19 July
    After 19 hours of traveling, Edgar and I pulled up to a house made of mud bricks with a tin roof. We’re in Ccasapata, Peru, several hours drive from the closest store, let alone the closest internet cafe. The house is indistinguishable from any of the other houses on the dirt street, including a tin door that is only about 4 feet tall. Inside, there is a storage room and an open area with a little garden, a clothes line, a sink, and a small building with a toilet. A ladder leads up to a wooden ledge that is build over the storage room looking out onto the open area. The ledge has three tin doors, each about 4 feet tall and 1.5 feet wide, that open into the bedrooms. When I arrived the water was off, which meant no toilet or sink or showers (though the showers are freezing cold when they do work). As I put my suitcase into my room, a scuttling noise in the corner alerted me to my roommate - a large, light brown rat descending from the ceiling (which is actually just a plastic covering under the tin roofing). I have named him Mateo, after a friend I met in Cusco.
    Well, I thought, this is my chance to put my money where my mouth is. Most people interested in development, including myself, preach the importance of immersing yourself in the community in order to make a project effective. Many philanthropy groups throw money from afar at buildings that will never be used, or at systems that the local culture rejects. Here in Cchopca, several different NGOs and development organizations have built guinea pig (cuy) pens and left, without taking the time to monitor the effects of the project, or even to understand whether the pens were needed in the first place. (After being here only one day, it seems to me that better irrigation would be far more useful.) But Yanapai actually stays here, working with the community. Edgar has worked here for 20 years and knows most of the townspeople, as well as all of the local officials. This was one of the reasons I wanted to work with this organization. So when the meals of bread and jam get old, and the dirt floors turn everything I own a rusty color of brown, I need to remember that there are strings and strings of dried mushrooms hanging in the kitchen. How cool is that?!

if only, if only the woodpecker sighs, the bark on the trees was as soft as the skies
the wolf waits below, hungry and lonley, and cries to the moon, if only, if only

I feel like I haven't written anything (worth reading) in this in a loooong time. Partly I was traveling in Peru and it was difficult/I had way better things to do. But also a lot of it is that I've been feeling really at home here in Colombia recently, and so I forget that I'm still traveling.

Two weeks ago I went to Pance, which is a town on the outskirts of Cali which a river clean enough to swim in. There are like 4 or 5 rivers in Cali but all of the other ones are too polluted to enjoy. From Pance you can access a national park with beautiful jungle and mountains. And the best part is that it costs only about $5 to get there and back, which is CLUTCH because I'm pretty much broke at this point.

I went with two Colombian friends, one of whom, Sebastian, used to work in the national park and so he knew all the guards and all the trails. We met up with Sebastian, the skinniest person I've ever seen, eating a bag of chips he had stolen on his way over, in a mall in southern Cali. From there we took the most crowded bus I've ever ridden on. I literally did not have to hold on as we swerved through the mountains because there were people holding me up on all sides. And, there were two seriously grumpy old women sitting in the front row of seats yelling at everyone to pack in a little tighter so that we could fit more people on the bus. I figured that because they were being so obviously rude, I was justified in unsubtley giving them some glares.

Once we got there we walked for a bit up to the beautiful river where we found a private waterfall and had lunch. I'm not even going to try to describe how beautiful the jungle is, because I won't even come close, but it is incredible to be in a place where everything is so alive. We swam in the river, climbed up the water falls, slid down on the rocks which formed natural water slides, incredible.

Then we decided to hike a bit more, but rather than pay the entrance fee to the park, Sebastian knew how to sneak in, so we did a little jungle trail blazing and bypassed the entrance. However, while we were hacking through the vines, without even knowing about my phobia, Sebastian goes 'oh, seriously, be very careful when you move the foliage. there are a lot of TREE SNAKES here and they are very poisonous' (!!!!). So obviously I couldn't really enjoy the offtrailing because I was freaking out a lot inside, but luckily we did not see any snakes. Just the most beautiful, huge blue butterflies, plus like 20 other kinds of butterflies, and some incredible birds whose name I can't remember but they are about as colorful and awesome looking as parrots. (Btw there are also parrots here. It's really crazy how many awesome animals there are here that people in the U.S. only read about.)

It's 1:30am and I am at gate b2 in the Quito airport. My flight back to bogota is in 4 and a half hours. I'm debating whether or not to try and sleep. Airports are really kind of creepy when you're the only one in them, and at the moment I am definitely the only one around. I've already done a lot of exploring, and there doesn't seem to be any food to 'borrow' but I did find some lovely red roses upstairs (random) which I've given a new home! Peru was incredible, but for now, I'm going to inflate my neck pillow (SO handy, I know) for a few Zzzzzs.

So when I said we were resting last night I apparently meant I was waiting until happy hour to drink a lot of Cusqueno beers and then spend hours dancing with a few people we met to a pretty good cover band. So this morning when we woke up to go mountain biking I had a pretty sweet hangover, but I got over it pretty fast since the Andes are BEAUTIFUL. I had one of those moments where you kind of mentally stop and  just try to take it all in and realize that you are actually where you are doing what you're doing. We biked first to some ruins where the Incas built these farming terraces in natural hole-shaped places in the earth, so the terraces are in circles descending down into the hole. Each level of circle-terrace is about 10 degrees hotter as you go down, so that they could acclimate plants from the jungles in Northern Peru to be grown in the colder highland regions. Brilliant Incas!

We also visited a salt mines, that are actually Pre-Inca, and have this really cool system of controlling the salty water to flow into these pools where the salt crystalizes and then is collected. It was a good reminder of how much work goes in to everything we have. Even table salt that I dont even think about using requires all of this pretty strenuous labor. I know, blah blah, Ive gone to Peru and had a revelation about economic exploitation, but I actually have. Its one thing to hear and know about, but its been such a different experience for me to actually see it. Ive been feeling really spoiled lately and I think Ive decided that Im no longer ok with just appreciating my priviledge and being grateful for it, I think that is not enough.