Huancavelica and Huancayo

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Huancavelica and Huancayo
We took a night bus from Pisco to Huancavelica and it was probably best that we couldn’t really see where we were going. At times the bus crawled around rock ledges and steep drop offs, mostly on dirt roads, arriving in Huancavelica at 5 am. We spent two days in Huancavelica, a small mountainous town where we were the only foreigners at that time and it made for great conversations while eating our peanut butter in the park, listening to music at a nearby community festival, waiting for buses or being given an extensive tour of the reconstruction efforts of an old church. While touring the church I tried to explain that I had been a building inspection and due to our inability translate correctly I suddenly became an architect and they showed me around everywhere, walking the tops of the walls, etc., it as great.

Getting to Huancayo was another 5 hour bus ride, but this one was in the daylight through beautiful mountains. The first day in Huancayo was cold and rainy and we attempted to take a bus out to the neighboring artistic communities, where each focused on different weaving, craving and other artistic skills. We wanted to go to the furthest and then walk to back going through several others on the way. We were only partial successful, but we definitely once again got off the beaten trail. Huancayo is a fairly large city and every Sunday they have a huge parade where they choose different traditional dance troops, different schools, different professions, (such as nurses), different musicians and they march a couple of blocks and gather in the city square. At first we thought this might be for the tourists or a rare occasion, but we were the only foreigners that we saw and they do it each week rotating groups so that it is a special occasion for those involved. Our time in the Central Highlands was wonderful. Although we can not say that we really know or understand Peru it did give us the time to talk with real people.

The last three weeks have been wonderful. We started in the more tourist places, where there were wonderful sites and hikes and the last week and a half have been in much less touristy places, with many great conversations with average people. One example of this transition is that in Cusco there are many children and others in beautiful traditional dress with their lamas wanting to have their picture taken for a small amount of money. In the central highlands we had several people stop us and ask to have their picture taken with us with their cameras in their traditional dress.

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