Weddings and Waterfalls.

There are some things I will never take for granted in Chachapoyas. One of those is the market which takes place everyday and is filled with literally hundreds of vendors. It is continually filled day after day with fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, and grains. Shopping is a daily activity here: the only way the food could be fresher is if you picked from a tree, plucked it from a bush, gathered it from the earth, or dug it from the ground yourself. The food system in Chachapoyas is the dream of ecological minded folks in the United States. Almost all the food comes from within 6 hours drive, most of it comes from much closer. The hills are literally covered in fields and gardens of corn, potatoes, wheat etc... and in the most impossible seeming places!! For example, the photo on the bottom where there are no people, no cities, nothing.... there are potato fields on the tops of those mountains. Yeah.

A week ago I took a trip to the third tallest waterfall aptly named Gocta which means something like monkey scream. After an ardous two hour hike through forests with orchids, palm trees, wild birds, pinapple and sugar cane fields, and various hidden hill gardens, we descended to the bottom of the waterfall, to a moss covered cliff face, and a pool of glassy rain water. The waterfall was so tall, in fact, that nearly half of all the water was blown away by the wind before it hit the ground. You could literally stand underneath the waterfall and, looking up, see the waterfall change it´s past in slow motion, drastically swaying from left to right with wind.

I have a friend named Charito who I met because she is living with Enita, the woman who I eat breakfast, lunch and dinner with. Charito is from a small farming village outside of Chachapoyas.

Last thursday she invited me to a wedding of her niece in her village, Lauman. I left early in the morning on thursday and dozed intermittently as we drove for 2 hours on dirt roads, rising and falling through valleys, bumping along, until finally we arrived to the district of Santo Thomas. Her city Lauman is on the side of a hill in a vast valley defined by two giant rock outcroppings. On these two outcroppings existed ancient Chachapoyan buildings built high into the stone.

Revash, high up in that rock believe it or not, are buildings.

In her village I met with her family and friends. Her sister served me breakfast of whole wheat oven baked bread (wheat from nearby fields) and sweet watery coffee. Within minutes I made great friends with a seven year-old girl named Kli (kaylee), who took a great liking to me and my hairy arms. We walked up the muddy road to Charito´s sisters house, picked sweet green peaches from trees, and then stood looking across the valley staring at an unbelievably high church carved into a stone cliff across the valley. For lunch we gathered in the adobe one room kitchen of Charito´s sister. At first her sister was a little embarrased, but Charito assured her that I eat everything. Lunch consisted of boiled free roaming chicken noodle soup, steaming from a cast iron pot cooked over a wooden fire in the corner of the room. On the side where whole fresh dug roasted potatoes, bread, and a plate of corn and beans. It was hearty and delicious, and when really well with the sugary coffee I used to soak my bread in.

Kids were dirty, a testament to the rugged life. Working in the fields there is hard, harder than working in Lima I was told by Kli´s father. HARD. He moved to Lima when he was in his twenties, and when he came back after a few years, he couldn´t handle the workload. ¨here there are no doctors, no... nothing. You work in the campo, that´s it¨ ¨When I came back from the city I hit a wall, I couldn´t it¨

The wedding started at 8pm. Actually it was two weddings. One side of the church was filled with one group and the other was our group. As the father said his thing, children ran around the room and women nursed their babies with casually exposed breasts. The father was very animated, and the ceremony was very religious. I actually agreed with most of the things he said, though I realized that I might have problems in the future if I try and marry a catholic.. haha!

After the ceremony, we filed out to the party into a small decorated room. After champagne, there was a second ceremony (the official legal state marriage... religious and state marriages are separate) and then dancing and beer drinking started. Music blared and everybody in the room danced, we danced and danced, pounding the earth floor with our feet, passing beer, until 4 in the morning, until there was only left a few drunken campesinos, the couple, and myself. My ride back to Chachapoyas arrived at 430 in the morning, I slept the whole way home, and then in my bed soundly into the next day. Happy and content in the knowledge that I shared something special - a world that almost all visitors to Peru do not get to take part in.

Carnavales

For the past couple of weeks I have been recovering from Typhoid and splitting my time between Guadalupe and the desert beach community of La Barranca. I recovered just in time for the biggest Carnaval festival in Peru in Cajamarca, the historic city where the Incan king Atahualpa was captured and killed. Noah (Guadalupe´s only other Gringo guy) and I road up to Cajamarca in the back of a beat up blue toyota pick up. It was an open air ride into the heart of the Andes, wind whipping our faces, standing up and soaking in the beauty as we wound up up up into the clouds. As we got higher we were confronted by water, which came in two forms. One was a torrential downpour as we burroughed into the clouds. The second was children on the side of the road with buckets of water and water balloons. Being two gringos in the back of a pick up during Carnaval is dangerous, because los carnavales are basically one huge waterfight, and who doesn´t want to soak to foreigners in the back of a pickup??

Needless to say we arrived to Cajamarca cold and soaked. That night we met up with another gringa, Dani, from Evergreen and went to the main plaza to take part in the festivities. The plaza de armas in Cajamarca is large and beautiful, and everywhere groups of young and old people stood in circles singing songs, banging drums, with trumpets or guitars, drinking rum and beer and warm chichi. The streets were packed, and people danced in the middle of their circles traditional dances. We danced late, ate soup, and went to bed exhausted from travel and merriment.

The next day we decided to explore. We made it only two blocks from the house before we were mauled by water balloons from a balcony, then seconds later, we were rushed by a group of kids who threw buckets of water on us. In ten minutes the three of us were soaked from head to toe. We quickly realized we needed defenses so we bought the biggest watergun we could find and a couple bags of water balloons. The rest of the day was spent wandering the city and engaging in urban water warfare. It was incredible!! No one was safe. Everyone was a target. Not only that but one had to watch out for paint. Buses, cars, buildings, people.... you could find paint covering them all.

after an epic day of waterfighting .. on my final night I found my self dancing in a group I had met after half a bottle of rum, drinking Chicha and soaking in the music and songs until 4 in the morning. It was beautiful and I left content, content, content.

From here it´s time to recover from a cold, then I got to the beach for a day and after that... Chachapoyas!!