24 Hours of Bliss

We made it to Pampas Grandes! Barely. We are here to do service for a program that we knew almost nothing about when we agreed to do it. Pan Peru is the program we are working for. We were recommended to them by a friend back home. The purpose of Pan Peru is pretty much to compensate for the lack of education and attention that small, poor, farming communities get in Peru. Pampas Grandes is the town they are focusing on right now. To get here we had to get to Lima where we met with the director (who doesn’t speak a lick of English by the way) and then get a bus up to Huarez. In Huarez we met another guy who lives and works in Pampas and met us to drive us the rest of the way. That transportation ended up being a little faulty. First of all turns out we were to drive up to Pampas with the mayor of Pampas, who was in a meeting. At first he said the meeting would be out at 10 am – long story short we pulled out of Huarez around 3 o’clock with 5 other passengers, one of which road in the back of the pick up truck amongst our back packs, a dirt bike, and a load of 10’ long pipes. After barreling up the windy country road for about 30 min we pulled over to check something under the hood – I wasn’t complaining because I needed a bano break anyway. By the time I made it back to the truck the mayor and Diego (the guy who initially picked us up) were arguing about something. They had taken the cap off of the (hot) radiator and it had flown off and was now missing. We searched for about an hour before heading back down to Huarez. The mayor (the driver at the time) was pretty annoyed and was cruising down the road that we had just climbed when we came across a lady and her small herd of live stock. At the last second one of the sheep darted in front of our car and the mayor ran right over it! Teri and I both gasped, but the best part is HE KEPT DRIVING. No apologie, we didn’t even slow down long enough to see the carnage, he just kept going. We didn’t know whether to laugh or what. That was just the beginning though – 2 min later Diego made us pull over so he could ralph out the window. We were going way too fast down that road and Diego proceeded to give the mayor and ear full. Diego drove the rest of the way. 2 hours later we were finally headed back up the road. No one had the right cap, but we forced one into working finally. Teri and I couldn’t help but laugh, it was the craziest day. The truck had some serious damage to the front bumper from the poor lamb. They guy in the back had to get out and walk twice as we passed police stations so they wouldn’t get a ticket for having him in the back. The cherry on top was when we stopped to have something to eat at about 9 pm after rumbling up a dirt road squished in the back of a truck for the past 2 hours and we were served soup with a swollen chicken foot floating in it. We got some serious giggles – it was all just too much.
It has all turned out fine though. We are staying in a great little house in the most beautiful spot at the top of a mountain. Pampas Grandes is a dusty little town clinging to mountain side at about 11,000 ft. One way down the mountain takes you to the ocean and the other to the jungle. Today we literally woke up to a rooster crowing. We went to the local “Olympics” where all of the surrounding towns come to Pampas to compete in running, soccer, and volleyball. Random I know. We made some fast friends with 3 little girls who took us all around town today. We can’t wait to start teaching. It’s so nice to be somewhere that we can actually get to know the people and not just be gringo outsider tourists. I really despise being a tourist. People don’t treat you like people, they treat you like a dollar sign. Here we’ll have a chance to really make friends with people and see how we live. We are living in pretty humble circumstances ourselves actually. We’re staying in this funny house, where there is really no interior space besides the rooms. It’s hard to explain, but there are no halls. All of the rooms just lead outside and there is a path outside the runs along the building that you take to get to the kitchen and the bathroom. There is no heat, the floors are cement. The water is hot though, which is just about all I could ask for at this point. It’s kind of like camping – I guess? I love it. There is a dog here that we are already friends with and our yard has big green over grown grass and flowers all over. Not a bad place to hang out for a few weeks.