A Trip to the Andes

Laurel and I had quite the adventure this weekend. Lidia planned a trip for the Lima volunteers to go up to a small village in the Andes Mountains. We were told very little about what to expect from the trip, but we looked forward to seeing another place in Peru. We left Friday morning and then got back Saturday night. Here are the events that happened during those two days.

7:00 AM Friday
We all piled onto a bus. The drive took about 5 hours and most of it was rather terrifying. The roads were extremely narrow once we got in the mountains, so we'd look out the window and see a complete drop-off. I think I cringed every time the bus turned around the bend.

You can't really tell the drop off from the picture, but this was taken on the bus showing the edge of the road

12:00 PM Friday
We made it to the school in Lahuaytambo. We sang songs and did a craft with the kids there.

The school

1:00 PM Friday
We walked to the village (the school was a good distance away from where the people lived). We were escorted to a room in a community center/hostel place. We just sat and played Scum while waiting to eat lunch. We ate lunch at 3:00 and then sent back to this same room. Laurel and I watched part of a movie and took pictures of the place. Apparently things weren't going according to plan, and some of the families weren't ready for us to go stay with them. So we just hung out for awhile.

8:00 PM Friday
We broke into our assigned groups. In my group there was me, Mike, and Tifany (Laurel was in a different group). Tifany is Peruvian and speaks both English and Spanish, while Mike is from Missouri. The three of us walked up to our host family. Our host family was an older couple named Teo and Angelica. They were so cute and so sweet! They made us dinner and told us about what life is like in their village.

Angelica and Teo

Group selfie

Mike and Tifany

10:00 PM Friday
We got ready for bed. Teo has two different houses, so we stayed in a different one from them. This house consisted of two rooms (no bathroom). Our group was fortunate because there were beds at this house. Some groups didn't even have a host family (because there was a miscommunication) and others had to sleep on the hard floor (Laurel slept on sheepskin). Mike had one bed, while Tifany and I shared the other. Good thing, too. The temperature dropped to about 50 degrees and we just had two blankets and no heater to keep us warm. It was really, really cold! Tifany and I basically cuddled all night to stay warm.

7:30 AM Saturday
We woke up and had breakfast. Breakfast was homemade goat cheese and potatoes. Teo also took us on a hike to see a waterfall (although it was dried up).

Dried up waterfall

11:00 AM Saturday
We met up with the rest of the volunteers. We went on a hike to see some ruins. It was a hard hike that was basically straight down and then straight up again. Very pretty though.

The ruins that we hiked down to

12:30 PM Saturday
Tifany, Mike, and I went back up to Teo's where they fed us lunch. We had steak and soup. They also served some juice made from purple corn that I thought was pretty much the best thing ever.

Cute little Peruvian boy

2:30 PM Saturday
We started back home. We picked up people and gave them rides on the way down the mountain. We even had some people climb up onto the roof. As if the bus ride wasn't scary enough already...

This was a cool experience. It was interesting to see how these people live such humble and simple lives, but are totally happy and content with everything that they have. They were very warm and friendly. I loved my experience there.