You failed, and the whole town knows it

D+!!!!! Oh my God .... I passed! I passed!!!!! Oh, man!! I got a D+! I'm gonna graduate!!!!

(Hug random Asian kid)

I wish we'd known each other. This is a little awkward.

Similar scenes to this one from the beginning of Tommy Boy happened all over the Ecuadorian coast this week*.

*Except instead of hugging a random Asian kid they might have hugged a random squinty-eyed Ecuadorian whose nickname will forever be Chino.

Schools in the coast run on a different calendar than those in the sierra and oriente. The highlands and jungle school year is very similar to the United States (September through June), while the coastal school year run from April through January. I believe that the different schedules exist to offset for climate* and the harvest schedule**.

* Not even the teachers would show up for work in the rain.
** Youth had to help their families on the farm.

Whereas Marquette University put a list of all the students and their grades on the wall, schools here only posted a list of students who failed and will be held back a year. There is no number system to hide a student's identity. The school puts up the kids full name. If you failed, everyone knows about it.

If a student fails one subject, he or she has to repeat the entire academic year in the same grade. It doesn't matter if a student does well in every other subject, he or she will have to repeat the entire year.

Students are given the opportunity to retake an exam if they fail it the first time around.

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As you know, I will take any opportunity to cite Tommy Boy that I can. I was really looking for a way to put "D+ isn't a grade they like to give out, I'll tell you that much" into the post but was only able to find space for it here, at the end, below the divider line.

And that's how you build a fence...

Last time we left off with my cactus fence, I had been attacked by some hornets, and the fence was non-existent.

Well, we have since decided to switch directions, in terms of cactus.

The previous species of cactus that we had used for the fence grew straight up. We are now using a kind of cactus that grows out horizontally. This should be much more effective as a fence.



As you can see from the picture, no sane or sober person would think of crossing that fence of cactus. Luckily, this species of cactus is just as easy to propagate as the other one. All you have to do is stick a piece of the cactus in the ground and, voila, you got yourself another cactus plant.



The owner of this fence was nice enough to let us use the cacti he had pruned off of his fence as starter seed for our own. So Saturday morning we rented a pick-up truck and filled the bed with cactus.



Then we planted the cactus along the border of the forest we are hoping to protect.



The cactus should grow at a rate of about one meter per year, according to the other fence's owner's niece. So as long as the youth from the local high school take care of the cactus plants and don't decide to light them on fire (like some youth already decided to do) we should be describing the botanical gardens as some sort of impenetrable fortress in a few years.

PERUsing

I have returned from an adventure in the land of Peruvian flute bands.

Disappointingly, and ironically, I didn't see any of those musical groups.

But despite its lack of flute bands on every corner, I greatly enjoyed my ten-day journey from Lima back to Arenillas. (For a more detailed account of my travels, continue reading below the slideshow)



The following map illustrates my itinerary from Lima back to Arenillas (keep in mind that the my house is not drawn to scale).



(This was not my first time traveling in Peru. In between my senior years of college, I backpacked from Quito to Rio de Janeiro. During that trip, I spent nearly a month in Peru and had the opportunity to see some of the more traditional tourist destinations.)

Lima

This was my second time in Lima. I was using Lima as more of a launching pad in this trip than anything else. Lima doesn't offer too much in terms of tourism, and I had covered the main sights in my first visit. I arrived in time for New Year's Eve and was able to bring in the new year with fellow travelers at our hostel in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima.

We ventured out to a seaside park and shopping center (with plenty of bars and night life). At 2:00 a.m., the place was still full of people of all ages bringing in the new year. There were families with little children, senior citizens, and young people. It was pretty fascinating to see.

The next day, it felt like the entire city was recovering from a hangover (because it was). The streets were dead until noon. I had to change some money to buy a bus ticket for the following day and had a lot of trouble finding a money changer at 11:00 a.m. in a city that is normally teaming with people who will readily change dollars to soles.

I spent the afternoon watching college football at a sports bar. After the game, I randomly bumped into a fellow Peace Corps volunteer from Ecuador, who I had no idea was going to be in Lima. She was heading off to Cuzco and Machu Picchu the next day, so we went out for dinner that night.

On Sunday January 2nd, I played the role of tour guide, leading a group of Swedish students on a little stroll through downtown Lima (Bite-sized Three Musketeers included). Lima is such an old city and has so many different building styles because fires and earthquakes have leveled portions of the cities in different eras. So it is not unusual to see old buildings from different generations next to each other.

Chiclayo

That night, I headed northward along the coast to the city of Chiclayo. The area is rich in archaeological ruins and museums. It is also reputed to have one of the largest street markets in all of Latin America (The market even has a witchcraft section).

I was interested in visiting the dry tropical forest reserve of Bosque de Pomac because the ecological reserve near my site is dry tropical forest. I wanted to see how they have developed the tourism at this reserve to get some idea on how it might happen in Arenillas. I learned that the big attracting in the reserve are some pre-Incan pyramids that were used as burial sites for the kings. (They have yet to discover such important archaeological ruins in the reserve in Arenillas, so I guess the tourism will just have to wait.) I thought the forest was really interesting. There were some trees in the forest that were more than 500 years old.

In the afternoon, I wandered through the giant street market. I love street markets. I especially enjoy hunting for one specific product in a maze of tents selling anything you can imagine. Luckily, I arrived at the Chiclayo street market with a certain product in mind.

When I was backpacking through South America on my previous trip to Peru, I had purchased a soccer jersey for the club from Cuzco. I had seen the club play in person during an alternative spring break trip to Buenos Aires. Unfortunately, I had lost my jersey on the beach in Rio de Janeiro.

So I set about finding a replacement jersey at the market in Chiclayo. It didn't take nearly as long as many of my other ventures through street markets (e.g. sesame seeds, nutmeg, white carrot, Wrestlemania III), but it was exciting, nonetheless.

Chachapoyas

In 2007, Chachapoyas was barely on the tourism map. The only way to access the principal attraction — The Kuelap Fortress — was to trek for several days across the valleys to reach it. For someone with plenty of time on his or her hands, that was a great adventure. But it was also the only attraction in the area.

Now, the area boasts one of the world's tallest waterfalls. I know what you are thinking. How does that happen? Can a waterfall just appear overnight? I'm not an expert in waterfall creation, so I couldn't tell you the answer.

In 2006, a German guy measured the height of Gocta Falls at 773 meters, which makes it the third highest waterfall in the world. Apparently, the locals had known about the falls all along, but they thought it was haunted, so they didn't bother to tell anyone about it.

Now you can take day trips to the Kuelap fortress and the Gocta Falls, which is exactly what I did. I spent another day hiking to a nearby artisan village.

Mancora

The north coast of Peru has a reputation for being a top surf destination. Apparently it boasts one of the world's longest left-hand breaks. As a non-surfer, I don't really appreciate that fact, but you might. One result of these waves is that surfing and beach towns dot the coastal highway. The biggest of them is Mancora.

I'm not much of a beach guy myself. I prefer to be moving around. But I had a couple of days before my vacation ended, and Mancora is on the road back to Ecuador. So I figured I would stop there. The town has a big party scene. Luckily, I was staying at a hostel on the outskirts of town and met some similarly laid-back, not-so-into-the-party-scene backpackers. So I passed a couple of lazy days in Mancora before taking the bus back to Arenillas.

It took about four hours to travel from Mancora to Arenillas, and I was really excited to make the trip because I like the idea of traveling with a final destination in mind (as opposed to looping back to where I started from). Plus, I often go to the border town of Huaquillas, which 20 minutes from my house, to get t-shirts made or to buy soccer jerseys (there will be an upcoming post about all the jerseys I have bought) but I had never gone through the full border crossing. All of the travel books say that it is a horrible border crossing. I went through it without any problems and got back to my house safe and sound.

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(In total, I was on vacation for nearly three weeks. I spent the first week and a half in Panama with my family. We saw some impressive sites and did had some great adventures. But more than anything it was really special to be able to share the experience with everybody. I hope to put some photos up from that part of the trip, but I have had some photo-sharing difficulties.)