Semana Santa

In my eyes Easter has always meant the Easter Bunny and Easter Baskets; hence, it didn’t feel too much like Easter here with the Peruvian proclivity for dying Jesus reenactments instead of Easter egg hunts. However, I’m not at all complaining as I was lucky enough to spend Semana Santa (Holy Week) in the Andean city of Cajamarca with a group of fellow volunteers. Cajamarca is the site of the death of the last great Incan ruler, Atahualpa. It’s set in the verdant hills of the Andes and to say it is pretty is an understatement.

The fact that we did next to nothing while we were there is probably a credit to our integration into the campo lifestyle. We were fairly content to just walk or sit around and enjoy one another’s company. We also spent a fair amount of time showing my friend Sara’s brother and friend the ropes of traveling in Latin America. They’re pretty much clueless and they know next to no Spanish. They arrived in country a few days before Semana Santa and already they’ve experienced a bus breaking down in the middle of the night and travel sickness. I had to laugh when her friend asked me if the sheets in the very nice hostel were safe to sleep in. Let’s just say he hasn’t seen Sara’s site yet.

We did make it to Los Baños del Inca for a soak in some naturally heated thermal baths. It’s said that Atahualpa camped near the hot springs before being lured to his death by the Spaniards. Today the operation has been modernized and the hot water is pumped into individual baths. It wasn’t as picturesque as communal outdoor pools would be but, since I haven’t taken any kind of bath besides that of the bucket variety since my arrival, it was amazing.

Coming from the dry forest, the weather of the sierra was a bit of a shock. It rained every day and it was cold. I knew this going into the trip but I guess I’ve been converted to the coastal mindset in which only one kind of climate exists in the world, that being hot and dry, because I didn’t even pack shoes.

Now, I’m back in site and it’s still hot and dry. I was a little apprehensive to go back just because I felt like I’d been gone so much in March but it’s been nice to be back. While I was gone all of the little hens we had began to lay eggs so my host-mother is in a panic and constantly reminding me to eat eggs. My life is now somewhat reminiscent of the Forest Gump scene in which Bubba lists off all of the possible preparations of shrimp, only it centers on eggs.

As usual, life at site is tranquil but often entertaining. Today, I heard a woman telling a neighbor that his bedridden mother could probably be cured by passing a hot pepper over her body and then running from the house while shooing the sickness away with the pepper. She assured him that if that didn’t work, rubbing kerosene over her body would.