Huancayo!

Hola mis amigos!

This weekend, five of my friends and I took our first big trip outside of Lima to Huancayo. It's a city in the Junin valley in the Andes. We left Thursday night and took a night bus (about 6 hours) from Lima to Huancayo. The night bus was...interesting. I got excited when I heard that they would play a movie, then I found out it was Free Willy 2. Not so exciting. I watched it anyway, though, because I had 6 hours to kill and I wasn't tired. I think it's safe to say that I never want to hear someone screaming "Wheely!" in Spanish ever again. I tried going to sleep after the movie, which didn't work out too well. We were in the very back of the bus near the bathroom. The bus goes up to the tallest point in Peru in the mountains, then back down a little to Huancayo. Because of this, a lot of people were getting sick and running past me to the bathroom, which was not a good sleeping environment. I was able to sleep for 15 minutes, then I would wake up for 10, then sleep for 5, then wake up for 15, then sleep...you get the point.

We arrived in Huancayo Friday morning. My friend's host mom is best friends with a woman who lives in Huancayo, which was great for us. We met up with her for mate de coca (Coca tea--it's legal here and it's absolutely harmless. It helps with altitude sickness) and then she showed us this really nice hostel and talked the owner down on the price. Can you say win-win situation? Once we were able to put our stuff down, she showed us this neat artisan market. I won't give too much away, but I crossed off a bunch of names on my Christmas present list! Then she took us to this market. When we were first walking through it, we went through the flower section, which was so colorful and beautiful! Then we saw all sorts of fruits and rice for blocks and blocks. Then we reached the main portion of the market, complete with raw meat hanging everywhere, pig heads, bread, and more fruit juice stands. My friend bought what looked like a cup of caramel, but with a jello texture. It turns out it was just ground up cow hooves with no additional flavoring or coloring. It will definitely be awhile before I have jello again! We kept walking through the market to probably the most impressive section: the potatoes. Peru has thousands of variations of potatoes, and I think every single variation was at this market. There were aisles and aisles of them.

Once we made it through there, we were pretty tired (we'd been in the market an hour and a half and we were only halfway through!) Our wonderful guide had to go to work anyway, so we went and got lunch. We were all so exhausted from the altitude, minuscule amounts of sleep, and lots of walking, that we went back to the hostel and napped for awhile. We got some more mate de coca (I think I drank about 6 gallons of the stuff this weekend) and went to dinner. Huancayo is a big city, but it isn't very pretty or very good for tourism, so we didn't have much to do at night. We ended up getting ice cream and going to bed early, which was fine by me!

On Saturday, we went back to the market to buy food for a picnic! We bought all sorts of fresh bread, cheese, and fruits and headed via combi to a nearby village called Cochas. It was a tiny little village in the mountains and it was absolutely beautiful! We climbed this hill (I say "climbed" because we were all terribly out of breath--Huancayo is higher than any US city!) and at the top we had our picnic! It was my favorite part of the trip by far. It was great to get out of cities and to see some beautiful scenery. Once we were done with our mini-hike, we went back to Huancayo for a little bit. I finally got to shower, which felt amazing, then we went to dinner and walked around Huancayo for awhile.

Oddly enough, there was a free concert put on by Hare Krishnas (??) in the middle of the plaza. With nothing else to do, we watched the concert (Peruvians singing "We Are the World" and such). Right when we were going to leave, the crowd started going crazy for the next band to perform. It turned out to be a hard rock band where the lead singer sang entirely in Quechua, an Andean language. It was so cool! After the show, this woman approached us and it turned out to be the lead singer's Swedish girlfriend who is in Peru studying to be a clown (I don't think it could get any weirder) and talked to us awhile, which was neat. We went back to the hostel and crashed after a day of hiking and concerts. Unfortunately, one of my friends was so sick from the altitude that she had to leave early on Sunday morning. She got back to Lima in the afternoon and is fine now!

On Sunday, our informal guide spent the day with us again. Apparently, every village in the mountains has one day a year when they have their festival. This particular Sunday was the festival of the village, Ocopa. She took us there and showed us around. There were people selling stuff everywhere, but I was a little disappointed to see people selling Minnie Mouse statues and hats that said, "Florida" on them. I guess that's the way things are, though. Besides that, though, everything was really authentic. I'm pretty sure we were the first white people that many of the residents of Ocopa had ever seen. They were gaping at us with open mouths whispering, "Look at their blue eyes!" It was cool knowing that this wasn't a festival done for tourism, but that it was a way of life there. I ate Pachamanca, which is the Quecha word for "meat feast." They put a bunch of meat in the ground with potatoes and hot rocks, cover it up, and wait for it to cook. It was really good, but I think once was enough for me. It was great seeing the cultural differences between Ocopa and Lima. There, people dress very traditionally and live their lives similarly to the way they did years ago. It was cool to watch, but I definitely felt more out of place. It took us forever to get back to Huancayo (we had major issues catching combis on the way back), but once we got back, we were pooped! Sadly, my friend fell and sprained her ankle, so we had to take taxis everywhere after that. Luckily it was on the last day! We ended up just sitting around in a dessert place killing time until our night bus back at 11.

This bus ride was infinitely better than the first. They played Bruce Almighty (in Spanish of course, but I'll take what I can get) and I was able to fall asleep for 3 hours! I reached my house around 6:30 on Monday morning and I crashed! I was definitely glad to be back in Lima, which makes me think that I am starting to think of it as more of a "home away from home" now, rather than a strange big city I happen to be living in. All in all, it was a great, but exhausting, weekend!

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