Party Preperations

We have completed another of our ambitions here in Huancayo, to eat Classicos in the market.
It's rice pudding with Mazamora Morada, a very sweet desert made from purlple corn. Lovely
Here are both Rocio and Michael tucking in ,,,

 

The enourmous street market where we bought them was a bit too much for us to get all the way round but we spent a long time there buying toys for Michael and fruit for me, power cables and trousers. A good time really,.

Michael's Peruvian birthday party is coming up soon and we have had some really great Iron Man invitations printed.
 

Then we went round the Plasticerias, a wonderland of stuff made from plastic, to buy plates and forks and cups etc, and we went to the toy shop for Pinata and bunting etc. The range of home made pinata in all sorts of shapes was amazing, from Disney characters to Superheroes to Angels to traditional donkeys. Michael of course chose Iron Man and company.
Now it's time to make the jellies and popcporn. I'm really looking forward to it.

Coca leaves

The food here is always great. Mami Noemi is always cooking for us and it's always more than I can eat. Fruit and veg here are just miles better than England (although there is no effort to make the stuff look perfect in the shops. So apples have spots etc.) and we have gone out for breakfast a couple of times too. The local micro-restaurants do excellent Quaker (thin porridge) and bread with palta
( Avocado ) and often a big savoury stew for breakfast if you want it.
Here are Rocio and Michael enjoying rice and veg for breakfast

and here's the cup that gave me so much pleasure to read. Is that Spanish or English? no it isn't.

Michael is having a great time here I think. He is always playing and running around. His Spanish is improving steadily and he seems quite comfortable going off into town with his granny to go shopping or for his haircut or whatever. At the end of the day at about 9 he just collapses and falls asleep wherever he is.
Here he has fallen asleep before eating his sweet churro.

Hat production is still in full swing usually starting at 3 or 4 in the morning and going on all day. The little adobe shed in the garden where most of the work goes on gets crowded with 5 or 6 family members all ironing washing cutting or sewing hats. The stereo is always on and it's almost always Peruvian folk music pounding out of the speakers.
Here is a collection of new hats out to dry in the sun

Rocio's sister Sonia has two sheep who live roped up in the garden. They eat whatever veg they can get and are brought arms full of grass during the day ( you can buy grass from passing tricycle grass sales people ) One of the sheep, Ivan, who is the bigger one with the horns, loves to play football as much as his rope will let him and he's always up for investigating whatever he can reach. I had to stop him eating washing powder today. But it seems one of his favourite things to eat is coca leaves. When Sonia walked past with a bag of coca he started jumping around wanting some. She gave him a couple of hands full and he gobbled them down.
Here he is...


Ivan eating Coca - YouTube

Southern Stars

We went to town to day to do some vital shopping, light bulbs and charger wires etc.
Huancayo hasn't changed very much really in 5 years. There are gadget phones everywhere now and there is a
big ugly shopping centre, but the real market and the streets are much the same as I had hoped they would be.

Rocio Michael and I pushed through the crowds and dodged the enormous holes int he pavements. We bought tasty snacks from street vendors and eventually found the Power Rangers DVD we needed for Michael.
The whole town it seems is full of traditional music getting ready for the Santiago season and I found some new DVDs of my favourite style of Peruvian violin music for Santiago.
Despite all our best efforts we are still struggling to get a decent Internet connection either on the phones or on the laptop. I have some intermittent data on my phone now and we have a crappy dongle for the laptop but neither are much use.
Who knows when you will get to read this.

The skies are clear every day and night more or less so the stars are wonderful. I can see a whole lot of them that I don't recognise and a few I do. Orion the Hunter is high up in the sky on his head for some reason, with his red eye at the bottom. The moon too looks strange as the light and dark sides are the top and bottom if you see what I mean.

Here is a picture of the moon and what I guess is Venus close by. I think I'll need a map to identify much more, after all half the sky I have almost never seen before as we are in the Southern Hemishpere here.

More Football

Its not been an eventful day but it's been great. We spent the day putting our rooms here to rights and enjoying the sun. Michael played even more football  ( he's never really liked it before) he even went out without Mummy and me to a field to play with the boys.
Hat production is still going strong here's a  view from upstairs of hat making and drying in the garden.

I did make a trip to another internet café and managed to post one blog but then for some reason couldn't post the others I have ready. Oh well I'll catch up eventually.
I found that my mask that I bought for dancing Santiago has gone mouldy so I'll need to buy a new one but my whip is still fine, so that's good.
I am so looking forward to when the folk orchestras and costumes and dancing really get going.
I still feel a bit rough and I'm not ready for anything in any way aerobic but I'm getting there and it's great to be here and quite different from driving a coach in London.

Life is returning

Life is return today which I am very pleased about. I only have a little headache and I never did get sick. I can't do much more than walk slowly without getting breathless but it's better than I thought it would be.
It's a beautiful Huancayo day. Cold , cloudless with strong sunshine. Such a change from the grey skies of Lima.  Most of the family were up at 3 am making hats we three had a lie in until 7ish.  We have arranged our room and raided the boxes of stuff we left here before.
I found that my ukulele was still in tune after 5 years and that I've forgotten how to tune my charango.  The new violin case I brought along for the lovely violin I have here is now in use and the rotten old case and broken bows thrown away. That was very satisfying to do.

Here is a view over the  roofs of Huancayo showing just a glimpse of the snow cap of the mountain Hauytapallana.

After a breakfast of cheese toasties ( yum yum ) and several hours  of enjoying the sun in the garden we went to Huayucachi market to visit Mami Noemi where she was selling hats. The market is a fascinating wild friendly place with a mixture of butchers DVD stalls fruit small cafés ironmongers and dodgy fake shamans selling crap medicine. And a whole section of traditional hats and costume.
We said hello to seemingly dozens of people and we had juice from crushed sugar cane, which is lovely and then big plates of yuyu ( if that's how you spell it ) it's a bit like boiled spinach and comes with potatoes and chilli. It's what I've been most looking forward to eating in Peru.
We bought DVDs for about 25p each ( makes you wonder if all copyright laws are being strictly adhered ) and sadly Michael's Power Rangers DVD when we got it home turned out to be a mis labeled Pokemon. We will replace it soon and Pokemon are nice too.
We also made a trip to the nearest internet café to post this blog but were unsuccessful. If you are reading this we must have found a way to get it from telephone without internet to Michael's blog page but I don't know what that will be.

Here is one of Michael'scousins Jake in a big chair.

In the  evening Michael and I both suddenly ran out of energy and wanted nothing but sleep and despite a night ling chorus of dogs and early morning folk music at tremendous volume from the neighbours we slept really well.
Michael says his favourite things were buying a big bag if marbles for about 25p and playing football with the boys.
He didn't like falling over three times  on the stones in the garden or of course he didn't like being ripped off in market.

Over the Andes

We got up quite early to go to the bus for Huancayo.  It was quite expensive for Peru and the miserable man selling us tickets wouldn't give us vegetarian food but it was clean safe and on time so that's good.
I always love the journey up from sea level to 5km or so high over the Andes and down to Huancayo,  but I knew I would suffer from the altitude. I took pain killers before we got to rhe peak of  the route but still I was in a lot of pain and feeling light headed by the time we got there. Rocio of course feels no difference and even Michael who was born in Nottingham and has lived most of his life there, isn't affected at all as far as I can see. He did complain of feeling ill on the bus but I don't think it was altitude. It soon passed and he's fine now.
Michael was also a real star looking after me in my bad moments.
Arriving at Huancayo was so good. Meeting the family again and being taken to the house to eat and talk and catch up.
Michael fit straight in. I am so proud of him.  He was soon playing football with the boys and making himself understood in Spanish. It's great to be back and we have a great room in the house here and we still have lots of things here from last time. I still feel awful and I think it's time for more painkillers. I can't walk upstairs without stopping on the way to get my breath and I had to ask for help with my suitcase but I am very very happy to be here. 

This is Michael and I feeling ill on the bus. 

It's Santiago season soon  here in  Huancayo which is the biggest festivalof the year with costumes and drinking and dancing and drinking and folk  orchestras and drinking for many many days.
It especially mean in this family lots of hard work making hats to sell. The whole family is dedicated to hat making and Rocio has jumped right back into her role in this. She's seweng hat bands, drinking
A strong spirit called trago, chewing coca and talking with her Mum and Sister. It's so great to see.
Today Michael really liked the game system on the bus and  he liked playing football with the boys and he liked a tasty apple from the shop.
He didn't like thinking he'd lost his tablet and he didn't like feeling ill on thw bus. 

Tourism

We have spent the day in Lima being tourists. I've never really done that before. I haven't
really been a tourist anywhere in Peru but least of all Lima which is a horrible place. It' s
dangerous smelly and stressful and it's usually my plan to get away as soon as
possible.

That said we had a gr eat day, mostly at Lima zoo. I was more than a bit worried about
going to a zoo in Peru imagining all sorts of tortured animals in filthy cages but it really
isn't that bad.
It's a bit strange seeing all these jungle animals living in the desert that is Lima but the y
all looked well.

Here we all are posing in front of a Vulture cage.

But the wildest sounding animal we saw in the whole zoo was actually in the gent's toilets.
I think it was a Tap-ir or possibly a Wilder- basin
Wilder Basin

Michael particularly liked the tigers and panther and I loved watching the seals swim
under water. We had planned on going to see a park full of colour ed fountains at night
but I guess the jet lag got the better of us and we slept on the bus on the way back to
the house we ate staying in.
Michael really liked the popcorn he bought on the street today and he really loved the
drink Chicha Morada that we had with o yr chips in the evening.
He didn't like the long long long bus ride because he was very thirsty.
After the second night sleeping like the dead we are getting over the journey to Peru and
ready to go on over the Andes t o Huancayo.

Travel to Peru

Russell says: 

We left Nottingham on the National Express at 10 Wed starting a journey of more than 24 hours.
The coach trip was fine although the driver was not as good as me and we got to Heathrow very early. That was the plan just in case anything happend but all was fine.
It was boring waiting at the airport but eventually they let us check in and we went to sit and watch the planes taking off. We managed to be among the pre-boarded passengers so getting on the plane was quite fine. We got an all important window seat and the trip to Madrid was fun and pretty comfortable.  Rocio managed to fall asleep during take off and pretty much slept all the way to Spain.
The change over in Madrid went just as it has before. We had to run and run through the airport and drag poor Michael along by the arm to get to the terminal and run along the walkways to the gate and still we were almost the last there and boarding had already started. Somewhere along the run we were supposed to get boarding tickets but I don't know where. We hardly saw any staff at all. Still the kind man on the gate sorted us out and we were on the big plane for Peru.
No window seat this time but it was already dark so that's OK. 
As almost always happens our vegetarian food  order had been forgotten. I don't know why we bother requesting it. They found us some nice pasta though.
Despite the plane being better and more spacious than the other it was still a horribly uncomfortable 12 hour ride. I don't know how to sleep sitting up and I couldn't find any other way to fit. I must have slept dozens of times for 5 minutes each time. Horrible. Michael and Rocio seemed to manage it much better. 
Getting to Lima at 6 in the morning with your body clock saying it is midday is unpleasant but meeting Rocio's Mum in the airport was fantastic and made it all good.
We got a lift to an aunty's house and were immediately surrounded by brilliant Peruvian hospitality nice food and everything in Spanish language. Just what we needed.
 Michael says:

I liked it on the plane when we blasted off because we had little tellies. 
In Lima I like the  food. I had a fruit called Tumbo and I didn't like the dog poo. Which is disgusting and everywhere on the streets.
I liked seeing Mami Noemi  and playing with Esteban.

Going back to Peru. 12/07/2017

I intend to start using Michael's blog again for our 7 weeks in Peru, so here goes. This is just to see if I remember how to post to it and share and to help anyone interested to find the long abandoned blog again Here's a picture of Michael actually from late last year...

See you all soon