A week or two before (finally!) getting our carnets, our colleagues Brad and Gina Shaw invited us to stay with them in the Cotahuasi Canyon. From Colorado, they have been living in the canyon for about 20 years now: discipling Christian leaders, helping establish congregations in the villages throughout the canyon, setting up a Christian radio station for the region, and much more.
So after 5 months of difficulty in getting our carnets, we were ready for a change of scenery! On Feb. 15th we took the 8-9 hour bus trip to the canyon. This left at about 7pm, and arrived in Cotahuasi in the dead of the night. (Why don't the buses travel during the day? Because most people don't want to lose a day's work while travelling. They would rather work all day, travel all night on the bus, then get straight into another day's work at the other end. Think on that!)
Below: Half-way stop at Chuquibamba. The five stars on the front of our bus (left) belied the fact that the toilet was almost full to the brim, many of the seats were broken, and the ventilation system wasn't working.
As you'll gather from the photos, staying in Cotahuasi is a feast for the eyes (at least for Australians, whose concept of a mountain is more like a mere Andean foothill). You just can't do the size of the scenery justice with a camera; no matter how many squigapixels your memory card has, you won't be able to suck enough of the view into the lens to capture the breathtaking scale of it all. You will simply have to take our word for it, or travel there yourself one day ;-)
[Hot tip: if you want to look at a bigger version of any of photos, simply right-click the image and select 'Open image in new tab'... or something like that, depending on your operating system.]
Above: Megan taking a breather at the side of the trail.
It wasn't all just fun play; it was fun work, too. Or at least work that took us out of the comfort zone, and produced enough adrenalin to make it feel like fun! Mike gave a few short Bible talks in Spanish to congregations in villages further up the canyon, and also back in the big smoke of Cotahuasi (pop. approx. 1500, we guess). Trying not only to convey things in Spanish, but also in ways which would make sense to people living in these hard and remote areas, really was a challenge. Mike dares to think his talks may have been moderately intelligible to the locals.
Above: Digging into Sunday lunch after the church service in Cotahuasi.
Every weekday morning began with a time of Bible study and prayer with the Quechua brothers and any of their wives who happened to be with them at the time. Kerry attended a few ladies' Bible studies with Gina and the rest of the women.
Above: Morning Bible study in Cotahuasi. (L-R: Mike, Santiago, Faustino, and Camilo.)
Megan enjoyed wandering with us along the town's main street, browsing the shops (happily discovering a great range of colourful phone cases for her Samsung A20), and making friends with Benji the guard dog. Kerry helped Gina in the kitchen, cooking meals for the various study groups.
Alas, not all went well for Kerry in Cotahuasi! Aorita, the feisty green parrot from the jungle (above), enjoyed fanging Kerry's finger a beauty. Kerry also nearly scored a scorpion sting when reaching for her towel off the rail in the bathroom; thankfully the critter's sting glanced off the side of her fingernail and only lightly scratched the skin!
Below: The danger is real, folks...
Our visit to the village of Suni, about 2 hours' drive via 4x4 up the canyon, was visually stunning. A torrent was thumping down the river (summer is the wet season here), waterfalls were cascading down the 1500m-high canyon walls, and everywhere were near-vertical slopes with the narrow, rough road carved carved into them. It was easy to feel queasy looking down to the river as Brad carefully drove the Toyota alongside what were, at times, sheer drops. Megan took it all in her stride while listening to her fave tunes in her headphones.
We arrived in Suni after dark on Sunday night, and lodged in a room on the church property. (Many evangelical churches in the rural areas of Peru maintain a room or two for visiting teachers.) On Monday morning we joined the church service; all the songs were sung in Quechua, most of the chatting was done in Quechua, and then our lunch itself (below) was quite Quechua too: potato and pumpkin soup flavoured with herbs and topped off with a strip of dried alpaca meat.
Above: Megan making friends in the main street of Suni.
Below: One of the super-hospitable Quechua ladies roasting corn as part of our lunch. The room was fairly thick with smoke from the cooking fire!
Below: Moon sinking behind the mountain peaks just outside Suni.
