Inches from death... (just kidding, mom)

Thought I'd fill you in on the end of our time in the Andes, since we´re going to be off the map for the next couple days...

Well, yesterday we decided to visit the Pre-Inca, Chachapoyan city of Kuelap. Its kinda like an off-the-beaten-path Machu Picchu. One that we can afford. The city itself is completely amazing. Sitting on the top of a 9,000 foot tall peak, surrounded by green mountainsides, Kuelap is about 3 times the size of Machu Picchu (said someone in our tour group) and has the remainings of over 400 stone buildings inside its giant walls. Wow. SO glad we got to see something so beautiful, and for like 30 bucks for the both of us. Why is such a site so cheap to visit you ask? This is why...

 It´s a two and a half hour drive out there up and down unpaved mountain roads. The definition of gut-wrenching. On one side, you´re hugging the stone walls, where there are landslides covering half the road at times, and then the other is a straight drop, probably 3,000 feet, down the side of the mountain. I mean, nothing beats the view, but I was literally hyperventillating the whole time. Jenna and I sat in the front of the tour bus with the driver and he was making fun of us freaking out the entire time. He took his seat belt off half way through and said it was safer, so that "when the van starts to roll down, you can escape more easily". Only half kidding...? Mine didn´t work anyways. Jenna took hers off, just in case it wasn´t a joke. He said he has been driving that route almost every day for the last nine years. "You know you have thee most dangerous job in the world right?". "No, todo tranquilo!" (Everything´s easygoing... right.) On the way back down, he told me to honk the horn around curves so he could keep both hands on the wheel. It was probably overkill, but I honked it pretty much the whole time. Safety first, right? Holy shit. 

He did get us back safely though, with only a few near-collision encounters. Again, thanks, God. And now, we need God´s guidance some more... because we´re doing it again. We just bused an insanely curvy hour from Chachapoyas to Pedro Ruiz (sitting next to a Peruvian girl who literally threw up into a garbage bag...) and tonight we´re taking our last night bus of the trip (I think) to the port town of Yurimaguas. From there, we´ll hop on a boat, string up our hammocks, and spend the next 3 days drifting down the river in the Amazon River Basin. Pretty awesome. Well, as long as we don´t get Malaria....

Bring it on.

Nae

From an Internet Cafe in the Andes

We´ve been out of Lima for ten days now, and falling in love with more of Peru. Last Monday we overnight-bused 10 hours up the coast to a beach town called Huanchaco. Originally the plan was to stay 2, maybe 3 days, but the sunny beach and laid-back feel held us down for a week there. I can´t complain. Travelers, and a LOT of surfers, from all over the world head to Huanchaco to relax, catch some waves, and see the sites. The town is famous for its 20-ft long reed boats which line the beach, and you can even paddle one out on the ocean if you want. Jen and I didn´t try it because you apparently have to have “mucha fuerza”, a lot of strength, to do it. We did rent some surf boards though, and had fun getting tossed around by the ocean. The beach is divided by a long fishing dock: one side with waves for the pros, one side with waves beginners can handle. Fortunately, the beginner´s side is loaded with people who have never tried to surf in their lives, so Jenna and I could hold our own over there. We´re gettin it down. Slowly, but surely.

The best thing about the town was the collection of tourists it brought in that week. We met surfers and non-surfers from Germany, Poland, Bolivia, England… everywhere. Our best friends for the week included a 45-yr-old Australian on vacay, and some Israeli backpackers trekking South and Central America. The Israelis had just finished 5 years of mandatory army duty and were taking the year, as is common now, to travel the world. It was mind-blowing to hear about life as a 23-yr-old kid, being a military leader in charge of a platoon of men, fighting terrorism, and making decisions on million-dollar government projects. Just a little different than the life I´ve known…

At the end of the week, everyone had to continue on their journeys. Most to Brazil for the World Cup (SO jealous) and for us, deeper into Peru. We took another night bus 14 hours east, in towards the Andes. I slept all of an hour, maybe 2, as the bus turned around sharp mountain roads all night. We´ve bused the Andes quite a few times now, but the horror stories of Peruvian buses crashing down the mountainside kept me up for some reason… But, we didn´t crash to our deaths. Thanks, God. We made it 5,500 ft up to Chachapoyas. We scouted out an Alaskan-looking mountain lodge, and planned out how to make the most of the last few days in the Andes. The town itself is a site to see: loud and friendly people, crazy mumbled Spanish, and gorgeous views from every angle. The main draw of the town is that it’s a central drop-point to visit some of Peru´s less-tromped caverns, hikes, and archaeological sites. Yesterday, Jenna and I spent 6 hours hiking to the world´s 5^th tallest waterfall, Catarata Gocta. The hike was tough, but worth it. 

Well, I think we´ll be here in Chachapoyas another 2 days, see some more sites, and then bust into the jungle, should be an awesome way to end the trip.

It is SO starting to set in how close to the end we are...

19 days,

Renae

Falta Poco

Okay, gotta say sorry for the lack of blogging lately, but life really has been super normal up until recently! We were so busy with the kids, hanging out with the teachers, and helping out as much outside school as we could that we didn't really even notice the end of our time at MCS creeping up on us until it was time to say goodbye. But come it did, so Renae and I spent last Friday going around to all the classrooms and saying goodbye to all the kids and teachers. We had SUCH an awesome experience at the school; the only way to leave it was to promise to make it back again someday. It's starting to seem like we have been making that promise a lot lately.....

And true to form, our 7 weeks spent at MCS taught us more than we ever could have imagined. As you know we have learned some pretty important lessons throughout the course of the trip so far, not just about cultures and the world we live in, but about openness, generosity, and trusting in God's grand scheme for us (just to name a few). And we've come to realize that God really did know what he was doing when he brought us here to Lima. He has poco por poco, little by little, let us discover His lessons for us all year long, just to have them cemented in here at the school. Living with someone as open and caring as Natalie, and having such great mentors everywhere we turn, has been the perfect environment to jump in even further, opening ourselves up to what might come next, and to how we really want to live out our lives. It's hard to explain it well enough for you to understand just how great and eye-opening it's been, even this far in. But my time here will always be precious to me, that's for sure.

On a different note, we ran a 10k in the city this morning! And won.... NOT! But I gotta say it was a little easier than the last time we did it, probably because we weren't at an altitude of 9000 feet this time, so we did manage to shave about 10 minutes off our time from October. We finished in a little over an hour, then headed over to cheer people on as they reached the final stretch of the half and full marathons. Before running in Quito last fall, I had only ever done one race, which was the half marathon in Fargo. There, people line every street, clapping and cheering for you the WHOLE time, which helps keep you going more than anything. I just assumed that's how it was everywhere. But the races in both Quito and Lima have been almost entirely silent, with nothing but the masses of runners on the streets. How there are WAY more people out supporting in a city of 100,000 than in one of 11 million I have no idea, but it's true. So when we saw some of those marathoner's faces by the end, and knew from experience how much a little moral support could help at that point, we took it on as our job to cheer for every single one of them. About two hours and a couple hundred funny looks later we had to leave before we lost our voices, but it was super fun to see everyone go by, and we hope we managed to pump up a few of them at least a little. We may have been a little of a spectacle with our braided, ribbon-ed up hair and painted legs on top of our height and gringo-ness (apparently no one goes all out for races around here), but by now we're not used to fitting in anywhere anyways so it's all good.

Other recent highlights include a Mexican potluck with the other teachers, a trip to see the water fountain park, which is WAY cooler than it sounds and even holds a Guinness world record for tallest fountain geyser, shopping at the Indian market, helping out at a church youth carnival event, and finishing off every night with a good old pirated movie and some popcorn. Life has definitely been treating us well.

But as comfortable as we've been, and as close to the end of the trip as it feels with only 30 days left, we have decided to bust out one last big adventure. So tomorrow night we will hop on a bus and start the trek over to the JUNGLE, complete with time on the ocean, in the mountains, and 2 days on a boat down the Amazon. All we have to do is pull out our scrubby trail clothes from the bottom of the pile, put some wraps in our hair, finally pick our beloved packs back up, and off we go. Can't say what shape we'll be in when we get back to the states after this, or if we will still be able to claim being lice-free, but I couldn't be more excited. Like I said to Renae, “I feel WAY too normal to go back to the U.S. right now”. I know at least some of you are expecting crazy, unshaven, bug-bitten, bracelet-wearing, jungle adventurers to hop off that plane, so I guess we better do our best to meet those expectations.

Turning my cardigans in for trail pants,

Jenna Flynn