Colca and Kirk's Visit

We finished up our 48th and last focus group discussion this week in an area called Colca known for having one of the deepest canyons in the world (twice as deep as the Grand Canyon). We spent most of the week in the tiny town of Chivay at 12,500 ft. and it was freezing at night! Every night I put my thick black tights on and climbed inside my sleeping bag with four thick blankets on top of me. The problem here is it is just as cold inside as outside because the buildings are literally just blocks of cement without any insulation. So my guess is that it was in the 30s at night outside (and inside). All the focus group discussions went well this week. The women in Colca wear some of the most beautiful dresses I have ever seen. They have so many colors and have matching hats as well. The traditional dress of the region is very distinct from anything else I have seen. Most of the women in the area don’t make money off of their crops but rather off of selling handicrafts to the tourists in the area. I saw more gringos in one week in Chivay than I have seen during my entire time here in Peru. The tourists come to see Colca Canyon and hike around it. This is a girl I met while working on my MPH report in a tiny restaurant that let me plug in my computer for the afternoon in Huambo (pop. of a couple hundred). She was so fascinated with my computer that I had to take a picture of her with Photo Booth. She loved the other feature that made her face stretch all crazy.


We traveled 2-4 hours down Colca Canyon, one-way, on dirt roads with 20,000+ ft. peaks overlooking from above to visit the little pueblos we were working in. It was spectacular terrain! At one point along the road there was an overlook called La Cruz del Candor where there were several huge candors flying very close to us at the top of the canyon. It made me think of E and the mascot at Cottonwood Elementary.


Kirk Dearden said he was sick of Lima this week (he hasn’t seen the sun there in months) and so he took a flight to Arequipa on Friday and then took a bus 3 ½ hours to meet us in Chivay on Friday night. We didn’t get back from working until around 9:30pm but we met up that night at the hotel and went out to dinner late. The hotel manager that night told us that a worker had to replace some electric wires in our room the next morning- at 4:30am! I thought he was joking at first, but no, he was very serious. Chivay is known for its volcanic hot springs. So the next morning, instead of trying to sleep through the noise in our room, we got up at 4:30am and went to the hot springs. And they were amazing! It was so cold outside (I even saw ice on the ground) but the hot springs were amazingly clean and steamy hot. I didn’t get much sleep but it was worth it. Afterwards we rented a car for the day and we went with Kirk down Colca Canyon again to see the candors and hike into the canyon from the tiny town of Cabanconde. Then we caught a bus late yesterday afternoon back to Arequipa. Kirk and I talked the entire way back. He’s been a great friend and mentor to me. This picture above is Kirk with one of the traditional hats the women wear. The other picture is of a Peruvian baby on her mother's back at one of our focus group meetings. The babies here in the Andes, I think, are the cutest in the world.

Today we attended the ward here in Arequipa where three American families attend as well (the men are working in a copper mine here). We even had Sunday School in English. This week’s plan is to do the qualitative data (focus group discussion) analysis here in Arequipa. I love it here because it reminds me a lot Salt Lake. The city is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes on all sides. And I saw a sunset here last week that I swear looked just like the sunsets over the Oquirrhs. It was just gorgeous. And this week has been a much better week with my GI problems, ever since I started taking that medicine for Giardia. I just had a cold, which I’d trade any day over stomach problems.