Follow the Journey

Two weeks ago we arrived in Arequipa, Peru. Having spent over a month in Ecuador I thought I knew what to expect from Peru environmentally; lots of green and lots of moisture. After all the country is separated into the same three geographical regions as Ecuador: The costa to the West on the Pacific Ocean, the sierra located in the highlands of the Andes Mountains, and the selva, the lowlands east of the Andes where the Amazon jungle resides. However, during the flight from Peru´s largest city, the coastal town of Lima, to the countries second largest city, the sierra town Arequipa, I saw vast expanses of a rugged desert. Impressive brown mountains rose as far as I could see to the Southwest (my window limited my view to this general direction). I could discern no vegetation although that may have been due to my extreme altitude, several miles above the Earth. I can say with confidence that for almost all of that hour and a half flight there were no trees. In Arequipa the change in climate was palpable immediately, just by breathing in the dry air. In two weeks in this country, it has rained just once; a very brief and light downpour, which is a far cry from our experience in our final days in Ecuador. The city is nestled in a flat space surrounded by three volcanoes and other mountains, some of them snowcapped.
Coming out of the airport we met with Maria, our first contact in Peru, and the director of the Llama Education Spanish school, where we would spend the week learning Spanish. Our group was divided into three homestays for the week. I, along with Jack, Peter, and Lucas, stayed with the Meza family. I have to thank them for accommodating us, especially Isabel for preparing us fantastic meals twice daily. The second day in the city, Sunday, we took a small tour of the city guided by Maria, visiting the mall, the market, and the basilica. At the tours end we lunched at the incredible sandwich place, La Lucha. For the week days we followed a fairly routine schedule. We were divided up into two groups: the morning Spanish lesson group and the afternoon group. While one group took Spanish lessons the other went to a nearby orphanage for girls to work a bit and play with the girls. Originally the morning Spanish group was supposed to teach English to the girls but that never happened. The afternoon Spanish group was supposed to do lots of work at the orphanage but that didn´t really happen either. In the end most of the time spent was playing with the girls and the one boy, Jeffery. We ended up teaching each other lots of games during the week. They taught us Kiwi and Cocacola, outdoor games involving a volley ball. We taught them nukem and several card games: presidents and assholes, spoons, squares, and bullshit. And of course with Jeffery we played “caballo”. We did do a bit of work there; we helped replant the garden and put some new sod in the yard, but this work was only for less than two of the days. Spanish classes lasted for four hours daily, two two hour sessions with a thirty minute break in between. I, being the worst in the group by far, learned a tremendous amount in this week but I was not alone in that. The group consensus was that we had learned more Spanish in this week than ever before in any other similar time frame. We spent our last full day in Arequipa enjoying the food festival for several hours enjoying many delicious foods. I personally had tamales, donuts covered in honey, a cow heart dish called anticucho, quinoa icecream, and multiple cupcakes.
Currently we are in Qusqu, and are headed off to the Sacred Valley tomorrow for a yoga retreat, where we will be off the grid for a while.