ousted! pizza! swimming!

Maren, Parker, Richard and Vienna hide from the sun


Claire, Ralph and Brendan...digging

Today started off much like yesterday ended...the whole group was digging at Parker's and my work site in an attempt to get one toilet completed for the locals to see. This was good because seven of us were making more progress than two of us alone, but bad because we didn't have enough tools to go around and we kept bumping into each other. Richard noticed this and sent Maren, Brendan and me off to dig at another site.

The new site was a little cleaner than the last, and the woman who lived there had a fabulous idea: dumping buckets of water on the ground before we started digging. Brilliant! It is the dry season in Peru so the water helped soften the soil tremendously. The three of us had a solid rotation going so that no one tired out in the sun, and we were making excellent progress. We were planning to work until noon but Gilberto came by at 11:45 and told us to go home for lunch, which was odd because he is a workhorse. :-) We didn't argue though and headed home quite excited because we were supposed to go swimming and take a shower after lunch.


Hasta luego, hole!

At the house, Richard had everyone gathered in the courtyard and was looking somber. He asked if we wanted the bad news or the bad news first. Doh! The bad news was twofold:

1) The locals had gone on strike, which meant there was no public transportation running, which meant we couldn't go to the pool

2) The people of Orquillos had a town meeting that morning and decided that they wanted to run sewage lines up to the houses we had been digging at. A bit of background...we were digging squat toilets with septic tanks for these people because it was thought impossible to run sewage lines up the mountain. So while it is good that sewage lines were suddenly feasible, it meant we had dug a bunch of holes for kind of no reason.

Richard said that our new project would instead be to build toilets and showers at the local football (soccer for y'all Americans) field. There were some details to be worked out but at least we weren't being ousted from the village. And, flush toilets and showers would definitely be a nice amenity for Orquillos. Nevertheless, we were sad that we wouldn't get to work at people's houses anymore and equally sad that we wouldn't be going swimming. We consoled ourselves with Yrene's delicious fajitas and homemade salsa...

After lunch, Richard suggested we walk down to the main road "just in case" a transport happened to be running. We walked, and walked, and walked and finally arrived at a little store on the edge of town, where the shopkeeper confirmed there was no transport. #$@#*! While thinking about what to do next, we munched on some Choko Sodas (chocolate covered soda crackers...downright amazing), and drank Inca Kola, which tasted like Big Red soda. We also scored a bottle of moonshine for 3 soles! Richard asked if we wanted to walk to Urubama, which was about a half hour away AND had a swimming pool. We were getting ready to start trekking when a farm truck drove by. Yrene hailed the truck and the next thing we knew, we were hitching a ride. (don't read this Mom)


Goin' for a walk


La tienda


Life. Is. Good.

The guy charged us 12 soles and we were on our way, picking up and dropping off other hitchers and waving like mad at the people on the street. Fifteen minutes later we were at the public pool and having a swim. The water was about as warm as one of my post-17-miler ice baths, but we jumped in anyways to try and get at least one layer of dirt off of our skin. Afterwards we took cold showers. I just kept dumping Campsuds on my head until the water stopped turning black.


Some of us jumped off the high dive, aka a log someone had stuck through a hole in the fence

Once we were clean we walked to a bar called Muse, where several of us (including me) decided to try Long Island Iced Tea for the first time. What we ended up getting was a pint glass filled with eight kinds of alcohol and a splash of Coca Cola for color. Yowza. We got a little drunk sitting on a big comfy couch and watching MTV, until Richard pointed us out the door and in the direction of heaven, aka Pizzawasi.

Pizzawasi was the best pizza I have ever had. Ever. And I've eaten plenty of pizza. Maren and I split a family-sized Pizza Mixta, which had everything but the kitchen sink on it. I also shared a pitcher of Cuba Libre (rum and coke) with Richard and a few others. Needless to say, I was singing La Bamba and James Blunt by the end of the meal. Clearly we needed more to drink so we went to the shop next door and bought some wine before grabbing a cab back to Orquillos. We hung out in the boys' room, drinking wine and listening to music before crashing for the night.