I Love Peru!

My heart is so full of gratitude right now.  I just want to burst!  I can’t even express how awesome it is to be here and be experiencing everything I am.  

This morning (Friday, March 9th), Miguel took us on another early morning adventure.  This time we only did a little run and then we hiked up to the very tip top of a mountain.  The mountain has this HUGE cross up on top and that was our goal.  And we conquered it.  It was not an easy climb but it was a beautiful climb.  It was filled with wildflowers and all sorts of shrubbery.  There’s no path so we just wandered through brush and rocks weaving in and out, trying to avoid the huge spider webs, not taking our eyes off our feet.  Every once in a while I’d stop for a second to look back, see how far we’d gone and take in the view.  It took us a good 45 minutes to get to the top.  I didn’t seem like we’d ever get there, but we did!

It was so peaceful sitting on top of that mountain.  And there were more mountains in every direction.  Beautiful, green mountains and rolling hills with little farms and tons of animals.  It was breathtaking.  I could decide what I wanted to spend my time looking at so I rotated every 10 minutes or so so that I could see it all. 

In one direction was Cajamarca.  A huge city amongst this beautiful scenery.  The metropolis with car horns and robbers, streets for shopping, restaurants, Incan ruins, tourist shops and museums, lots of cement and just a few trees and grassy patches.  There are so many adventures there and we love visiting the city and exploring it.  

In another direction there were small villages.  Little houses surrounded by their plots of land and noisy farm animals.  Each plot a perfect square…it kind of reminded me of home.  Some of the land was populated by cows and some with crops.  They stretched over the valley and up into the rolling hills that turned into mountains.  I could see the families working some of the farms.  Surely, they were up working even before I woke up to enjoy the scenery.  I wonder if they appreciate the beauty that’s around them.  I wonder if they have the chance to enjoy it as their life is built on taking care of the farm and animals so that they can live to the next day.  I wonder if they have time to go explore the mountains they call their home.  I sure hope they’re able to.  At least, I hope their children have the opportunity to see the world around them and soak it all up.  They are a blessed people.

In the last direction there were mountains as far as I could see.  A dirty, brown, trash filled river flowed into the distance.  Had I not been to the riverbank a few days before I wouldn’t have known it was dirty and trash filled.  From up on the mountain it looked like a perfect winding river, on its way to something bigger and better.  This was my favorite view.  I was on top of the world with no one else to worry about but myself…and I didn’t even have to worry about myself because I was on the top of a mountain with no worries!  On the right there were mountain tops hidden behind clouds and then more mountains to the left with more mountains behind them and more and more and more.  They just kept on going!  Oh they were beautiful!  The mountains here are covered in green.  There are trees at the bottom and halfway up but you get to a point where there aren’t any more trees, just green shrubs and weeds.

On the way up I had a depressing sort of thought.  Things like this hike and the views are the things I want to remember from Peru.  I want to remember the gorgeous mountains and the farmers and everything!  But sadly, these are the things that I feel like I’ll forget the quickest.  I don’t have pictures of all the views because we have to run to get there and I don’t want to run with a camera.  I can’t capture in a picture the characters of the people I’m coming to befriend and love.  I can’t write down every conversation we have with Miguel while hiking up mountains and I can’t write down every funny thing Ricardo says.  I guess I’ll remember that they were funny people but the specifics will be hard to keep.  Maybe the specifics aren’t important.  Maybe it’s only important to remember that they were awesome people who’ve helped us so much in this journey.