Uphill Both Ways

Total body exhaustion. It has been a while since I have felt that feeling. Today we pedaled out to Puca Cuesta to do a little visiting and see if we could help out in the school there. There are only 5 kilometers between Lampa and Puca Cuesta, but I swear that it was uphill both ways. When we got to the school, the teacher wanted us to come in and teach a little English to her kids. First, they sang their national anthem for us in Quechua, which was a scene right out of GlobeTrekker (for those unfamiliar, that is my favorite travel show). Then we sang our national anthem for them, a little off-key, but I betcha they didn’t notice. It was culture exchange right before our eyes. Very cool. After the singing, we taught the English alphabet to the kids, and it was funny to hear them trying to pronounce the G, J, and Z, because they don’t really have equivalent sounds in either Quechua or Spanish. We had our turn though, as we tried to pronounce the Quechua alphabet. Not too easy. The whole teaching thing was a lot of fun, and I really hope we get to that a lot more. After we taught the other class of littler kids too, we said “chau” and “hasta luego” and then headed back toward Lampa. We must have been feeling a little too pleased with ourselves, because 3 kilometers down the road, Wades chain broke again. Oh boy, I wish I could post the pictures of what resulted from a desperate situation and a little improvisation. Dave and Wade put their belts together and tied one end to the back of Daves bike while Wade held onto the other end. Dave pulled Wade behind him for a good km, until the road decided to go uphill again. When we finally made it back to our hostel, we could barely walk up the stairs. That sounds kinda wimpy on my part, since I did none of the pulling or hanging-on, but believe me; the road was against us today. I think Dave might still be sleeping it off. Oh yeah, we had our first gringo sighting today. A whole group of them came in last night and were very loud in the room underneath mine, so I had a little trouble falling asleep, partly on account of the excitement of hearing English, and partly because I was irritated that they wouldn’t shut up. Also, there was a drunken fight in the street outside my window, and I couldn’t help but watch. Who could sleep with all that going on? This morning we got to talk to one of the gringos, a guy from Ireland. It was great. Yay for the Irish! Ok, time to go eat another 60 cent dinner. Adios!