Friday was “Dia de la Juventud”
here in Peru. Most of the schools went on paseos for the day and my directora
invited me to go along. The plans for what we were actually doing changed a few
times though out the week, but I was still going where ever it was. The last my
host nephew and I heard we were going to a petrified rock forest to have a look
around and enjoy our picnic lunches in the sun. Accordingly I put on a pair of
jeans and my converse. For those of you who have never owned converse of your
own; they have ZERO traction…..we’ll get back to this later.
When I got to
the school they told me we were actually going on a hike to a lake, but they
said the walk would only be about 40 minutes from where we park the car, so I hardly
noticed the change of plans. When we finally got into the vans the driver told
us we were going to a different lake. I don’t remember the name he said, but it
doesn’t much matter because it turns out that it doesn’t exist. We finally
ended up at Lake Churup . Once we got there we realize that three of the vans
from our school had actually gone to some other lake, so we didn’t have the
school director or a third of the kids with us……..I know, right? And we’re not
even out of the vans yet.
So Lake Churup
is up in Nevada Churup in the mountains on the other side of Huaraz and it sits
somewhere between 4500 and 5000 meters of elevation. The drivers tell us we
need to be back to the vans in three hours, which is fine because the lake is
only 40 minutes away. At least that part of the plan didn’t change, right?
Wrong! After an hour of climbing straight up hill my legs started getting weirdly
tired; after two hours it hurt to breath; around 2 ½ hours my fingers started
tingling; then around 2 hours and 40 minutes my vision started to tunnel
out…..oh wait that’s me laying across a big rock to keep from passing right out.
At the same time course I am trying to figure out how to explain that my house
isn’t much higher than sea level in the United States. To help increase the
likelihood of remaining conscious, I decided it was time to start making my
decent. Not surprisingly once I turned around to head back about 40 or 50 other
students decided that wasn’t such a bad idea either :-P I think at least half
the kids didn’t make it all the way to the lake.
The way back
down was still very slow because it’s so steep, but at least it was getting
easier to breath. No one was going to
make the 3 hour dead line at this point and we were the closest to the bottom
anyway, so my little group decided to take a snack break. While everyone was
gathering their things to keep moving, I stop to wait on one of the many
boulders that we had to climb over to get back down. Suddenly all the little
tiny pebbles and broken rocks started to slid off, with me on top of them.
There was nothing nearby for me to grab and no way for me to get my traction
back (remember the converse?); so I did the only thing I could think of…. turn
to face back up the hill, throw myself down on the rock and try to hang on so I
don’t slide sideways down the mountain. Needless to say I was ready to be done
with the hike :-P Fortunately we all made it home in one piece.
Saturday
afternoon Jeff and Brice were both in Caraz, so I went up to meet them for a
little while. We had some ice cream and used the internet…….the basic out-of-site
activities :-P On my way home that day I had another one of those “life is
different now” moments. It gets dark pretty fast around here; so even though I
left Caraz in the day light, it was dark before I got back to site. Right about
the time I was getting off the combi my host sister-in-law called my cell phone
looking for me because they were all SO worried about me. Turns out they don’t
think I should even be out on my own after dark…..even though, in this case,
dark was about 6:30 pm. I keep forgetting I don’t quite have the same independence here that I have in the
States.
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