Thanksgiving in the Montañas

I know this post is a tad bit late, as we have now past Thanksgiving and have entered into the “official” Christmas season, but I just wanted to tell a little bit about my Thanksgiving this year.

So we get a few “free” days off each year in which we, volunteers, can go wherever we like. Last year I chose the German jungle, and for this trip, I chose Ancash, where snow and good food meet.

So…2 Cajamarquinas, 2 Tumbesinas, and one lonely Piuriano took off to the Cordillera Blanca, the Peruvian Andes. Here are some highlights…

Highlight #1: Café Andino. One of the first things you need to know about Huaraz, the capital of Ancash, is that it is very touristy…aka great food! This is one of the many things us volunteers treasure. Huaraz offers tastes of Thailand, Italy, and best of all…Mexico! Café Andino is known for their great Mexican food and French pressed coffee. A key to my own heart! Needless to say, we hit it up more than once.

Highlight #2: Camping. It’s been more than a year and a half since I’ve last camped, so we all thought it would be fun to pitch a tent for a few nights. We had heard that it would cost a lot to camp in the National Park (which later we found out that it’s free for Peace Corps volunteers), so a friend lead us to this lodge a little outside the park owned by a British fellow named Charlie. Charlie was very accommodating and even let us take shelter our last night there as we were cold and wet and our camping stove broke. But all and all, we had a fun time. Thankfully, I had a nice, warm sleeping bag unlike some people (Should of brought a warmer one Katie!) so I slept straight through the nights. Cooking camp-style was also a bit interesting. We definitely overestimated how much food we were going to need (and drink!), so going hungry wasn’t a problem. However, we had quite the trouble getting our camping stove to light and stay lit. Thanksgiving dinner consisted of over cooked noodles with too little sauce. And it took us so long to get the stove lit and cook the darn noodles, by the time everything was ready, none of us were hungry. In addition, as I mentioned before, the last night the stove finally gave out, so Charlie let us cook our chili on his stove.

Highlight #3: Hiking amongst mountains. Nothing makes me miss Oregon more than seeing snow capped mountains and breathing in that fresh, wilderness air. Since we were a little outside the park, we had to hike in to begin with. Our plan was to hike to Lake 69 (no joke), which was going to be about a 3-4 hour hike. The tricky thing about this national park is that transportation is hard to come by. You either hire a taxi or try to hitchhike in. We had left late in the morning, so finding a ride in was going to be tough, but the mountain angels were smiling upon us that day and we found a ride in. The road into the park takes you by razor sharp cliffs, two turquoise-blue glacier lakes with ominous mountains behind them. Huascaran is the highest mountain in Peru and it towers over the park. We hiked along beautiful mountain streams with cows grazing nearby. But because of the late start and the unlikelihood of catching a ride back out of the park, the mother and eagle-scout brother in me convinced us to turn around before we even made it to our destination. And it was good we did because on the hike back, it started pouring down rain and luckily, a service car came to our rescue. Nothing like some coca tea and fried cuy to warm us up afterwards.

And that was how I spent my thanksgiving this year. And if you get a chance, send me some leftovers, especially those canned cranberries I like so much :-)