Another cool thing about this zoo is they had a bunch of archaeological sites spread through out it. So we would walk through and be like, "Look at that ostrich, oh and that 800 year old adobe wall."
We found out that Wrenn takes after his daddy in loving monkeys. He just kept laughing at the monkey below every time Nathan leaned closer to it. It probably helped that the monkey kept jumping out of the way or hitting the glass. Wrenn loved it.
We really enjoyed our trip to the zoo, and were surprised with how nice it was. We finished off our fun day by going to Museo Larco which had a lot of artifacts (mainly pottery and jewelry) from the Incas and other ancient Peruvian cultures.
This was exhibit on the technique of how they made some of the pottery.
A sacrificial knife and cup for catching blood they would use in human sacrifices...
I think this was armor, but I'm not positive.
Different heads they would use on clubs for fighting.
Ancient Peruvians were gauging their ears before it was cool.
I really liked the head dresses and jewelry the royalty would wear. They were very interesting, and the museum brought up a good point concerning precious metals that I hadn't thought of before. The royalty would wear metals because they shone in the light. This gave them the appearance of being godly because the peasantry wouldn't necessarily understand why they were shining.
Another interesting thing the museum had was erotic pottery. It was interesting, but mostly weird to see. Most of it was rather scandalous, so I'm posting a mild picture. It was interesting though. We wish there had been more explanation on what the pots were used for, but oh well.
Then we left and headed home. There isn't much to see in this picture, but doesn't Nathan look hot?
We also made another trip to El Centro to check out some more churches and museums. We saw the church of San Pedro which was beautiful and it was fun to see a wedding happening as well.
As well as the church of San Pedro we went and saw the church of San Francisco. We weren't able to take pictures during the tour that we took, but we were able to see a monastery that was attached to the church as well as the extensive catacombs underneath the church.
We were able however to take a picture of the church and its many birds. Nathan thought baby might enjoy running through them...
We went and saw the museum of inquisition as well. There we saw a few interesting things like a few of the different tortures that were used during the time as well as where the people under "investigation" would stay. I didn't get as much from it because the tour was in Spanish and Nathan was zoning out a bit as my translator. Anyways here is one of the tortures below. I felt a bit weird taking pictures for some reason...
El Centro is also a great place to go shopping! There as well as other places around Lima they have tons and tons of stalls full of any type of Peruvian thing you could want. I love it. I like all the fun treasures, but it is hard to just browse some times as all the stall owners are desperate to hawk their wares. So we had to learn to browse without looking too interested.
Then at the end of our day in El Centro we decided to take a bus up Cerro San Cristobal, which is basically a large cross on a hill. On the bus we met and made friends with some Peruvian teenagers that were studying to be policemen. They were fun to talk to, and of course Wrenn was a celebrity amongst them. Even so much that the girl in the group wanted to hold him in her picture overlooking the city.
Seeing Lima from atop of the hill was beautiful and it was amazing realizing how big it really is.
Another night we went and learned how to make Aji de Gallina from some friends we have made in this ward. It was the same family that had us over for Elizabeth's birthday party. We had a lot of fun; they are such a wonderful people. We are so glad we got to know the Llanos family!
After dinner we headed over to the national stadium to watch the championship futbol (soccer) game between Cristal and Alianza. We went to the game intending to cheer for Cristal because that was the team the Llanos family liked, but when we found we were surrounded by Alianza fans we cheered for them instead.
The game was really fun, but really loud and Wrenn was not happy about that. I didn't realize cheering and chanting could be so deafening. It was also interesting to see all the police officers around the stadium that were there to keep the peace; because lets just say people are pretty passionate about their teams down here.
This last weekend we decided to get out of Lima and check out a different flavor of city. We went to see Huancayo which is up in the mountains. It was an exhausting 7 hour bus ride winding up into the mountains to get there, but once we got over our motion sickness we had fun.
The bus ride went through the outskirts of Lima which was an interesting view of the city. The outskirts are a lot poorer and run down. There are also a lot of "shanti towns" as Nathan likes to call them built up on the hills around Lima. The other interesting thing about the outskirts of Lima were the mountains themselves. I had never seen mountains that were so lacking in life. They looked like giant piles of dirt. I was glad I got to see this part of Lima too, and realize how truly blessed we are in the States.
After our grueling bus ride we spent the night in a bed and breakfast where we enjoyed a traditional Peruvian breakfast the next morning. Mainly bread, eggs, fresh made juice, and Mate (a hot herb drink).
Then we headed out to see the different craft villages around Huancayo. Three main crafts you can find in Peruvian markets are carved gourds, silver jewelry, and weavings/clothing. Many of these are produced from these villages. For our first village we took a bumpy dirt road up to Cochas; which is where they carve gourds.
This is a cute little park we saw that was fun and pretty. While at the park we saw a family making Pachamanca; which is potatoes, meat, tamales, and other vegetables you cook with hot coal usually in the ground. It was fun seeing them make pachamanca because I was like hey this is their version of a family barbecue!
After we checked out the park we went and talked to some of the Artisans themselves. One of them gave us a demonstration, and it was really interesting to see how they were made.
He carved the donkey for us; then proceeded to "color" it by burning it. He said he was able to get different colors depending on how hard he blew on the stick.
We found out that most of the gourds you buy still have their seeds in them.
And the man demonstrated another technique using pig fat and ash to darken the lines of another more intricately carved gourd.
Then they showed us how many gourds they get each year that they work on for the markets. It was a crazy amount, but very interesting. It was fascinating to realize they have been doing gourd carving in this family for four generations.
One of my favorite parts of the day was driving in between the villages. The countryside up on Huancayo is beautiful and had a different feel than anything else I have experienced.
Then we made it to Hualhuas which is the weaving village. The first family we talked to was very excited about our baby and got us to buy him a hat because he looked just adorable in it. We were a little sad as we weren't able to see as much of a demonstration because it was Sunday and all the weavers took Sunday off. A few people gave us mini demonstrations, but if we had come a different day of the week it would of been full of people weaving, but oh well. I did buy a pure alpaca scarf which is pretty awesome.
Interesting thing this yarn was died with the blood of an insect. The lady showed us the bug and squashed it, the blood color did look similar to the yarn.
Random but awesome statue at the park.
Another thing I liked about Hualhuas was how rural it was. It had cows and pigs just tied up in peoples yards. We would walk along the road and be like oh hello cow, I'm glad you decided to not go into the road.
After all the fun of the craft villages we went and got some lunch in the village of Ingenio; which is famous for its trout. The restaurant we ate at had trout swimming around in the middle, and chickens wandering around. We were also pretty sure the canopy that shaded our table was hand crafted. So all and all a wonderful ambiance with even better fish. The trout lived up to its name; it was amazing!
Our last village stop was the village of Concepcion. The thing that makes Concepcion famous is a giant statue of the virgin Mary up on a hill overlooking the town. Kind of random right? Well we went to go see the statue and more specifically to climb to the top to see Montaro Valley from the crown. It was beautiful. I wish we had more time to look around but there was only room for only about five people in the crown, so you had to move along.
Aren't the clouds awesome?
After seeing all the villages we headed back to Huancayo. It had been a fun day of exploring but we were getting tired. We decided to go look for some ponche (a hot, sweet beverage with rice in it, and whipping cream on it) before we completely tuckered out. Our ponche experience was interesting because the main place to find ponche is street vendors. So we made our way into this market where we stood out terribly, and sat down at this street vendor who gave us our ponche. It was getting dark so we drank our ponche quickly , and got out of there. It was yummy though I'm glad we got to try it.
For dinner we got some pachamanca, but unfortunately we didn't know the culture of pachamanca when we chose it for dinner. Pachamanca is made in the morning and is served for lunch. So when we went at night the pachamanca was cold because the coals weren't still hot at that point. Also there was a power outage so we were eating a bit questionable meat by candle light. Needless to say I mainly ate the vegetables.
After dinner we went and killed a few hours at a Starbucks in the mall, and waited for our bus to come to take us back home. The bus back home was a lot less miserable as we slept through our motion sickness. The trip to Huancayo was a lot of fun, and it was a good rehearsal for our longer and more intense trip to Cusco next week.
This week Nathan has been getting a lot of work done as he is taking next week completely off. We did however decide to take a Peruvian cooking class on Tuesday where we learned to make causa, ceviche, lomo saltado, and picarones. We had a lot of fun learning how a lot of the food we have enjoyed here is made. We are also excited to be able to cook some Peruvian cuisine once we get home.
Weird Peruvian Potatoes.
Nathan's causa. He made his look pretty. I wanted mine to have lots of Mayonnaise because the Mayo here is awesome!
Ceviche (I actually ate the raw fish, proud of me? It was actually good.)
The Lomo Saltado.
Making Picarones, or trying to. Making nice rings was not easy at all.
Baby hanging out at the cooking class.
Then on Wednesday night we threw an American style pizza party with domino's pizza for all our friends we have made down here. It was a nice kind of last hurrah with everyone before we go. Wrenn even said good bye to his Peruvian friend. Well we think he did we mainly had to keep him from poking Pedro's eye.
Then that brings us to Thanksgiving where I moped a little all day missing my family, and also being sad that I probably wouldn't be able to find turkey even if I wanted to. So to make me feel better we went to chili's and had our own little Thanksgiving; saying things we were grateful for before eating each quesadilla slice in our appetizer, and enjoying the closest food I could find to a Thanksgiving dinner.
Baby's first Thanksgiving!
Well that catches us all up. We are happy, but excited to be home. We plan to fly over to Cusco bright an early Tuesday morning and go see Machu Picchu, and the Sacred Valley. Then take a bus down to Puno, and see Lake Titicaca. Then from there fly to back to Lima then head home. We should be back December 10th, and the next time I update this blog we will be home!
It has been an amazing trip, an incredible experience, and I will be forever grateful for the opportunity I had to be here. I love Peru, now, even more than I did when I dreamed of coming here growing up.
Hasta luego amigos y familia!
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