One of the stores at the town of Peña Blanca, where we borrowed our paila and machete
And there it is, our destination! Imagine me waving to you on the far left top peak!
The morning on top of the ridgeline, with our tent in the distance
Rubén, Erin, and Jess
Mile after his torture!
The town of Peña Blanca as seen from the Peña
Dan and Rubén
Sunrise over the comarca
Las Gringas de Chichica
Piñata time at the christmas/end of school party
Arroz con pollo y ensalada de papa, el plato típico
Parents with their children
A little girl doing poetry
The class dancing jegui
La mesa principal (sin yo, la mas importante de todos)
Fuzzy mushrooms on Cerro Plata
Mi amor y yo
Contemplating our eventual destination Peña Blanca, the tallest pointy mountain in the center
Oh man! I think it´s gonna take a while to write about these last few weeks! It's been action-packed. The pictures are also in reverse order chronologically. So the last couple times I went to David were full of runarounds and wild goose chases that always seem to end up as a waste of time. I went to talk to customer service for my cell phone since they never are available on the phone, because of the jerks that keep ripping off my money from my phone cards. Every day a couple of different numbers send me a message and suddenly my account is one dollar shorter. It pisses me off and they are walking away with most of my saldo! So I went in to get it fixed and they said that they fixed it by disconnecting me with this "club" that I supposedly joined, but it hasn't stopped! I will have to go back again I guess.
Painting on this map mural has gone a lot slower than I like or expected although it is getting close, but December has been busier than I expected too. I was expecting that less people would want to work! Actually the work has mostly been parties still. I went to a birthday party that I had been invited to, where there were the requisite drunk men hitting on Jessica when I arrived, whose birthday it also happened to be as well. She told me that sometimes it´s nice not to be the only gringa at times like these! So I took up some of the slack on the comments of how beautiful our eyes are. The food on this occasion was arroz con puerco, but the pork consisted mainly of skin that still had the pig´s hair in it. Not the most appetizing thing, so I asked for a bag to take it home for later. . . where I gave it to the dog. It was either that or drop it accidentally for the dogs to eat there, but I would run the risk of them giving me more! We smoked the birthday boy which is the tradition here, where you hold them over a little pot of coals that have some kind of leaf burning in there as well that smells sweet. I am still not quite sure why they do this, I forgot to ask. I think it's probably to do with starting out clean with the next year of your life. Then you stick a little money in the hat. Afterwards the birthday boy Waldo basically pulled me up and danced with me (a little closer than I would like). After that I made my excuses and left, because another guy that was so drunk that he couldn't even talk started petitioning a dance as well, through hand gestures of course. So I left poor Jessica there, who at this point is a lot more diligent in staying at these things than I am.
I went with the tourism group to get some firewood for cooking at the fair in February. There were about 5 of us and in no time we gathered enough for the event. And Hector arrived (five minutes early no less) to take the wood back to chichica in his car, so we didn´t have to carry it all the way back to town. That would have been a chore times 10! Later that day I painted a little more on the map and then Mile and I climbed Cerro Plata. It is so lovely now that the rains are stopping, you can do fun stuff like that in the afternoons and not worry about mud or getting wet or getting back home before your stuff gets all soaked through.
Recilia wanted me to help her out with her end-of-year party that she was giving for her class, so I helped get the piñatas ready to break and helped with the decorations. She also invited Jessica and I to sit at the mesa principal, which is the place of honor at events like that reserved for the high-ranking officials. She is so sweet! She also put me in charge of taking photos of the event, which I took tons! She gave those kids like 15 pounds of candy, nothing like rotting out more teeth. Then after that I went with Mile and Jess to the river. Yay for summer activities!
So this Thursday I washed my clothes and painted some more, to where the provinces are at least all painted in. It still needs some touch up painting and outlining and writing the names, but in the eyes of the people it probably looks finished! While I was waiting for the arrival of Erin and Dan for the Peña Blanca hike, Mile and I talked for a while and we found a house that he could maybe rent next year by the evangelical church. He has always insisted that he hates Chichica and has been talking about getting a job somewhere else this next year, but suddenly is going to re-apply to work here again which is fine with me! So Dan showed up eventually but Erin didn´t make it to Chichica that night and had to stay in San Felix. In the morning Erin went directly to Porto Rica where she had a site development meeting with the community, where we walked over and met her there. And due to great fortune, John, a panamanian peace corps guy, was also there with his car and took us most of the way to Peña Blanca! He saved us a couple hours of walking which was awesome, but even though the road was dry it was really rutted out and he didn´t dare take us all the way. Also, Rubén from the tourism group came with us, I stopped at his house to tell him we were going and he said he´d catch up with us, but it was actually us who caught up with him in the car! He´s an all-star hiker that Rubén.
We decided to climb the mountain that same day and camp up on top that night, then come down and return to Chichica the next morning. So we borrowed a machete, a pot and a jug of water to cook in, bought some rice and spam to cook, and headed on up. I was hoping to not have to climb the mountain carrying packs, but that´s how it was. So we headed up behind on the other side of the cliff. However, Mile, who is an experienced hiker but is out of shape from sitting around at the school all day, didn´t drink enough water and got overheated and his legs started cramping. So I told the others that we would meet them at the top while we slowly continued the ascent. It was even more emotional making it to the top that way, like coming to the end of an odyssey or something! The clouds were coming in by the time that Mile and I arrived, so there wasn´t much of a view at that point. So we pitched the tent, found some wood to burn from the scrubby bushes at the top, and cooked rice and spam. Cruchy, not salted, rice and spam. The spam was the best part, at least it gave flavor to the rice that gringos don´t know how to cook as well as the Panamanians.
That night Jess, Mile, and I started out in the tent. Rubén was hitting it off with Erin, they stayed up late talking. Then Rubén came inside and Erin and Dan decided they wanted to sleep under the stars, which was fine because it was a three-man tent anyway and with Rubén it was pretty close. Not to mention all the rocks that were cushioning us all night long... oww! I had only one position that was comfortable to be in due to those rocks, and that was practically on top of Mile! But then in the middle of the night Erin gave in because it was really cold outside and asked to be let in. So she squeezed into the already tight tent, leaving me approximately enough room to sleep on my side sandwiched tightly between her and Mile. To turn over I had to get up. But it was nice and warm!
In the morning we got up to watch the sunrise over the comarca, and while the actual sunrise was not that spectacular, it felt like we were on top of the world up there. I have looked at that same peak this whole time I´ve been here wanting to be up there, and there I was looking over the little world that I have come to know. It was really awesome! Plus we had excellent luck weatherwise, no rain or wind or even a lot of cold! Great timing.
An interesting side note to this trip: I recieved a call from a Stephanie from USAID the other day asking if she could come with us to Peña Blanca. I said that it was fine, but it seemed a little strange. So after several follow-up phone calls trying to establish logistics, that morning she called and told me that she was just leaving panama city. It was 7:00 in the morning, and I told her that we were leaving too, and that if she happened to get there maybe she could catch up to us and maybe she wouldn´t, depending on how long the meeting in Porto Rica took. Then she said that she´s not used to travelling so ambiguously, so I told her Welcome to Peace Corps, that´s what we do! It´s not my fault she decided to leave so late even though I told her she should probably leave at 3 in the morning to get here on time! So while we were getting our cushy ride up to the town of Peña Blanca, she was just arriving at Tolé in a car that would never make that road. And while we were beginning to climb the mountain, she was looking all over Chichica for someone to take her up there that same day. And while we were camped up on top of the mountain, she was arriving in the town at 10:00 at night! You may wonder why she was so persistent, as did I. Dan, who had met her before when she strangely asked to visit his site as well, told me that she has a shaman who told her that Peña Blanca was the key to a great change in her life, and she had not heard of Peña Blanca until she went to Dan´s site where he pointed it out. From then on she was in pursuit of her destiny through my trip. We found her in the town when we came down from the mountain, where she was planning to climb up that day. I hope she had luck, but it looks like it was raining as we were walking back to Chichica!
So after re-rationing ourselves in the town, Mile and I started walking back first because we were going to be slower than the rest. Sure enough, about halfway back the rest overtook us, Dan first and then the others. By the time we made it to where the cars now come to pick up passengers, we were both kind of limpy, him from his sore muscles from the cramps the day before and me from my knee that began to act up after four hours of walking. Two old grandparents we are! But we made it, and now Mile can say that he is the only teacher at the high school that has climbed Peña Blanca! We went back to my house and made some pollo guisado and patacones and nursed our tired legs.
And here I am in Tolé. I´m sure I´ve left out lots of stuff, but who has time to sit at the computer all day? Not me! Well, until Christmas! Man, it doesn´t even seem like Christmas here. I tried listening to Christmas music and it just seemed weird. Oh well. Later!
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