Peru Expedition 2: Huancayo

On Thursday afternoon, January 3, 2019, we witnessed what I dubbed a "mistbow" on our way into Huancayo.

Our hotel there was cheap, small and shabby, and it made Linette sad. So we ended up staying there just one night and booking an AirBnB apartment for the other two nights, which gave us some nice elbow room and made us happier.

That first evening in Huancayo, we took a taxi downtown to the main square, and the taxi driver recommended a couple of restaurants. They have some "Chifa" restaurants that tend to serve Peruvian food but with Chinese decorations (and an occasional Chinese item on the menu). But we opted for a nice grill called La Leña on La Plaza de Constitución, which had excellent food.

Then we walked a couple blocks down to Parque Humanmarca, where we had fun sitting and watching the people.

At the park we came across several groups of young people practicing energetic dances.

Friday morning we went out to explore Huancayo. I love the colorful markets where they sell fresh fruits and vegetables.

Here's some of that purple corn (maiz morada) that is used for the wassail-like cold purple drink (chichi morada).



I was a tad unnerved by the chickens that hang in the open air, as I am not sure how long that's ok before it makes you sick. (I later learned, though, that it's not as scary as you might think. These chickens tend to be very fresh, whereas chicken in U.S. grocery stores has sometimes been around for a few days before it arrives at the store, thus making refrigeration much more critical).

And you gotta love the cute babies on the backs and the little old ladies with the European hats.

We walked over to La Parque de las Flores (The Flower Park), which, as you might expect, had a lot of flowers, along with a couple of gardeners working on the park and a greenhouse.

And we saw other pretty things as we walked down the street.

We passed by the church on our way to the mission home.

We also saw a preschool with Dora and other friends.

And here's a little bit of cement with "Erika" and "Camila" written in it. (Turns out this wasn't a coincidence...)

When we arrived at the mission office, Elder Rose (a "good chap" from St. George) at the front desk seemed happy to talk with Erika.

I also thought it was cool that the baptism board still had a picture of Erika and her companion and one of their converts (bottom, second from the left).

The mission president, President Silva, and his family, took us to lunch at Resaurante Huancahuasi, which was very nice.



We tried ceviche, which was tender, marinaded raw fish. That would normally gross me out, but I tried it and it was quite nice. (Missionaries aren't allowed to eat it because it can be dangerous if not prepared right, but this was a nice place).

I tried the traditional lomo saltado (marinaded/salted beef loin) with potatoes and rice (and an egg for good measure), and it was excellent.

It was really fun to get to know the family of President Silva. Three of his sons (on the left) spoke some English, and their oldest son Sebastian was recently married to the gal on the left (Kelly). Apparently they met when Sebastian was teaching an institute class after his mission. They have another son on a mission in Boise, Idaho, and the little girl in front of the President. They were gracious hosts, and it was so nice to talk with all of them.

President Silva's Family: Mikel, Kelly, Sebastian, Mateo (front),
Kelsi, Linette, Erika, Randy, Hermana and President Silva, and Rachel (front).

We had something to deliver to one of the sister missionaries, so we arranged to meet them at a park. When we arrived, we had to wait a moment, because they were having a prayer there with two men.

At first the sisters only spoke Spanish to us, and they were happy for the delivery. We also took a picture with them and texted it to their parents, which their parents really appreciated.

Kelsi, Linette, Hermana McFadyen, Hermana Romero, Erika.

That evening we dropped by the home of Erika's pencionista (cook), Blanca, who had made us a customized welcome sign, which was nice of her.

Blanca (pencionista) and Wilsons

We also had fun meeting the sister missionaries who were there for dinner as well. The one on the left is from Brazil and had only been on her mission for 4 months. Linette said she spoke very smoothly but was a little hard to understand until she realized that when she didn't know the Spanish word she was slipping Portuguese in to fake it.

The other sister (by Linette) was from Argentina and seemed to always have a big smile.

That evening we walked to the church to participate in a missionary activity.

When we first arrived, no investigators were there yet, so we helped the members and missionaries mop and sweep the floors to clean up from the New Year's Eve dance that had gone on there a few nights before. Linette had a nice long talk with the sister missionary from Brazil.

After the activity, we went back over to the pencionista's house and met her sister (on the right) and also Maria Isabel (on the left). Maria Isabel cracked me up because she spoke really fast, with excellent articulation, so it was like a machine gun of Spanish. She said that her friends sometimes teased her about it, but she said that her mind just worked very quickly and her friends just needed to try to keep up.

Maria Isabel, Blanca (pencionista), Erika, Kelsi, Theresa (Blanca's sister)

That night we made use of the washer at our AirBnB to do a couple loads of laundry, and then hoped that it would all dry before we needed to leave a day and a half later.

On Saturday, we hit the dirt roads to look up Erika's friends. It reminded me of the missionary days.

Here's Mr. Pig. Erika remembers this shed and there always being a pig there. This is a different pig, however. (Because that's "the way things are." And pigs are delicious.)

We visited a lady named Hermana Sonia there who served us the famous "Inca Kola" (which looks yellow like Mountain Dew, and tastes like bubble gum). She had come all the way from Lima to visit with Erika's companion Hermana Huanaco (who didn't make it, so I'm not sure if they got to see each other later).

This scene reminded me of the experience in Mexico when we were visiting Kelsi's mission, and we wondered what we should do on New Year's Day. "We could go to the mountain, or go to the beach," Linette said. "Or," added Erika, "We could sit in people's living rooms and drink juice!" That was hilarious because it was pretty much what we had done up to that point in Mexico. This trip had a little less of that (and more crazy mototaxi rides).

Drinking Inca Kola with Hermana Sonia.

The trip included many selfies.

And a few photo bombs.

This precarious bridge can probably hold cars.

The cactus plants have those little round fruits on the tips that are edible. People pick them, whittle off the stickers, and sell the fruits at the stores. Erika said they are refreshing but don't have a lot of flavor.

That day we visited Rossi, one of Erika's converts. She has been in a wheelchair since an accident when she was 16, so that has been a challenge for her. However, she has a beautiful smile that is almost always there, showing off her great dimples.

I thought afterwards how some people have full use of their legs, but are grumpy and sour, not enjoying the happiness and smiles that Rossi manifests. It made me think she was better off than many because of her good attitude.

Then we hopped another mototaxi to go visit another family for an outing to the nearby town of Concepción.

We visited the family of Rosemary, including her daughter Angeli and her mother. The aged mother had 15 children, several of whom lived in this same house. I had them pose for this "three generation" picture.

Rosemary, Angeli (Rosemary's daughter) and Rosemary's mother

Erika made good friends with Angeli.

I flicked my cheek to make that "boieep!" sound, and Angeli was amazed. She kept asking us to do it again.

We all walked down the street to the corner where we caught a collectivo to Concepción.

There were cool statues along the road as we walked.

This lady in purple offered me a seat on her bag of carrots, but I declined at first. Later when some people got off and I was able to get a seat, Angeli took the seat on the carrots.

Usually I'm the only one who can't stand up straight on the collectivos. But Erika couldn't quite do it, either, with her bun in play.

After a 20-minute ride, we arrived in Concepción. It has a big virgin Mary statue on a hill overlooking the town.

We waited to meet someone at the park, but they were delayed.

While we waited, a parade happened down the street by the park, so we had fun watching the dances and costumes.

I liked the mellow sound of the saxophones in this video clip (30 seconds). The massive harp that the guy is carrying is also impressive, though you can't hear it over the saxophones.

In this segment of a parade, the dancers sing about a party that was so crazy that 9 months later they're washing dirty diapers! (1 minute).

The best part of the parade was sharing it with people I love.

Next, we walked up the hill to the virgin Mary statue. The walk included some beautiful pastoral views.

Here we are at the top.



The peak offered nice overviews of the city.

Overlooking Concepción. Erika, Linette, Angeli, Rosemary, Kelsi, Randy.

The virgin Mary statue had a museum in its base, which included this nativity scene.

Like the Statue of Liberty, you could climb up inside the statue to its crown.

The view of the town from up there was great.

In this short video clip, Erika provides an odd start to Kelsi's panorama of the view from the top of the statue.

Then it was back down for some more selfies and stuff.

This ceramic work of art appears to refer to the miracle of the fish and the artichokes. (?)

I went back down to the park with Erika and Kelsi to meet Maria Isabel, who is from Concepción, while Linette went back up the statue Rosemary, who had not made it up when we went.

I asked Erika about missionaries in Concepción when suddenly, there were the elders! It seemed like every time I asked about the missionaries on this trip, they would suddenly appear.

On the way back to the park, I bought some bird feed for 1 Sol ($0.33) and used it to feed the pigeons while we waited. The seeds attract pigeons, and then the pigeons attract children, which I didn't realize before.

Maria Isabel found us, and then we walked across the street to where a crowd had gathered to watch some traditional dancing by some of the people from the parade.

This little girl was so cute and did all the moves as well as the adults.

Here are a few video clips of the dancing, if you're interested. (Feel free to hit "full screen" on the video to see better, and then "Escape" to get back).

In this clip I like how the little girl is dancing on the far side, and how a little girl in the crowd is dancing off to the left.

After all of that, we decided to go to ice cream. Peru has mostly soft-serve ice cream, so I wouldn't say it's a strong contender in that department, but this particular place was pleasant.

That evening we took a collectivo back to town with everyone to get them home.

Then we went back as promised to pick Rossi up and take her out to dinner. We ended up eating somewhere just a few blocks from where she lived, so I wheeled her down there in her wheelchair. We had to lean her back when we went over rocky dirt roads; and keep it slow and steady down the hills; and it was a little tricky to find our way across the big main street, but we made it there.

Rossi made us each a personalized card, which was sweet. They reminded me of the fun cards that Leslie Gates makes sometimes. Here is the one she made for me.

I only used a fraction of my bird seed for the pigeons that day, so I left the rest with Rossi, who said she knew people with chickens who could use it.

Erika served in two different areas of Huancayo, but the wards for both areas met in the same chapel, so on Sunday we attended both sacrament meetings and one of the Sunday schools. We were impressed with the awesome teacher there and how she led the discussion for their first Sunday school under the new "Come, Follow Me for Individuals and Families."

Erika got to see a bunch of people she knew, which was fun for her. This is Fabiola, who Erika described as a "power house".

Erika and Fabiola

The elder on the right (Elder Bryan) is a friend of our nephew Hunter Davis (Lori and Jim's son). (Hunter is serving a mission in Berlin, Germany right now, and was excited that we had met his friend).

Erika, Elder Noble, Elder Bryan

The guy in the middle of this picture (Daniel) was an elder in Kelsi's mission when she was there, so it was fun for them to see each other in this unexpected place! He had recently married the gal between him and Kelsi.

La familia Cano: Melani's husband, Melani, Rossi and her daughter,
Maria, Daniel (from Kelsi's mission), Daniel's wife, and the Wilsons

The young men were an impressive, boisterous bunch.

After church we had lunch with Erika's pencionista, Blanca, again, where she served is chicken, rice, potatoes and tough corn with huge kernels called chocla. And we had Inca Kola to drink.

For dessert we had bananas in a creamy sauce with cinnamon, which was very pleasant.

The sister missionaries and the pencionista's sister were there with us, as was Maria Isabel. Maria Isabel at one point started talking about the four personality colors, and she had a lot of information in her head that was ready to all get out at once. We all sat in amazement at the 'rapidity of her elucidations', and then we all laughed and talked about that for a while. It was awesome.

Erika, Theresa (Blanca's sister), Randy and Kelsi, Sister missionaries, Blanca (pencionista), Maria Isabel, Linette.

That afternoon we walked around to visit a few more people, but after a lot of walking down dirt roads in the warm sun, we kept not finding anyone at home. Finally we visited Erika's other pencionista (from the Los Andes ward), Hermana Eliane and had a brief visit with her.

Hermana Eliane and Erika.

Next we picked up Rossi again. She had a friend who is a taxi driver who put her wheelchair in the trunk and piled us in the back and took us all to a fun park in Junín that she knew about. It was out in the country, so we saw some fun countryside scenes along the way.

Here is a sign advertising where you can eat guinea pigs (cuy, pronounced "kwee"), which they're really into in Peru.

We were wondering a little bit about whether it would be worth the 20 minute drive to visit a park, but the park we visited, Los Mates Burilados, was really something--like a Peruvian version of San Francisco's Fairyland.

There were all kinds of odd bulbous statues, like large versions of the painted gourds that are so popular in Peru.

There was a tunnel with no lights that was long and curved enough to get pitch black in the middle. People had to use cell phone lights to avoid bonking into each other.

There were little thatched roof structures and wooden bridges that made it seem like a Peruvian fairy tale.

Overall, we were very impressed with the park.

On the way home, we dropped by another park, Parque Identidad Wanka, which was actually inside of Huancayo itself.

Here are some dancing ladies that were part of a group wandering around.

You had to walk across big stones to get across this little creek, which I assume has water in it at times.

The cobblestones were arranged in geometric patterns and sometimes actual pictures.

There was a fun castle slide thing for little kids, and a fun wobbly wooden bridge.

Here is Kelsi's little video, summing up our experience at the parks.

It was fun to get to know Rossi, and I love her smile as she said good-bye to Erika.

Our last visit in Huancayo was to a family who we talked with for some time. Their little boy Daniel was really smart, and I played a game of chess with him.

Isidora, Tania, Daniel, Kelsi, Erika, Linette

Erika also had fun with Daniel.

We also enjoyed checking out the sunset from their window. (The houses in this picture all have rebar sticking up into the air--apparently in case they decide to add a second story?)



When we went outside to leave, it was pouring rain, but we quickly caught a cab back to our apartment.

With that, we grabbed our bags from our apartment and taxied to the bus station for an all-night bus to Lima.

Fortunately, the seats reclined way back, there were leg rests, no loud annoying movies were playing, and most of us were able to catch some sleep on the way to Lima.

I thought the "no smoking" sign could have tried a little harder on its English translation.

It was fun to meet Erika's people from her mission and get an idea of what life in Peru is like away from the tourist areas.

In the next episode, we see if Adam, Sienna and Erika's companion all happen to arrive in Lima at the same time so we can check out Cusco, the capital of the Inca Empire.