Transportation in Peru

Transportation can be full of surprises in Peru, like seeing that bag on the floor of the bus start crawling around or realizing there was a little old lady in the back of the station wagon taxi with the spare tire for your entire ride. Once the bus broke down so they just waited for another company’s bus to go by and had us trade our tickets for ones from the other company (presumably reimbursing the company at a later date).

To get to my regional capital, Huaraz, from Huallanca I typically have a 3 ½-4 hour bus ride. During the rainy season its not uncommon for the weather to impact travel on some of the roads that are in worse condition but the road to Huallanca is in pretty good shape because it’s a mining town and they have the money to make sure that transportation is as good as it needs to be for them. We had one little mishap though when a bridge went out about half way between Huaraz and Huallanca.

At first I thought there was a traffic accident when our bus stopped behind a long line of traffic. But after asking around I found out that there was a bridge out and no way for the bus to get through.

This is an exact profile of the gap that used to be a bridge so it’s a bit difficult to make it out, but heck you get to see the mountains at least.

It sounded like I might have to go back to Huaraz and be stuck outside of my site for a while, but then the driver told us that the bus coming from Huallanca was stuck on the other side of the no-longer-existent bridge. Problem solved. Walk to the other side of the river (crossing an old bridge that wasn’t washed out) and both buses would return in the direction they came from. Unfortunately the police had stopped traffic a couple miles away from the bridge so we’d have to walk all the way and pray that the bus on the other side didn’t take off without us.  But for some reason the police let a few cars past that charged us a couple sols to drive us to the missing bridge.

Obviously they couldn’t drive us across a bridge that wasn’t there, though, so after a 20 minute hike out to an old bridge (through a muddy field) we made it across. And lo and behold, at the end of the line of backed up traffic was my bus waiting to go back to Huallanca.

My boots got really dirty, but you can’t really see that here. But if the blog post was all words and no pictures, it would also be no fun.

Bridges going out aren’t the only problem you can run into in Peruvian transportation. Another day on a bus we got a flat tire.

I’ve had a few flat tires in my life, so I figured it wasn’t a big deal.

But when you don’t have a jack, its time for creativity. So you use what you can find…

Rocks. I don’t even remember how they got the tire changed now, but my experience sure couldn’t offer any ideas to help them.

You Know it’s the Week Before Peruvian Independence Day When…

…everyone is painting their house...

...or business...

...or church.

They have a week of festivities here in Peru for Independence Day so who wouldn’t want their house to be looking its best? Er, at least lots of relatives, friends and random people will be visiting to celebrate. There are Joneses to keep up with in Peru too, I’m just not sure what the stereotypical Peruvian last name is.

I had no idea how common sprucing up the house for Fiestas Patrias (as they call their Independence Day here) was until I realized that whenever I walked around town this week I saw at least a few houses getting painted. I took all these pictures in a 10 minutes walk this afternoon. And I didn’t even take a picture of everyone I saw painting.

As much as I would love my next blog post to be about how wonderful (or crazy, or incomprehensible, or disgusting) the week of partying was I will actually be doing a little traveling myself. There is a two week mid-year school vacation beginning with Independence Day on July 28 so I want to take advantage of some days off to see a bit more of the country.  As long as I remember to take a few pictures on my vacation I will update you all afterward.

Health Promotion

NOTE: I wrote this blog post a few months ago, but forgot to post it. School Vacation and the rainy season have now ended. But this is something I was up to in February and March.

Right now we’re in Summer Vacation (technically I guess I should call it “Rainy Season Vacation”) so there’s less work since lots of the families leave during this time of year. While I use my free time for many things like contemplating the meaning of life, staring at the ceiling of my room and torturing the neighborhood with my guitar practice I’ve also visited some of the comunidades, smaller communities outside of town but still in our district (our county, more or less).

Near Galanniog, one of the comunidades. One of the ladies came to the meeting on a horse (to make it through the mountains in time) carrying her baby on her back.

The nurses and technicians from the Health Center in Huallanca visit each of the comunidades every month to track weight and height of all the kids (which they use to estimate malnutrition in the areas), give charlas (educational talks about things ranging from clean homes, to healthy food, to family planning), and administer vaccinations. All of that is referred to as Health Promotion.

Some crazy, bearded gringo up in the hills.

While accompanying them is a good way to help pass time when I don’t have much work, its also useful since lots of my students, who are now attending high school in Huallanca, grew up in those areas. They have to come into town to attend high school since the only two high schools in the district (county) are here. I can also give a hand now and then with a charla or putting one of the bigger kids on the scale.

My most recent one of these Health Promotion trips was to a little town called Llacuash (have fun trying to pronounce that). It was about an hour taxi ride outside of Huallanca. Most of the time we spent making our way up the side of the mountain where Llacaush is located. But once we were up there it was relatively flat. We also had a couple hour wait until the people started showing up.

The little splotches of white you can see in the valley are Huallanca. I took the picture when we were in Llacuash.

I say “town” but its really just a little cluster of a few buildings and everyone who lives nearby walks or comes on horseback with their kids to where we are at.

One of the adobe buildings that makes up Llacaush. Nice view of the mountains in the background.

It takes some of them over an hour of walking to arrive since everyone is spread out on their farms.

Some of the attendees in Llacaush. Everyone brought a dish to share with the nurses and I for lunch. You can also see the traditional dress from the region here. Its becoming less common in Huallanca, but in the more rural areas like Llacaush it is still worn on a daily basis.

Boys Camp

Right now I am planning a boys camp for July with some of the other volunteers. We will be holding it in a national park here in Ancash and all of the volunteers will bring a kid from their site. The park is providing us with buildings, beds, etc to use free of charge, but we applied for a grant to get funding for food and all the materials we will be using in the activities. Why am I explaining all this you ask? Because the grant gets funded by donations. Meaning we need friends and family back in the US to give a few bucks to fund the project. We actually only need about $550 total, but we need it within a couple of weeks so that it can be processed in time for the camp. Since we don't need a super large sum of money, but we do need it soon, every dollar really does count. I would greatly appreciate any donations anyone can make. Every couple bucks is important. You can follow the link below to donate.

https://donate.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=13-527-025

One last thing, I will be posting about how the camp went afterward so you can all see.

Replacing hockey with bull fights

Unfortunately I’m not able to go to hockey games in Peru since the sport doesn’t exist down here. The good news, though, is that they have a possible replacement. Bull fights!

I should use the word “fights” with caution, though, since there isn’t always a lot of fighting going on. I’ve had the luck, or maybe opportunity would be a more appropriate word, to see a couple varieties of these events. If you read my first couple blog posts you might remember me talking about toros locos (crazy bulls), bull costumes covered in fireworks (and incidentally still pending approval from the fire marshal) that are often part of Peruvian parties. Well, my understanding is that all of this is part of the Spanish culture that came over from Europe. The difference with my latest experience is that the toros were real live bulls (fortunately not covered in fireworks) although the human participants remained the same: drunk, partying Peruvians.

Huallanca's very own bull fighting stadium (that's really all its used for).

In Huallanca I went to a corrido (I think it would be easier if you just read the story I’m writing here instead of me trying to define the word) with my brother Mauricio.

Me and Mauri with clowns and crazy people in the background.

They let a series of different bulls into the ring. At first it was just the clowns out there with the bulls, but eventually some spectators got drunk enough to participate as well.

The clowns set up a teeter tooter and went up and down as the bull chased them around (and underneath).

They also “accidentally” let some bulls into the corridor that runs around the outside of the ring so everyone freaked out and jumped around, but after a little while we got bored and all went home.

Before leaving we ran into Kendra with some of her family.

A few weeks later, there was a real bull fight for the anniversary in a neighboring town, Chiquian, where another volunteer lives. I went over with some of Kendra’s family for the afternoon.

Chiquian’s stadium is a more makeshift than Huallanca’s, but it still has a nice view of the mountains.

We were packed in like sardines.

I say “real” because in addition to everything that Huallanca had in Chiquian there was also a bull fighter, fully equipped with his sword to kill the bull. Yup, that’s right. He “won” the bull fight and killed the bull at the end, although I feel like the bull probably didn’t have much of a chance.

Run, bull! He’s actually hiding a sword behind that inviting red cloth!

In a way it was a little disturbing watching him repeatedly jab the bull with his sword until it successively couldn’t run, couldn’t walk, couldn’t stand and eventually couldn’t stay alive. Then they dragged it off.  (Sorry, not trying to be a downer, but, heck, that’s life, right? Or death…I guess. Maybe I should stop before I offend any more people).

The crowd stormed the court, tore down the goalposts and then dragged the dead bull out.

Unfortunately as soon as I got addicted to seeing drunks get rammed by bulls I found out that they only have these a couple times a year. So now I spend all my time not just missing hockey but also missing corridos!