Semana Santa

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April 8th 2018

Published: April 8th 2018

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His Dudeness

San Ramon

Arrived at the guesthouse

I read this book the other day. It was written through the eyes of a fifteen year old autistic boy. It was interesting, because the writing style was so different. Like the writing style of a fifteen year old autistic boy. The style was something like this…

We went for a trip to San Ramon on Semana Santa. Semana Santa is what the Peruvians call Easter. It is a very important holiday for Peruvians. My brother says everybody is on the road on Semana Santa. My brother chose San Ramon because everywhere was full already. But in San Ramon his institute has a guesthouse. It belongs to the field station and when staff from Lima come they can stay at the guesthouse. They also allow family of staff to stay there when it is not in use.

We left on Ash Thursday because that is the first day of Semana Santa. Everybody leaves on Ash Thursday, so my brother wanted to leave at 05.30 in the morning, because he hoped to avoid the traffic that way. I had my big backpack with me. It contained the following items: 3 t-shirts (2 red, 1 blue), 2 shirts with buttons (1

San Ramon

View from the veranda

red Hawaiian shirt, 1 green), 1 red sweater, 3 shorts (2 olive green, 1 khaki), 1 grey zip-off, 3 socks (2 grey, 1 black), 10 pairs of underwear, 1 blue travel towel, 1 sheet, 1 blue sarong, 1 pair of blue swimming trunks, 1 pair of hiking shoes, 1 bag with toiletries (containing a toothbrush, 2 tubes of toothpaste, 2 small bottles of shampoo, 1 small shower gel, 2 small hotel soaps, 2 hotel shampoo sachets, 1 razor, 1 comb, 2 deo-rollers, 2 nail clippers, 1 small mirror, 2 small tubes of after-shave lotion), 1 water container, 1 toilet roll, 1 medikit, 1 bag with pliers, a sharp knife, duct tape some matches and a lighter, 1 orange rain-poncho, 1 small bag with clean syringes and needles, 1 sewing kit, 1 bag with a clothesline, 6 clothesline clips, 2 different sized plugs to put in a sink, 1 container with paracetamol and ibuprofen.

I didn’t need all these things, but my mother and I had just come back from Mexico and I had not unpacked my backpack yet and decided to just take everything with me. All my clothes were packed in vacuum bags so I can fit them

San Ramon

Test fields around our guesthouse

easily into my backpack, and it also makes it easier for me to find things. I also had a small backpack with me. It contained my big DSLR camera, a tele-lens, 1 small compact digital camera, an underwater casing for the small compact camera, 1 steri-pen (water purifier), 1 mini-laptop, 1 Kindle, 1 iPod, 1 wallet, 1 money belt containing my credit and debit card, my passport and two small usb-sticks, 1 eye-mask, 1 pair of earplugs, 1 small bottle of hand sanitizer, a bag with 2 more usb-sticks and my online banking card readers, 1 big bag with cables for my laptop, Kindle, iPod and iPhone, 1 battery charger for my DSLR camera and 1 for my compact camera, 1 normal battery charger for the batteries in my steri-pen, 1 converter which fits in the plugs of different countries.

We also made sandwiches for our breakfast along the way. We packed them in foil and then we put them in the cooler box. We took wine with us and pisco and limes and butter and cheese and some fruit. My brother packed the car. It was a big yellow Toyota cruiser which my brother says can climb up

San Ramon

Walking towards the first waterfall

45 degrees angles. We were only five of us, because Ida was going to go with her boyfriend and his family to the beach for Semana Santa. Because of this we all fit into one car.

Dawn was approaching when we left and the sky looked deep purple. My brother was happy because there was not much traffic. Still it took us an hour to get out of Lima. I played games with Nina, like ‘I spy with my little eye’ and ‘I am thinking of an animal’. As we drove deeper into the mountains they went from dry brown to lush green. After three hours we got stuck in a traffic jam. It was a huge traffic jam and it became worse because many anti-social Peruvians decided not to stand in the right lane and overtake, so then the people coming down the mountain could also not move. I was surprised that the other people in the traffic jam didn’t get angry, because in Europe if this would happen people would get very angry.

We had breakfast while waiting in the traffic jam and I joked that we would be able to see where we had breakfast

San Ramon

It was beautiful but busy, I managed to take a shot without anybody else in it, but it was difficult

when we had lunch. My mother and my sister-in-law went out and walked up the road to see where the traffic jam started. My brother also got out. A man with a black dog wanted to take a selfie with me, which was fine. Then my brother almost got into a fight, because more anti-social Peruvians started coming up the road on the wrong lane and he stopped them. And the man got out, but then the other Peruvians came to help my brother and they forced the man to turn back and after that they stopped other cars trying to do the same. My mother and sister-in-law came back and told us they never could see the beginning of the traffic jam, but that the police had arrived and they were making all the bad people go to the side of the road so the traffic could flow again. After 2 and a half hours we started moving again. But because the traffic was so heavy we got stuck in many more places. Only after the turn off to San Ramon did the traffic ease up.

It took us 11 hours to drive to San Ramon. My brother

San Ramon

My brother took this picture of a beautiful flower

says it normally takes 6 hours. Our guesthouse was nice and it was empty. And it was located behind a gate with a big fence and a security guard. There were many greenhouses and test fields and it had a nice garden. We were very tired. We went to a restaurant on the other side of the road and I had ‘cecina’ which is the local speciality. It is smoked pork. And I also had a big ball of mashed plantains, which is also local. After that we had drink on the veranda outside our rooms. We made ‘chilcano’ which is pisco with limes and ginger ale. My brother said it wasn’t good because it was warm and we had no ice, but I liked it anyway.

On Good Friday we went to some waterfalls. In Sweden they call it Long Friday, because it must have been a long day for Jesus, but not such a good day. We first had breakfast at the institute because it was included. It was a nice breakfast and we made some lunch sandwiches because we wanted to have a picnic somewhere beautiful. The first waterfall we went to was very crowded because

San Ramon

On the way back from the first waterfall

of Semana Santa and because it was well known. So we went to another one which was on a bad road and less well known and we hoped this would mean less people. But this waterfall was also crowded. So we went on again, because we had seen on a map about more waterfalls down the same bad road, but they were not advertised so maybe nobody would be there.

And we had to ask at a village and they said continue up the road until you come to a bridge you can’t cross and then you have to walk. So we continued to drive and the road became narrower and trickier and there was nowhere to turn. But then we found a spot to turn and we parked our car there and walked. And we walked for half an hour and came to the bridge and crossed it and on the other side was a nice waterfall and there was nobody there. We had lunch there. You couldn’t swim at the waterfall, but you could stand under it and it was like having a back massage. And there were many beautiful butterflies.

My brother saw a small

San Ramon

Nina with chickens

path leading up and decided to explore and above the waterfall was another waterfall and we all went up, but we didn’t swim because we had left our swimming gear at the bottom. Then we went back and we had dinner in La Merced the next town. The restaurant was nice it looked out over the square. I had fried trout for dinner. We walked around the square after dinner, but my mother had pain in her hips and we thought it was from the bumpy ride on the bad road. In the evening we had chilcano’s again, but this time they were cold and my brother liked them.

On Saturday we went to a waterfall along the main road, it was called the Maiden’s Veil, because it is very thin and looks like a veil. You can walk behind it. After that we tried to walk to another waterfall but we couldn’t go on after a while because of a wild river so we turned back. Nina had been to San Ramon on a school trip a year earlier and knew about a butterfly place and she wanted to go back to it. So we went there and

San Ramon

At the second waterfall... Also busy, this photo doesn't do the crowds justice

saw more butterflies. They also had other animals but they were not so interesting. Then we had lunch along a small road overlooking a river. After lunch we went back to the guesthouse and my brother hid Easter eggs in the garden for us to find.

Because we were going home the next day very early, we had an early dinner as well. We had some pizza because it was easy. Since 5.30 wasn’t early enough when we left we decided to leave at 3.00 in the morning on Sunday. It was very cold and dark when we left. But there was no traffic and we were happy. We played music from my iPod because I have a lot of music on it and many different kind of music and I was the DJ.

At 6.00 we had breakfast at a nice restaurant. I had scrambled eggs, orange juice and a coffee. We arrived back at 9.30 in the morning. We had a BBQ for lunch and just some small snacks for dinner and went to bed early again because everybody was tired from getting up at 3.00. Ida also came home on Sunday. She had had a

San Ramon

Going to the third waterfall

good time on the beach.

And that is what we did for Semana Santa.

The rest of the week my mother and I did nothing. We sat at the pool at the house, and walked around the lake in the evening. On Wednesday my sister-in-law had to go to the north of Peru for work, and she came back on Friday again. And on Saturday my brother left to the United Kingdom and Finland for work and he will be back again in one week. So my mother and I are going to go on a little trip ourselves next week. But I will write about that in my next blog.

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