A Birthday Full of Firsts

We’re back from a wild weekend of all sorts of adventures.  I’ll post more of a Jackson specific update in the next few days, but will attempt to recap a little of our weekend excursions now.  First of all, the action started off when we got a bit lost on the hike from Ollanta to Cachiccata, one we’ve done several times.  We somehow got off track, ran into Alvarez, a drunk dude on a horse from the village on the other side of Cachiccata’s mountain.  Drunk Alvarez was a bit shady and his habit of mixing Quechua with Spanish made him very difficult to understand, but he was pretty clear about which path to take to Cachiccata.  We took his misadvice and ended up on a 2.5 hour hike that landed us up the side of a mountain overlooking Cachiccata, so we arrived slightly late to Klever’s family’s house for lunch.  But, we made it. 

Here’s Jackson playing with his little buddy outside Klever’s house:

Here’s Jackson with Klever’s mom:

I had the opportunity to check something off my life’s “To-Do” list after lunch at Klever’s…it was much harder than I expected!  Oh, and I later realized I was kneeling in cow crap.  Yeah, that green loveliness will be with me for awhile since I only brought a few pairs of pants to Peru.

The community threw a huge birthday bash for Jackson.  The guys in Cachiccata started preparing Patchamanca early in the morning.  Patchamanca is a pre-Inca method of cooking in which meat and veggies are prepared in an earth oven, and it is reserved for special occasions.  The community is very inclusive, so all were invited to join in the feast, which included Guinea Pig, sheep, chicken, sweet potato, dry potato, and several other potato types, beans, and chicha (the corn based alcohol that people in the Andes drink for nutrition). 

Here’s a picture of Jax gnawing on a guinea pig claw (look closely;)

They had a pinata and the kids went nuts for it!  They also had Cachiccata’s harpist play for Jackson’s birthday fiesta. 

The party raged on pretty late, and Trav’s poor tummy is still suffering for those extra cups of chicha he drank.  We camped that night and Jackson did great.  I have to say, it was a pretty darn cool 1st birthday, and I think Jackson thought so too.

My mother-in-law is visiting Peru for the first time and we brought her to the community for Jackson’s bday too.  I think culture shock may have arrived before the guinea pig on her plate, but that may have been what put her a bit over the edge.  She’s been a trooper, and even camped in Cachiccata with us! 

Here’s a picture from a previous trip of the campsite at Cachiccata:

Family picture in Cachiccata:

After we left Cachiccata, we hopped on the train to take Lynn to Machu Picchu.  This was our 4th visit, but it’s been incredible each and every time.  The weather in the cloud forest is totally unpredictable, which always makes it interesting.  We have seen it under a pure blue sky, rainy, shrouded in mist, and overcast.  It looks totally different depending on the conditions. 

Trav told me I look like I’m about to eat someone in this picture, but oh well, Jackson is smiling:

Here are our 2 troopers, Gramma and our littlest traveler:

Jackson has been amazing.  We’ve gone everywhere in planes, trains, and automobiles, and Jackson has been such a champ!  I’ll tell you all about our little traveler in my next post.  I can’t beleive he’s 1. 

Gramma Lynn leaves tomorrow, and Trav and I are moving our homebase out to the Sacred Valley so we can be closer to our birthing center project.  We’ll be conducting a few focus groups with the women from Cachiccata to use as a model since research has shown focus groups to be very accurate in providing information representative of communities at large.  We are hoping to gather info on things such as the cultural factors that lead women to deliver at home rather than seek medical care, when do they choose to pursue an intervention, common complications of pregnancy/delivery women have experienced, average family size, etc.  Since we have a strong relationship with Cachiccata, this is a good community to use in our rapid needs assessment.  Showing up in any of the other Sacred Valley communities, speaking broken Spanish, as American strangers, we may not engender the trust necessary to get accurate information.  Klever is going to arrange the meetings for us and will be present as well, making sure our Spanish and translations of their Spanish (and Quechua) are accurate as well.