Thanksgiving- Jumping in Waterfalls and Stuff

As of November 19th, I have officially been a Peace Corps Volunteer for 3 months, which also means that my travel restrictions are lifted- perfect timing for Thanksgiving, since it is one of very few times during the year that we are granted 3 travel days in a row.  The rest of the year, we have to use vacation days even over the weeked- Peace Corps is a 24/7 job!  And it definitely feels like it sometimes, so I was very excited for this trip with some other Small Business and Youth 17 Volunteers.

We went to Chachapoyas, the capital of the region (state) of Amazonas.  Contrary to what the name suggests, Chachapoyas is considered the "eyebrow" of the jungle because it very much strandles the divide between sierra and selva.  It is mountainous and the town has a highland feel to it, but day trips can bring you into dense and humid somewhat-jungly areas.

We arrived at 6:30am on Thursday morning and at 8:30am started on our way to Kuelap, which involved a 3 hour bus ride and short hike.  Keulap is an ancient fortress-city from the Chachapoya people, which is an Inca word that means "Warriors of the Clouds."  This fortress was built pre-Inca domination, and was eventually taken over and abandoned by the Incas.  It was massive, containing a multi-tiered city inside, complete with water management, burial grounds, and defense mechanisms.  Our guide was great, and at one point removed an extra rock from a wall to reveal a mass grave, piles and piles of human bones!  Creepy and cool, that we could interact so directly with these ruins, without the barriers, plastic coverings, etc. that you find in other sites.

Click here to see my pictures from Chachapoyas (Kuelap and Gocta)

Friday we ventured off on a shorter bus trip, this time only 1 hour, to the small town of María to begin our hike to Gocta, the third highest waterfall in the world.  It was only discovered (by outsiders) in 2005, because the area is so off-the-beaten-track.  I didn't fully consider what we were getting ourselves into, so 2 hours into our intense hike I was beginning to regret my Chacho sandals choice over hiking boots, but luckily they held up.  The waterfall is actually made up of two separate falls, which you can see here in the photo, so we went to two "look-out points." (or whatever that phrase is in English? I'm losing it.)  This picture is from the second mirador, and as you can see, I am wet.  Why?  Because we got to JUMP IN THE WATERFALL at the first mirador.  Yeah, take that Niagara Falls.  Where you can see the break in the waterfall in the picture, we climbed across the slippery rocks to the other edge of the lagoonish thing where the waterfall fell, settled, and trickled down a small river to the second fall.  The water was REALLY dark and REALLY cold, and it was definitely a Top 10 Moment of my life.  For those of you that have been close to a big waterfall before, remember the raw power and energy you can feel around it... the mist everywhere, the roaring water... jumping into that was incredible.  Many of us (obviously including me) were screaming "I'm ALIVE!! I'M SO ALIVE!!"

So, if you can believe it, amidst all this amazingness, I had the most intense bout of homesickness yet during my almost 6 months away from the USA.  It definitely had a lot to do with Thanksgiving, especially since I made the stupid decision to leave my computer at site (I needed to ensure I wouldn't try to work on my diagnostic), and all my friends spent Thursday evening Skyping with family members gathered around computers and dining tables.  I got to talk to both my parents on Friday, but the homesickness wouldn't go away.  Then there was the UVA-VTech game on Saturday, always a fun rival game (although UVA usually leaves pretty depressed), and this was a first-time in history event, that if UVA won this game we would be playing in the ACC Championship for the first time ever.  Seemingly all my friends in DC and NYC traveled down for the game or were watching it together, and the thought of how much fun I could be having there (ridiculous, considering my surroundings) plus a bout of Facebook-stalking everybody's recent Charlottesville visits made the distance feel quite far.  I spent a good hour or two searching for the slight possibility of finding DirecTV somewhere in the city, and after being directed to 4 different bars, arrived at one that said he has the package at home.  He said he "might" bring the pack in, which in Peruvian means "no."  Turned out I didn't miss much of a game, UVA losing 38-0, so maybe it was a good thing I missed it.

I'm back at site now, attempting to hole myself up in my room and get my diagnostic done (big research/informative document about my site, to present to the community and to Peace Corps).  I am going to present it on December 13th, before Christmas activities get too intense, so that I can have it off my mind for the rest of the holidays.  While the alone time in my room is nice (wearing SHORTS! don't get to do that in public in my site!), it does make me feel pretty lethargic and guilty for neglecting some to-do's in town with other people, and I think I'm just getting more anxious about everything.  Tomorrow and this weekend I'll hopefully get some other things done off my to-do list, including making plans for summer classes.

On separate note, Peru is going through some pretty intense mining strikes currently, which affected the travel of two of my compañeros with us in Chachapoyas- one left a day early only to have his bus unloaded in a random small town tense with protest, but he is now safely back at site.  The other friend's site is very close to the center of the strikes (strikes meaning boulders block all roads and some people getting violent in the streets), so he traveled to Chiclayo instead of Cajamarca, and is now stuck on the coast for the time being.  You can read about the strikes here.  They are a big deal in a number of ways, politically (testing who Humala really is), environmentally (destruction of water resources), economically (Cajamarca is losing approximately $1 million a day in tourism due to the strikes, and mining is the biggest part of the Peruvian economy), and socially (is the relationship between poor serranos and the mining companies finally reaching a point where something might change?).