Monday, May 9, 2011

Día de Madre

Because I never post photos.

My mom and I, for Mother's Day, went out visiting family.  Visiting family is always quite the trek.  We took a combi for about forty minutes, to Mitapampa.  Then we start walking.  There are few paths and we trek for hours.  We hauled along with us a couple of big cakes, a pot full of chicken and yucca, a bag with about 50 little breads, and a three liter of warm jello water.  We stopped to give food to everyone we saw on the way, but the main goal was to get some cake out to the very elderly women in our family who live ever so far out.

My mom and a nice little old lady (Angelica from Huascaran's mother!)  We had some chicken and yucca and cake together under a tree.

This is my great aunt.  She is 98 years old and lives a good two hour hike from the nearest road.

My uncle doing some plowing.

My grandma's house.  It's about 150 years old.

We did some quinoa harvesting.

Yes, my mom made lots of jokes about the quinoa being phallic.

My uncle and aunt and cousin had us in for lunch.

The ladies and I - our Mother's Day photo shoot.  I am a giant.

My mom got pretty style-y about five hours into our hike.

Finally back to the road.

 Forty minutes later we miraculously find a mototaxi.  He was off to pick up some other people but my mom says she'll give him fifty centimos more to take us instead.  Nice one, Mom.

The rain here stopped just over a week ago and dry season hit with a vengeance.  We had been out on this hike a few times before, but on Mother's Day is was GRUELING.  It was super hot out, we hiked for a good six hours, and the BUGS.  There are never bugs in my site, it's too cold, so I am not in the habit of wearing bug spray.

I now have about 80 bug bites from mid-calf down.  Every centimeter.  Ugh.  I am glad dry season is only a few months here - you can bet that I will be thoroughly coated in bug spray between now and September.

Events of late:
  • One of my banks ws planning a fundraiser the other day and they decided that they would have a raffle.  They decided they should raffle off their gringa.  They thought it was brilliant and were crushed when I had to shoot them down on pimping me out.  We switched to having a picaronada and I was the only one there who could rattle off the picaron recipe.  Weird.
  • At bank meetings, I am still shocked every time just to see them all arriving at the correct time.  Banks are amazing.
  • Easter weekend: Friday a guy climbed the hill in my town dragging a cross with some other guys pretending to whip him.  At the top they strung him up.  Saturday everyone wore all black and people were crying in the streets, mourning the death of Christ.  Sunday - party, of course.
  • I made ravioli from scratch the other day, blowing my mom's mind.  It was a big hit, but of course my mom insisted we fry it all instead of boil it.  It was of course delicious, if extraordinarily unhealthy.
That's all for now - I have more but I am late for lunch!  Ciao!

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