Cuerpo de Paseo

My town really likes field trips. So far with them I've gone to Chalaco, Confeccionarios, Represa Poechas, Sullana, Santo Domingo, and Jacanacas. Some of those were part of the same field trip, but we made stops. I wasn't able to go on two or three of the other ones, though they asked.

Yesterday, we went to Jacanacas which is a caserio (I don't know how to explain it in English. It's a little satellite town but you have to go into the main city to do everything like school, medical, etc.). We went for what I thought would be a few hours like all the other ones, but it ended up being from 7:30 in the morning, when we left Pambarumbe, to 10 PM when we returned. The drive was 2 and a half hours.

At Jacanacas, my counterpart talked about his environmental projects and what we can do to help. He's really motivated to do his part in helping to limit climate change. Then, they played football and volleyball. Then a bit more of the talking and then we left.

Mostly, this is just a quick summary because it was the drive home which was my favorite part. The transportation we took is basically a large truck with a big open bed. We stood up in the bed the the walls come up to about my shoulder. There were about 30 of us back there which was fine. But then it started to rain a little bit. I'm also a few inches (probably 6) taller than the rest of my town and as such, got hit in the face/head with branches when I wasn't paying attention enough to duck out of the way.

We didn't leave Jacanacas until 7:00ish and I was just ready to get home because I was tired and I had to be up at 3:30AM this morning to catch the but into Piura. Well, getting home quickly isn't an option because I live in Peru. What this means is we had to slow down because there was a donkey in the middle of the road. He wouldn't move out of the way and then got startled and started running along the road. Therefore, we were only able to drive as fast as the donkey could run. We past a guy on a motorcycle and he helped to move the donkey from our path.

Not two seconds later, a bull is doing the same thing. He wasn't so keen on running, so he walked slowly and we followed him for a short way before he just got out of the way himself. The thought of animals just blocking the road seemed hilarious to me. We were behind the donkey for probably 10 minutes and the bull for 2 or 3.

Then, I got my first taste of what rainy season will be like.....We got to a large mud patch in the road and the truck got stuck. Someone dug it out with a shovel, then it moved 10 feet, got stuck, dug out, moved ten feet, etc. This took a good 45 minutes.

Anyway, the trip back really wasn't that bad and it reminded me that I for sure am not in the states right now!

I have some pictures from Jacanacas (none from the transportation situation) and I'll put a few up later if I get a chance. I just wanted to share the ridiculousness of last night.